Views & Visions:
Connecting & Sharing The Visual
Wednesday, August 10, 2022 to Friday, March 10, 2023
VIEWS & VISIONS: CONNECTING & SHARING THE VISUAL
By Kate Nearpass Ogden, Professor of Art History, Visual Arts Program, Stockton University (USA)
The 2022 IVLA Virtual Art Exhibition “Views and Visions: Connecting and Sharing the Visual” features work by seventeen artists from countries as diverse as Canada, Hungary, Japan, Korea, Pakistan, Peru, Turkey, United Kingdom, and United States. The thirty-one works of art in the exhibition lean heavily toward digital photography, although there are also hand-crafted prints and drawings, photo- constructions, a video, and stills from virtual reality projects.
The title “Views and Visions”(1)is meant to distinguish works of art that are views of real places and things from art that depicts visions imagined by the artist. The title seems particularly appropriate for this year’s online exhibition. “Views” immediately connect us to the visual reality we share with others; “visions” allow artists to share their personal dreams, ideas, and interpretations of the world around them.
Both views and visions can be powerful and expressive modes of art-making. This year’s online exhibition includes works of art from both camps, as well as images that straddle the line between them. The interpretations given here are the writer’s; to read the artists’ own words, please see the information in the online exhibition.
SELECTED ARTISTS
Faizan Adil
Zsolt Batori
Tracey Bowen
Susan Jane Britsch
Debra A. Davis
Dan Hernandez
Misaki Kawahata
Hyungjoo A. Kim
Barbara Miner
N. Toros Mutlu
Marita Ibañez Sandoval
Patricia Search
Viviana Torres-Mestey
Thomas Wilcox
Lisa Winstanley
Eric Zeigler
AWARDS
2nd Place – Dan Hernandez, “Grotta”
3rd Place – N. Toros Mutlu, “Tides’ End – XI”
Hyungjoo A. Kim, “呼吸●共生: we breathe and live, together”
EXHIBITION JURY
Petronio Bendito
Peter Carpreau
Kate Nearpass Ogden
Dana Statton Thompson
!["HUMANITY, MAKING A BIG HEART: the way we live and design [together]"](https://ivla.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Kim_Hyungjoo-A._digital-print_01-Hyungjoo-A.-Kim.jpg){kind=link}
Featured Award Winners
Winter Sunset
1st Place Art Exhibit Award Winner
Barbara WF Miner
University of Toledo, USA
About the artist:
The Land Outside My Door Series: The Midwest is flyover country according to most news organizations; nothing of note to be considered. Every day, no matter the weather, I walk and photograph the macro and the minutia. I use these images as touchstones for this series of prints, my sculptural interventions in the woods and for the small wooden artworks that I create from reclaimed ash wood. I am part of a web, connected and somehow separate from all other organisms. Intimately knowing the patterns of plants and animals in the rhythm of seasons brings me great, anchoring joy.
Dan Hernandez
University of Toledo, USA
Grotta
2nd Place Art Exhibit Award Winner
Grotta imagines a descent into the underworld loosely inspired by mythology, and video games. Much of the source material for this image is drawn from illuminated manuscripts. For instance, the main character is a depiction of Virgil appropriated from the Yates Thompson Divine Comedy (YTDC) (1444-1450, Italy). In Grotta, the figure is not Virgil, but rather an avatar of the viewer. One experiences the journey through this figure. Similarly to the YTDC, the narrative in this work plays out in a series of vignettes, but here the scenes compose a larger image – a map. Additionally, while there is a starting point and end point, Grotta has no predefined path. Instead, the viewer can explore the world autonomously. This approach to storytelling is influenced by the open world genre of video games. Grotta pays homage to one of the early masterpieces in this genre – Metroid (1986, Nintendo)
Tides’ End
3rd Place Art Exhibit Award Winner
Just like dreams may seem to be about anything and everything, but really are about nothing; these photographs, too, are about as anything and everything as dreams can be. A dream is distilled from your everything; it is fed from a network of memories that stretches from what you had in your breakfast today to your high school history grades, and sometimes even these two can be elemental in the same narrative. Similar to a dream structure, the images in Tides’ End were not made to be about anything in particular; and even if they once were, their meanings should be sought in artist’s past and in their own individual merit. Imposing a pseudo-bond between these images would be a betrayal to viewer’s own narrative. Once again, they are about whatever and anything you see now. If anything; I want these photographs to be the memories you never had.
N. Toros Mutlu
Izmir University of Economics, Turkey
Marita Ibañez Sandoval
University of Tsukuba, Japan
Mending Landscapes:
Mirroring Jōsō
Honorable Mention
Joso in Ibaraki Prefecture is home to a significant Latin American population. In this context, three photographic visits were conducted in search of the migratory footprint of Brazilian and Peruvian communities and its effects on the urban-rural Japanese landscape. A work methodology was built using photomedia tools, photowalks, rephotography, and photomontage. Flusserian ideas of migrants as mirrors and windows are essential in (re)observing the city through their (our) eyes and experiences, always attentive to the city’s migrational footprint and my traces when making an image or constructing a scale model. These models contained photographs and rephotographs of the city, taken on different days and times, an intermediate point between the printed photograph’s two-dimensionality and the visited landscape’s three-dimensionality.
呼吸●共生: we breathe and live, together
Honorable Mention
This poster reflects the problem of the ecosystem with the current Covid issues. Visually, ecology is a gestalt (configuration) made of many parts and is greater than or different from the combination of its parts. The poster illustrates that humans are a part of the ecological system. Also, the poster visualizes each species as a unique organism that represents the whole system simultaneously.
Biodiversity is key to sustaining life on Earth, and human existence would be impossible without its harmonizing effects. This poster intends to raise awareness about the issues of the environment and encourage an appreciation and respect for other species essential for achieving ecological vitality.
Hyungjoo A. Kim
Purdue University, USA