School 33 Art Center and the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts are pleased to announce the opening reception of the Two Person Juried Exhibition curated by Andrea Pollan, Director of Curator’s Office in Washington DC . An opening celebration takes place Friday, January 9, 2009 from 6 – 9 PM, with a brief gallery talk beginning at 7 PM. The exhibition runs from January 9 through February 7, 2009. The featured artists in the Two Person Juried Exhibition include Eun Woo Cho of New York, NY and Liz Ensz of Baltimore, MD. School 33 Art Center is located at 1427 Light Street Baltimore , MD 21230 . The gallery is open Tuesday through Friday 10am-5pm, with extended hours on Thursdays from 10am-7pm and Saturdays 12-4pm. This exhibition is free and open to the public and is part of School 33’s Open Call to Artists.
About the Exhibition and Selection Process
For the first time, School 33 has flung open its doors to support and even larger artistic community by offering artists outside of the mid-Atlantic an opportunity to participate in the dynamic programming that School 33 has built its reputation on for nearly 30 years. The two artists featured in this exhibition were carefully selected from over 90 applications that were received from over a dozen cities across the United States and internationally. No specific theme or restrictions were placed on the artists’ applications by School 33. Instead, artists were elected to exhibit at School 33 based upon their artistic merit and then additionally awarded a $500 honorarium to even further recognize and support their creative practice. Likewise, opting to feature only two finalists allows each of the artists to share a more comprehensive body of work and/or present larger scale installations in the main gallery at School 33. Furthermore, by attracting artists from outside of the region to Baltimore and coupling them with local artists, this furthers School 33’s mission by not only highlighting the strength of Baltimore’s cultural life, but to further assist local artists in building a larger network in an effort to help advance their work beyond the local sphere.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
The two artists selected for this opportunity not only exhibit a high level of merit and rigor in regards to their studio practice, but possess a unique approach to installation in gallery settings. Similarly, both artists could be considered social activists. Their work confronts issues related to the historical and modern day political realities of our world.
Eun Woo Cho’s body of work incorporates fashion, performance, installation, painting, video, and photography. Her work integrates the human body into (and as) architectural environments activating a sense of hybridity, survival, migration, power, control, and liberation within these site specific contexts. Likewise the juxtaposition and assimilation of her various tools and practices reflect the artist’s interest in identity politics, multiculturalism, artistic and political history, neoliberalism, as well as our individual and collective realities. Born in Seoul , Korea and currently based in New York City , Cho has received numerous honors and awards in the visual arts and has been exhibiting her work extensively across North America, Europe, and East Asia since 2004.www.eunwoo.org
Liz Ensz designs large scale politically-themed patterns that are inspired by the floral motifs and geometric structures typical of Islamic architecture and decorative art. Her interest in repetition and variation act as a metaphor for the conformity of people within a group or, on a larger scale, corporate globalization and enforced consumer assimilation. Ensz currently resides in Baltimore, MD where she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Fibers from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2005. That same year she was awarded the prestigious Jacques and Natasha Gelman Travel Award to study Moorish design in Spain and has since exhibited her work in numerous venues across the United States. http://lizenszgallery.blogspot.com/2006/09/silkscreen-on-fabric.html
Liz Ensz’s Gaspump WallpaperABOUT THE JUROR
Andrea Pollan is a curator, gallerist, art consultant, writer and appraiser based in Washington , D.C. She has organized more than 125 exhibitions of contemporary art both regionally and nationally and has written numerous catalogs and exhibition brochures. She has managed a large corporate and several private collections. In 2004, after serving as exhibitions director at McLean Project for the Arts for 10 years, Pollan opened the acclaimed curatorial space, Curator’s Office in Washington , D.C. It serves both as a curatorial office for offsite exhibitions and projects and a micro-gallery for diverse curatorial voices. In addition to onsite exhibitions, Curator’s Office participates in the international art fairs and organizes exhibitions off site for museums, galleries, and arts organizations. Curator’s Office was identified in the December 2006 issue of Vanity Fair as an important player in “The Art Universe.”
