Thinking Through Making

Thinking Through Making

Presentations and discussion exploring the studio practices of artists and designers whose material choices are deeply intertwined with their conceptual interests. By focusing on the distinct properties of materials such as wood, metal, glass, and fabric, we might consider how they each operate in space and at scale, in dialogue with the body, to impact environment, mood, emotion, and perception.

Speakers

E.V. Day
Marc Ganzglass
Sarah Oppenheimer
Allan Wexler
In conversation with Josh Jordan and LOT-EK

Biographies

E.V. Day is a New York-based sculptor known for employing gravity-defying suspension techniques in relationship to architecture, and for themes of sexuality and humor. By manipulating iconic imagery from popular culture, Day re-animates the recognizable into new forms that illuminate contradictions in gender roles and stretch the confines of social stereotypes. Day emerged into the contemporary art scene after graduating in 1995 from Yale University School of Art’s sculpture MFA program, and has had group and solo exhibitions in the U.S. and internationally ever since. Day’s work is in the permanent collections of The Whitney Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Brooklyn Museum, The National Museum of Women in the Arts, The New York Public Library, the Saatchi Collection, The Lever House, and The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

Marc Ganzglass is a New York based artist whose interdisciplinary work examines the connections between material practice in art, science and industry. He uses video, photography, print, publishing and object-making to enter into dialogue with laboratories, factories and institutions, often in collaboration with scientists, engineers and other artists. Ganzglass received a BA from Hampshire College and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and has been an artist in residence at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Kohler Arts and Industry Program, and the Chinati Foundation. He has taught sculpture and extended media at Reed College, Bard, RISD and VCU. In 2011 he opened the Space for Art and Industry a not-for-profit gallery at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. He produces and exhibits in the US and abroad, including projects at the Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen, the Laboratoire de Minéralogy et Cosmochemie, Paris and the Forum for Advanced Energy, Climate, and Weather Issues, Steiermark.

Sarah Oppenheimer is a visual artist whose work extends the disciplinary boundaries between sculpture and architecture. Her calculated manipulation of standardized spaces disrupts the embodied experience of spatial continuity, reorienting and clarifying the experience of the built environment. Recent solo projects include S-281913 (Pérez Art Museum Miami 2016), S-337473 (Wexner Center for the Arts 2017), S-399390 (MUDAM Luxembourg 2016), 33-D (Kunsthaus Baselland 2014) and W-120301, an architecturally embedded permanent commission at the Baltimore Museum of Art (2012). Her work has been exhibited at such venues as the Andy Warhol Museum (2012); the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (2009); Art Unlimited, Art Basel (2009); Skulpturens Hus (Stockholm); the Saint Louis Art Museum; the Mattress Factory; the Drawing Center; and the Sculpture Center. Oppenheimer is currently a senior critic at the Yale University School of Art.

Allan Wexler has worked in the fields of architecture, design, and fine art. He is represented by the Ronald Feldman Gallery in New York City. The subject of Wexler’s work is the built environment. He creates drawings, multimedia objects, images, and installations that alter perceptions of domestic activities. He investigates eating, bathing, sitting, and socializing, and turns these everyday activities into ritual and theater. Wexler is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2016), is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, and a winner of a Chrysler Award for Design Innovation. Wexler currently teaches at Parsons School of Design in New York City. Lars Müller has recently published Absurd Thinking: Between Art and Design, a book on Wexler’s work and creative process.

Free and open to the public.
Organized by Columbia GSAPP.

Photo: Allan Wexler, “Interchange chair” (2008), from Absurd Thinking: Between Art and Design (photo by Allan Wexler; image courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York).