Celebrated signature event features new exhibitions at the SCAD Museum of Art and programming with international contemporary artists, including a keynote conversation with honoree Jorge Pardo.
SAVANNAH, GEORGIA — The Savannah College of Art and Design presents the 14th edition of SCAD deFINE ART, the university's annual program of talks, tours, and exhibitions featuring work by contemporary art's most vital voices. This year's dynamic programming, presented Feb. 28–March 2, includes a keynote conversation with renowned Cuban-American artist, sculptor, and 2023 SCAD deFINE ART honoree Jorge Pardo; a screening of Argentine-Israeli video artist Mika Rottenberg's feature film REMOTE; and a keynote lecture by New York-based multidisciplinary artist Rachel Feinstein, among other illuminating gallery talks, panels, and conversations.
The programming complements new exhibitions on view at the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, featuring work by Pardo, Rottenberg, Feinstein, and other globally renowned artists including Ann Craven, Hassan Hajjaj, Chase Hall, Gyun Hur, Leung Chi Wo + Sara Wong, Josh Sperling, and Ana Bel Lee Washington — an international roster of artists representing countries and regions including Argentina, Cuba, Hong Kong, Israel, Mexico, Morocco, South Korea, the U.K., and the U.S.
Questioning our collective past and present with introspection and whimsy, the exhibitions capture the complexities of contemporary life and include an expansive site-related installation by Jorge Pardo (b. 1963, Cuba); a panoramic presentation of recent paintings by Ann Craven (b. 1967, Boston, Mass.); an installation and sculpture- centered survey of work by Rachel Feinstein (b. 1971, Fort Defiance, Ariz.); photographic work by Hassan Hajjaj (b. 1961, Larache, Morocco) and the artist duo Leung Chi Wo + Sara Wong (b. 1968, Hong Kong; b. 1968, Hong Kong); the first solo museum exhibition for Chase Hall (b. 1993, Saint Paul, Minn.), presented by SCAD MOA's Evans Center for African American Studies; a collection of connected bodies of work by SCAD alum Gyun Hur (b. Daegu, South Korea; M.F.A., sculpture, 2009); a video installation by Mika Rottenberg (b. 1976, Buenos Aires); a two-part solo exhibition showcasing new work by Josh Sperling (b. 1984, Oneonta, N.Y.); and an ode to the artistic vision of Ana Bel Lee Washington (b. 1924, Detroit, Michigan; d. 2000, St. Simons Island, Ga.). Exhibitions programming also includes the group show Protégé, which celebrates the creative and professional relationships that grow and evolve between students and professors at SCAD and beyond, presented at the university's Gutstein Gallery.
"SCAD deFINE ART 2023 challenges students, collectors, and lovers of beauty to query the quotidian and question the quixotic. Glowing glass installations, fantasy-inspired painted panoramas, and three-dimensional dioramas immerse viewers in ethereal elegance. In addition to renowned artist Jorge Pardo's magnificent work, SCAD deFINE ART guests will marvel at myriad other mediums and masterworks on display throughout SCAD MOA. Join us as we celebrate creators and inspire tomorrow's innovators. SCAD defines art."
— Paula Wallace | SCAD President and Founder
"We are so honored to showcase these incredible artists here at the SCAD Museum of Art. They have created a diverse group of important exhibitions of the highest caliber that I am certain will inspire audiences of all types. As always, the artists we work with bring such ambition, thoughtfulness, and creativity to their projects here. We are so excited to share their brilliance with our students and visitors."
— Daniel S. Palmer | Chief curator, SCAD Museum of Art
Many of the university's top-ranked degree programs — including sculpture, painting, fibers, photography, film, architecture, production design, and furniture design — are represented in this year's exhibitions and programming. SCAD students and community members can engage with the artists during the three-day event through gallery talks, conversations, master classes, collaborations, and public art.
An opening reception takes place in Savannah at SCAD MOA, Tuesday, Feb. 28, at 6:30 p.m. For more information, visit scad.edu/defineart.
SCAD deFINE ART 2023 exhibitions
Protégé
Group exhibition | Now on view through April 2
On view at Gutstein Gallery, Protégé showcases pairings of work by alumni artists and the faculty members with whom they worked closely during their studies, and who continue to support and inspire their practices. Works by mentors and mentees adjoin one another in the gallery, revealing connections of inspiration and ideas between artists. The exhibition features work across SCAD degree programs including fibers, graphic design, jewelry, illustration, sculpture, painting, printmaking, and photography, created both individually and collaboratively. Protégé reflects the important connections and exchanges artists make at SCAD that extend into their creative careers.
Ana Bel Lee Washington
Rejoice! | Now on view through May 15
Featuring 18 works collected across the years by the artist's friends and advocates Jonèe and Tina McElroy Ansa, Rejoice! perfectly encapsulates Ana Bel Lee Washington's singular painting technique. Washington (b. 1924, Detroit, Mich.; d. 2000, St. Simons Island, Ga.) began her artistic practice late in life after a long career as a social worker and activist. Her keen observation of culture is reflected in richly saturated paintings that present scenes of people in joyous collectivity, depicting "the South for Black people as it could have been" and sharing an optimism and sense of togetherness that continue to inspire today.
Rachel Feinstein
Façade | Now on view through July 3
New York-based sculptor and painter Rachel Feinstein (b. 1971, Fort Defiance, Ariz.) is known for creating whimsical, multidimensional installations inspired by a concoction of references, which range from fairy tales and religious myths to 18th-century European craft and 20th-century American kitsch. Drawing from memories of her frequent childhood trips to Disney World and her college degree in religion and philosophy, Feinstein fabricates idyllic landscapes and decadent genre scenes with a heightened awareness of the power that accompanies storytelling. In this exhibition, Feinstein lays bare the underpinnings of the fantasy realms she so often constructs. Painted panoramas, large-scale wood sculptures, and wall- relief works from across her decades-long career come together to form a labyrinth that shifts between reality and illusion.
Hassan Hajjaj
1444 | Now on view through July 3
Like the amalgamation of cultural influences that make up both his home country of Morocco and the United Kingdom, where he currently resides, Hassan Hajjaj's (b. 1961, Larache, Morocco) photographs present a vast array of stylistic references. Hajjaj's models don bright colors and are set by the artist in environments of clashing patterns in a joyful celebration of multicultural identity. Hajjaj's exhibition 1444 presents work from two series, My Rockstars and Vogue: The Arab Issue. In My Rockstars, he photographs friends, artists, and performers around the world — from British painter Lynette Yiadom- Boakye to American rap superstar Cardi B — in pop-up studios consisting of textiles typical of North Africa. In Vogue: The Arab Issue, models wear garments, like caftans, babouches, and hijabs, of the artist's design, both celebrating Islamic culture and challenging Western stereotypes.
Leung Chi Wo + Sara Wong
Museum of the Lost (Strangers at Home) | Now on view through July 3
Leung Chi Wo (b. 1968, Hong Kong) and Sara Wong (b. 1968, Hong Kong) explore the anonymity of history by contemplating figures in the background of found snapshots. In their Museum of the Lost series, Leung and Wong reenact the poses and attire of these unidentified, unaware "minor characters," producing life-sized photographic prints and crafting accompanying texts that imagine their experiences and personalities. The artists' exhibition focuses on works made from the photo albums of families in Nagoya, Japan, in which Leung and Wong challenge historical grand narratives and shed light on the poetics of photography. Undeterred by the impossibility of truly knowing these people from the fleeting past, the artists' romantic encounter with history may inform how we see our role in the world and years to come.
Josh Sperling
What a Relief | Now on view through July 3
Free-wheeling squiggles and joyful jigsaw composites adorn the SCAD MOA entrance and public-facing Jewel Box vitrines in Josh Sperling's (b. 1984, Oneonta, N.Y.) two-part solo exhibition. The artist's shaped assemblages, constructed of intricate plywood supports for stretched canvas, bring his doodles into three dimensions with expressive applications of color. Within the Jewel Boxes, Sperling responds directly to the museum's particular architectural setting, premiering new sculptures of bold symbols in contrasting red and blue, deceptively simple forms that reveal their complex construction and subtle overlapping after careful contemplation. The exhibition also includes Sperling's Untitled (2021), a jaunty, Memphis Milano–style abstraction that was recently acquired by the museum.
Mika Rottenberg
Cosmic Generator | Now on view through July 24
In Cosmic Generator, Mika Rottenberg (b. 1976, Buenos Aires) presents a spellbinding architectural installation leading to a single-channel film that serves as an elaborate allegory. The film follows the exchange of commercial goods through a subterraneous tunnel system that connects an overflowing market in Yiwu, China, with a dollar store and a Chinese restaurant in the U.S.–Mexico border towns of Calexico and Mexicali. Featuring potent textures, hypnotic sounds, and vivid colors that activate the autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR), the film offers a kaleidoscopic view of the everyday absurdities and extreme conditions caused by globalization, geopolitics, and capitalism today. The artist extends the mesmerizing on-screen mise-en-scène into our physical world, inviting viewers to experience her peculiar surreality in multiple dimensions.
Gyun Hur
There is peace like a river 저기에 강같은 평화가 | Feb. 15–May 15
In this exhibition, Gyun Hur (b. Daegu, South Korea; SCAD M.F.A., sculpture, 2009) composes a visual landscape based on collective and personal memories. The lyrical topography — constructed of hand- blown glass vessels filled with Savannah River water amid a bed of hand-shredded silk flowers — evokes images of the American South refracted through Hur's family history and heritage. The exhibition title is an interpretation of "I've got peace like a river," an African American spiritual often sung in Korean churches in the U.S., with the song's musical notation serving as the compositional structure for the installation. Hur also presents intimate drawings and writings that engage with archival photographs from the postwar period in Korea. In bringing these works together, the artist reroutes the circulation of images and materials with the river as her guide, reflecting on untold stories and offering a new course for healing.
Jorge Pardo
JP@SCAD | Feb. 28–July 2
Through a wide-ranging practice that includes sculpture, installation, painting, design, and built environments, SCAD deFINE ART 2023 honoree Jorge Pardo (b. 1963, Cuba) upends distinctions between function and fine art. With an emphasis on craftsmanship, the artist creates opulent interventions for both the public and private sphere that challenge the expectations of designed objects and spaces. In this exhibition, Pardo places familiar, everyday items within the formal setting of the art space. Alive with color and form, hand-blown glass pendant lamps are suspended from the museum ceiling and scattered throughout the space in a glowing spectrum. Responding to the unique length of the gallery, Pardo also presents a new large-scale textile, a monumental digital print collaged from previous paintings.
Ann Craven
TwelveMoons | Feb. 28–July 17
Ann Craven (b. 1967, Boston, Mass.) paints en plein air to create exuberant depictions of the moon and night sky. These small canvases document the lunar conditions she observes at specific moments and become the source for her larger monumental compositions. Painting in a lush, sensuous palette, Craven describes the moment just past, her memories, and subjective personal experience. For her largest exhibition of these works to date, the artist transforms the gallery into a panorama representing the cycles of the moon, captured over the course of the 2022 lunar year. The works on view reveal both the serial nature of the artist's larger endeavor and the myriad meanings the moon can convey. Collectively, they chronicle a distinct chapter in her ongoing process to creatively and beautifully encapsulate the wonders of the natural phenomena that surround us.
Chase Hall
The Close of Day | Feb. 28–July 17
Chase Hall (b. 1993, Saint Paul, Minn.) interrogates the realities of race in America through innovative figurative painting techniques and iconography that engages the past and the present. Using coffee grounds as pigment on raw cotton canvases, Hall varies the levels of coarseness and fineness of the bean to achieve a range of tonal values, metaphorically articulating a non-monolithic Black experience and evoking his biracial hybridity. The artist's first solo museum exhibition brings together new paintings and an impressive installation evoking the museum's historic structure — and the breath and memory of those who created it. The works address a range of issues, from the complexities of race and labor to the weighty histories of coffee, cotton, and other commodities, as well as personal meditations on the artist's own place in society and history.
SCAD deFINE ART 2023 schedule of events
Tuesday, Feb. 28, 11 a.m.
Join artists Rachel Feinstein and Josh Sperling in the galleries for a conversation on their distinct approaches to sculptural objects and installations. Feinstein will touch on the elements of myth and storytelling that inform her installations, while Sperling will speak to the formal qualities and design influences in his works, which merge painting and sculpture.
Tuesday, Feb. 28, 6:30 p.m.
Join SCAD MOA at the opening party for SCAD deFINE ART 2023. Explore thought-provoking work by international creative visionaries including this year's SCAD deFINE ART honoree Jorge Pardo. Meet the artists and other global scene-makers as you delight in this transformative night of festivities.
Wednesday, March 1, 11 a.m.
Join artists Ann Craven and Chase Hall in the galleries for conversations on their respective exhibitions, moderated by SCAD Museum of Art chief curator Daniel S. Palmer. Craven and Hall each will discuss their singular practices, as well as the methods and themes present in the works on view. Craven will share the process of creating her paintings, from the small plein air canvases she makes by moonlight to the panorama-like installation that constitutes the largest exhibition of these works to date. Hall will illuminate his innovative figurative painting techniques and the range of social and historical issues his works address, as well as his impressive presentation at the museum.
Wednesday, March 1, 3 P.M.
Pei Ling Chan Gallery, Afifi Amphitheater, 322 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Savannah, Ga.
Join gallerists Mary Mitsch, Alexis Johnson, and Camila Nichols for the SCAD deFINE ART 2023 professional practices panel as they share insight on and opportunities to enter the fascinating world of gallery work, how each of them came to the field, how their notions of the art market are informed by their varied experiences, and what they envision for the future of the industry. The panel will be moderated by SCAD MOA chief curator Daniel S. Palmer.
Wednesday, March 1, 5 P.M.
Trustees Theater, 216 E. Broughton St., Savannah,Ga.
Experience REMOTE, the debut feature film by Mika Rottenberg and Mahyad Tousi, in connection with Rottenberg's exhibition Cosmic Generator at SCAD MOA. Created during the COVID-19 pandemic, REMOTE is set in a vivid, otherworldly future and follows the regimented daily routine of a quarantined woman, Unoaku (Okwui Okpokwasili), who lives alone in an ultra-modern apartment complex in Kuala Lumpur. Unoaku's orderly activities begin to unravel as she becomes invested in a popular South Korean dog groomer's (Joony Kim) social media. When Unoaku engages in a virtual chat with four other women living in different parts of the world — Iran, Argentina, Puerto Rico, and South Africa — who also watch the dog grooming show, they soon discover they are connected in ways they could have never imagined.
REMOTE was commissioned by Artangel; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark; and Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden, in association with Hauser & Wirth. The film was completed with support from the MOCA Environmental Council, Los Angeles; Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal; X Museum, Beijing; and the Busan Biennale, Korea.
Wednesday, March 1, 5 P.M.
FORTY, 40 SCAD Way NW, Atlanta
On the occasion of her solo exhibition Façade at SCAD MOA, luminary artist Rachel Feinstein will deliver a keynote lecture at SCAD Atlanta. Gain insight on Feinstein's impressive three-decade career as she discusses her multidisciplinary artistic practice and the inspiration behind her complex work.
Thursday, March 2, 11 a.m.
Join artists and SCAD MOA curators in the galleries for conversations on the work of Hassan Hajjaj, Gyun Hur, and Leung Chi Wo + Sara Wong. The artists will discuss their distinct approaches to image-making, as well as the specific cultural contexts that inform their work, touching on the relationship between portraiture and cultural identity, the connection between visual landscapes and collective memory, and the anonymity of history.
Thursday, March 2, 5 P.M.
Arnold Hall, 1810 Bull St., Savannah, Ga.
Presenting the SCAD deFINE ART 2023 keynote address, honoree Jorge Pardo is internationally regarded for work that tests the limits of fine art production, melding disciplines like painting, fibers, architecture, furniture, and sculpture in vibrantly colored spatial interventions. Pardo will be joined by Matilde Guidelli Guidi, associate curator at Dia Art Foundation, for a conversation on his wide- ranging artistic practice. This conversation is hosted in connection with Pardo's solo exhibition at SCAD MOA.
Thursday, March 2, 6 P.M.
Gutstein Gallery, 201 E. Broughton St., Savannah, Ga.
Join SCAD for a celebration of Protégé, a group exhibition that highlights the creative and professional relationships that grow and evolve between student and teacher at SCAD and beyond. The exhibition features work across SCAD degree programs including fibers, graphic design, jewelry, illustration, sculpture, painting, printmaking, and photography.
All events take place at SCAD MOA, 601 Turner Blvd., Savannah, Ga., unless otherwise noted, and are free and open to the public.
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SCAD: The University for Creative Careers
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SCAD enrolls more than 16,000 undergraduate and graduate students from more than 120 countries. The future-minded SCAD curriculum engages professional-level technology and myriad advanced learning resources, affording students opportunities for internships, professional certifications, and real-world assignments with corporate partners through SCADpro, the university's renowned research lab and prototype generator. SCAD is No. 1 in the U.S., according to Art & Object's 2023 Best Art Schools ranking, with additional top rankings for degree programs in interior design, architecture, film, fashion, digital media, and more. Career success is woven into every fiber of the university, resulting in a superior alumni employment rate. For the past four years, 99% of SCAD graduates were employed, pursuing further education, or both within 10 months of graduation. SCAD provides students and alumni with ongoing career support through personal coaching, alumni programs, a professional presentation studio, and more. For more information, visit scad.edu.
SCAD Museum of Art
The SCAD Museum of Art features more than 10 dynamic gallery spaces presenting exhibitions and commissioned works by international emerging and established artists. The museum serves visitors and students alike, enriching both the high caliber of education at SCAD and the cultural life of the Savannah community and beyond. Exhibitions range from painting, sculpture, and photography to digital media, fashion, and jewelry, complementing the artistic disciplines offered at the university. The museum also hosts public programming year-round, including lectures, gallery talks, workshops, and film screenings.
SCAD MOA has presented exhibitions by artists including AES+F, Jane Alexander, Radcliffe Bailey, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Subodh Gupta, Alfredo Jaar, Sigalit Landau, Liza Lou, Elaine Mayes, Lorraine O' Grady, Ebony G. Patterson, Robin Rhode, Bill Viola, Carrie Mae Weems, Kehinde Wiley, and Fred Wilson, as well as site-specific installations by Daniel Arsham, Kendall Buster, Jose Dávila, Michael Joo, Odili Donald Odita, and others.
An award-winning architectural icon, the museum attracts visitors from around the world to the heart of Savannah's vibrant downtown historic district and incorporates the oldest surviving pre-Civil War railroad depot into its striking contemporary design. Recognized with awards from the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation, the Congress for the New Urbanism, the International Interior Design Association, and the Historic Savannah Foundation, the museum received the American Institute of Architects Honor Award for Architecture, a pinnacle achievement.
Established in 2011, the museum's Evans Center for African American Studies celebrates the imaginative breadth and expressive legacy of African American art and culture. In the decade since its founding, the Evans Center and SCAD MOA have continually exhibited and celebrated Black artists, including internationally heralded exhibitions focused on the legacies of Elizabeth Catlett, Frederick Douglass, and Jacob Lawrence, as well as contemporary exhibitions by artists including Hank Willis Thomas, Toyin Ojih Odutola, and Kenturah Davis.