The Savannah College of Art and Design Presents SCAD deFINE ART

The celebrated signature event features new exhibitions at the SCAD Museum of Art and in-person and streaming programs with international contemporary artists, including a keynote conversation with honoree Katharina Grosse.

SAVANNAH, GEORGIA — The Savannah College of Art and Design presents SCAD deFINE ART 2022, honoring visionary artist Katharina Grosse. Taking place Feb. 28–March 2 with in-person and streaming events in Savannah and Atlanta, the 13th edition of the university’s annual program of conversations, curated experiences, and exhibitions at the SCAD Museum of Art brings together an international roster of vital voices in art and design — from countries including Canada, Cameroon, Germany, Iraq, South Korea, and the U.S. — to share thought-provoking work and ideas.

New exhibitions encourage deeper engagement with the histories we inherit, creating spaces in the present moment to envision a future full of opportunity, and include a site-specific installation by Elaine Cameron-Weir (b. 1985, Red Deer, Alberta, Canada); a solo presentation of recent works by Matthew Angelo Harrison (b. 1989, Detroit) in the museum’s Evans Center for African American Studies; exhibitions of new works by artist Norbert Bisky (b. 1970, Leipzig, Germany) and designer Sang Hoon Kim (b. 1979, South Korea); a presentation of recent paintings by Hayv Kahraman (b. 1981, Baghdad, Iraq); new large-scale commissions by Doreen Lynette Garner (b. 1986, Philadelphia); a survey of work by Barthélémy Toguo (b. 1967, Mbalmayo, Cameroon); the first museum exhibition for SCAD alum Carter Flachbarth (b. 1996, Atlanta; B.F.A., painting, 2020); and an expansive site-related textile installation by Grosse (b. 1961, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany) as well as large-scale works on canvas created between 2006 and the present. Exhibitions programming also includes the group photography shows Icons Only and Taking Shape.

“Coinciding with the 10th anniversary of the opening of the SCAD Museum of Art, the world’s finest teaching museum, this year’s SCAD deFINE ART promises special magic,” said SCAD President and Founder Paula Wallace. “From honoree Katharina Grosse’s extraordinary paintings of incendiary color to Matthew Angelo Harrison’s sculptures that explore diasporic identities, SCAD deFINE ART 2022 both interrogates the zeitgeist and begets boundless beauty.”

Many of the university’s top-ranked degree programs, including sculpture, painting, fibers, and furniture design, are represented in the signature event’s exhibitions and programming. SCAD students and community members can interact 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, March 1, at 6 p.m. For more information about SCAD deFINE ART 2022, visit scad.edu/defineart.

SCAD deFINE ART 2022 exhibitions:

Taking Shape |Group exhibition | On view through March 2: Exhibited in Alexander Hall, home to the SCAD School of Fine Arts, Taking Shape assembles spectacular photographic works by SCAD students and alumni that suggest a newfound physicality as we collectively re-engage in a changed world. Many of the works illustrate processes of forming or becoming and capture moments in which figures simultaneously connect and dissociate as they redefine their place within this present space.

Carter Flachbarth |Morality Sucks | On view through March 27: In Morality Sucks, Flachbarth’s first museum exhibition, the artist presents recent paintings that cast an ambiguous male figure in myriad narratives, reflecting on anxieties and tensions founded in topical global events. Packing his paintings with situational clues, Flachbarth prioritizes action through the amplification of scale, rendering exaggerated bodies cinematically, as if through a fisheye lens, bending and twisting the picture plane in irregular positions.

Icons Only |Group exhibition | On view through June 13: Curated from SCAD MOA’s modern and contemporary photography collection with a selection of portraits by SCAD alumni photographers, Icons Only traces the evolution of iconography and its modern embrace in popular media from the Golden Age of Hollywood to our current era of viral social media fame. The works on view — icons of the 20th and 21st centuries — feature individuals whose names have become synonymous with images of their faces and bodies, from supermodels and actresses to musicians and visual artists. Excelling in the art of posing for a portrait — performing in front of and for the camera with a special awareness of how they position themselves, figuratively and literally — they enact a delicate balance between empowerment and objectification.

Hayv Kahraman| The Touch of Otherness | Feb. 16 – July 17: In paintings that embody the complexities of diasporic experience for women, Kahraman challenges the power and assimilation practices of colonizing states. Informed by her own experiences as an émigré from Iraq to Europe and her eventual settling in the U.S., Kahraman’s works explore states of in-betweenness and the othering of refugees. The female figures in her work invert the gaze of the viewer, rejecting the dehumanization of the larger collective of displaced peoples worldwide. Sumptuously rendering her ghostly figures with calligraphic marks in oil paint on brown linen, Kahraman borrows from diverse techniques, from those found in Renaissance painting to Islamic patternmaking.

Elaine Cameron-Weir | Dressing for Windows (Exploded View) or ‘everywhere I go people know the part I’m playing’ |Feb. 18 – July 18: In her artistic and writing practices, Cameron-Weir grapples with questions of individual and collective human survival, while also considering the potential for renewal and transformation in states of being and forms of knowledge. Her work is informed by belief systems that structure how people make sense of and meaning in the world — from science and religion to nationalism. Often repurposing objects with previous scientific, medical, or military functions, she creates exquisitely assembled forms that conjure speculative uses or ritual applications in times past and future.

Doreen Lynette Garner |Pale In Comparison| Feb. 21 – July 21: Garner’s sculptures and performances engage the history of medical experimentation on Black women’s bodies in the U.S., portraying their brutal humiliation and objectification, while clearly identifying the white perpetrators who enacted this suffering. Informed by deep research, her experimental and accumulative approach combines a wide range of materials — silicon, glass-fiber insulation, plastic, Vaseline, artificial hair, crystals, pearls — in anthropomorphic forms resembling fragmented or amputated body parts and human remains.

Barthélémy Toguo| Urban Requiem | Feb. 21 –July 21: Working across painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, performance, and installation, Toguo addresses enduring and urgently relevant issues of exile, displacement, migration, colonialism, race, and the relationship between the Global North and South. At the core of his practice is the notion of belonging, which stems from his dual French-Cameroonian nationality. Through poetic, hopeful, and often figurative gestures connecting nature with the human body, Toguo foregrounds concerns that have both ecological and societal implications. The artist’s recent works are informed by political and social movements and humanitarian tragedies, including Black Lives Matter and refugee crises.

Matthew Angelo Harrison| Dark Silhouettes | Feb. 21 – Aug. 1: Adopting the language of industrial design and anthropological aesthetics in sculptural forms, Harrison combines references to colonialism, African diasporas, and the industrialization of the U.S. This dialogue is manifest in his materials and processes, as he repurposes or represents culturally loaded objects in resin and metal. His explorations center on notions of history, preservation, and progress, and take the shape of “capsules” that problematize or expand on the nature of the object, its circulation, and cultural significance through time. The artist takes a scientific approach to his practice, with the aim of unveiling complex relations to systems that are present and pervasive in daily life.

Katharina Grosse| Chill Seeping | Feb. 28 – July 11: Grosse is renowned worldwide for her expansive use of the painting medium, challenging perceptions of surfaces and ideas of spectatorship and establishing fertile relations between colors, shapes, and elements of architecture and landscape. Grosse’s exhibition Chill Seeping features large-scale works on canvas created between 2006 and the present alongside an expansive site-related textile installation. The exhibition highlights Grosse’s relentless exploration of color and its agency in space, inviting viewers into an immersive dialogue with the environment.

Norbert Bisky |Mirror Society | Feb. 28 – Aug. 1: Chaotic explosions, ambiguous physical struggles between male figures, and nostalgic smiling young models typify the contradictory images in Bisky’s paintings. The German artist’s canvases are executed with a flat, straightforward application of sumptuously colored paint, laid down in brisk gestures that parallel the dynamism of the works’ content. Drawing on a range of sources, from the Socialist Realism art and propaganda of his youth in the former German Democratic Republic to Christian symbols to homoerotic imagery, the artist presents viewers with complex compositions that suggest — yet ultimately confound — perceptible narratives.

Sang Hoon Kim| Soft Spot| Feb. 28 – Aug. 1: Kim has developed a signature technique for originating organic and colorful works with an unlikely material: foam. His unique treatment of the design object — making use of color, texture, and multi- perspectival shapes — creates a rich connection to sculptural practices. For his solo exhibition at SCAD MOA, the artist presents a group of recent objects that are diverse in function but cohesive in their playful and innovative approach to design.

SCAD deFINE ART 2022 schedule of events

Monday, Feb. 28 | 11 a.m. Doreen Lynette Garner, Barthélémy Toguo, and SCAD MOA adjunct curator Humberto Moro tour the artists’ exhibitions and work by Katharina Grosse, as they share stories of exile, experimentation, space, and spectatorship.

Monday, Feb.28 | 2p.m. Elaine Cameron-Weir and Carter Flachbarth join SCAD MOA adjunct curator Humberto Moro and Sang Hoon Kim’s gallerist Cristina Grajales for a gallery tour, offering insight on artistic practices across sculpture, painting, and object design, as well as bold and innovative ways to engage issues of function, representation, and materiality.

Tuesday, March1 | 11a.m. Matthew Angelo Harrison, Norbert Bisky, and Hayv Kahraman lead a gallery tour of their exhibitions, sharing ideas of migration, assimilation, gender, ancestry, and technology that they engage in their work and process.

Tuesday, March1 | 3p.m. Esteemed photographer Duane Michals presents the SCAD deFINE ART 2022 Atlanta keynote lecture, which will also stream online. One of the great innovators of contemporary photography, Michals (b. 1932, McKeesport, Pa.) is widely known for his work with series, multiple exposures, and text. Rising to acclaim in the 1960s, an era heavily influenced by photojournalism, Michals manipulated the medium to communicate narratives, appropriating cinema’s frame-by- frame format. The artist frequently incorporates handwritten text as a key component in his works, which, rather than serving a didactic or explanatory function, adds dimension to the works’ meaning by giving voice to Michals’ singular musings, at once poetic, tragic, and humorous.

Tuesday, March1 | 6p.m. SCAD MOA hosts the SCAD deFINE ART 2022 opening reception with tours, interactive experiences, and a performance by experimental composer and vocalist L’Rain.

Wednesday, March2 | 11a.m. SCAD MOA presents the annual SCAD deFINE ART professional practices panel featuring gallerists Emanuel Aguilar, Dominique Clayton (SCAD M.A., business design/arts leadership, 2018), and Jasmin Tsou, who are creating new spaces in the commercial art world by taking radical approaches to the business of art and challenging accepted notions of what it means to be a gallerist. They join Vanity Fair art columnist Nate Freeman to demystify a climate that can be intimidating for emerging artists and share their inclusive methodologies for incubating young talent.

Wednesday, March 2 | 5p.m. Katharina Grosse joins New York-based curator Dan Cameron for the SCAD deFINE ART 2022 keynote conversation in SCAD’s historic Trustees Theater in Savannah. The event will also stream online. Frequent collaborators, Grosse and Cameron will discuss the artist’s life and career trajectory to become one of the most celebrated international figures in contemporary art.