Juried BFA Exhibition 2022

Hatton Gallery, Colorado State University

551 W. Pitkin Street, Fort Collins, CO 80523

May 12-August 12, 2022

Admission: Free

Review by Emily Zeek

For the art majors in the graduating class of 2022, it’s the end of a several years-long journey of artistic practice and scholarship at Colorado State University’s Department of Art and Art History. Student work by these graduates is currently assembled in the white cube Hatton Gallery in the Visual Arts Building on campus. Gallery Director Silvia Minguzzi describes the Juried BFA Exhibition 2022 and the pieces displayed as the “best” work of the class of 2022, as chosen by local artists Anthony Guntren, sculptor, and Kris Barz Mendonça, illustrator.

An installation view of the *Juried BFA Exhibition 2022* at the Hatton Gallery at Colorado State University. Image by Emily Zeek.

In keeping with the sparse aesthetic of the art world, Minguzzi explains, the work is juried and pared down from a larger collection to the selection on display. She wants students to have an experience of what it is like in industry. [1] This philosophy as it pertains to displaying student work is not uncommon. For instance, even the annual University of Colorado Denver Sculpture Club show at Pirate Gallery, ironically entitled Inclusivity in 2022, had a juror to select works.

But what is really being taught to students through this process? Is it originality, risk-taking, and creativity—aspects that presumably should be nurtured by an artistic education? Or is it conformity to the “spectacle” that is the art world and its capitalist commodification?

By separating works into the displayed category of “best” and those that don’t meet the standard of the jurors, a fragmentation occurs. The works that appear are contrasted with a subjugation of those which do not. This creates a dynamic similar to that in human psychology between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind, rendering those not selected into a repressed shadow state. [2] It reinforces the theory that Guy Debord presents in his provocative text The Society of Spectacle. In essence, the exhibit lays a foundation for spectacle by perpetuating the notion that “what appears is good and what is good appears.” [3]

This is not to say that the existence of art itself is doomed to spectacle, but rather within the context of capitalism, the industry standard is not necessarily synonymous with value. And as anyone who has completed some amount of psychological shadow work may attest, there can be value found in what is repressed.

Hannah Chatham, *I can’t hear you, I have flowers in my ears*, 2021, copper, Prismacolor, wool, thread, and flocking. Image by Emily Zeek.

Debord is specifically critical of our modern society that creates inauthenticity and alienation by mediating our lives with images—images that are selected and reproduced to further the existing capitalist order. [4] In this way, by replicating the industry standard with a sparse white cube gallery show, it must be noted that the juried exhibit subtly bows to the power structure of the art world. However, despite this limitation, I found the works that do appear in the BFA show present a collection of moments that, taken together, provide worthwhile insights into our contemporary lived experience.

Orion Gizzi, *Self Portrait*, 2022, acrylic on canvas. Image by Emily Zeek.

After all, according to Debord, “in analyzing the spectacle we are obliged to a certain extent to use the spectacle's own language.” [5] And so while the Juried BFA Exhibition is a manifestation of the mediation of our lives through images, it also, in some notable ways, eclipses the spectacle. Foremost, because as art students, the artists in the show are nurtured by the safe space of a university setting which encourages authentic inquiry, unlike the competitive and at times violent atmosphere of the capitalism that follows market forces. The exhibition, with its varied reflections on our human condition, is a genuine, if edited and abridged, statement that transcends and juxtaposes the somewhat nauseating extremes of contemporary life.

Alisondra Stephenson, *Guidelines*, 2022, oil on canvas. Image by Emily Zeek.

Alisondra Stephenson’s work Guidelines explores memory, loss, and isolation. Bailey Douglass looks at inner conflict and the different personas we take on to manage it in Inner Dialogue 1. And in Neva, Alanis Hernandez portrays the experience of being a first-generation Latina while in Self Portrait, Orion Gizzi investigates gender dysmorphia.

Alanis Hernandez, *Neva*, 2022, printmaking. Image by Emily Zeek.

Sara Arnold’s digital video work Language in Cyberspace simulates the experience of watching the internet and the diction and cadence of the virtual sphere. Court Fichter uses the medium of digital video to present files from prosecutors and victims’ advocates addressing a sexual assault case in their work 2/12/22. In this piece, Fichter contrasts the audio with intimate videos of them in their home processing the trauma. The haunting layered audio is a metaphor for the confusing and overwhelming process of working within the system to get justice.

A still image from Court Fichter’s *2/12/22*, 2022, digital video. Image by Emily Zeek.

Fichter notes “A huge influence of mine has been [the artist] Sadie Benning. Benning really excels in providing such an intimate but broad view on their personal struggles in relation to the world around them. I think video is a mediator between connecting oneself to the world around them and Benning is an amazing example of that.” [6]

Wren Strother, *Parts of me*, 2021, digital print with maps, journal pages, and mixed media. Image by Emily Zeek.

While intimacy of pleasure is further explored by Heidi Chrisman in She is getting close, disconnection in the digital world is the focus of Wren Strother’s work Parts of Me. And the photographer Irie Sauceda-Lindsey looks at individuality of expression through the unlikely imagery of porches in works titled E Pitkin St, E Plum St # 1, and E Laurel St.

Irie Sauceda-Lindsey, *E Pitkin St, E Plum St # 1,* and *E Laurel St*, 2022, archival pigment prints. Image by Emily Zeek.

Even though conceptual depth is certainly the show’s strength, artist Kate Zynda, in her piece Place in Me, concentrates much more on the materiality of ceramics and the process of creation, which is spelled out in painstaking detail in her artist’s statement.

Kate Zynda, Place In Me, 2022, ceramic. Image by Emily Zeek.

Zynda explains, “I would say that a consistent motivation underlying all of my work is to create tools that allow users to have an interpersonal relationship with that tool, and/or a relationship with the ideas that the tool (art object) is presenting.” For Zynda, “This desire stems from my own experiences with mental illness and marginalization. I tend to make objects that I think will help my depersonalization and derealization.” [7]

The most radical aspect of Zynda’s work is the utility we assume is present by the existence of a chair. By virtue of its practicality, Zynda’s work interferes with the spectacle. As she says, “my work is for the people who use it and my process of making it. It's not about production or a desire to achieve any kind of status. It's more about our current lived reality and making it better, and hopefully not just a façade of our reality.” [8]

A still image from Sophia Hernandez’s Matando la Rosa, 2022, digital video. Image by Emily Zeek.

In a work of transcendent digital beauty, Sophia Hernandez walks the line between the spectacle of our digital sphere and the hidden delicacy of the feminine in her work Matando la Rosa. For Hernandez, “Creating something that requires the viewer to think beyond what the art piece is directly saying makes the work so much more complex and interesting to me. It’s almost like having little secrets within the piece and the more you delve deeper, the more the narrative of the work becomes alluring.” [9]

And so, within the Juried BFA Exhibition 2022, our society of spectacle quietly competes with the secrets of our society that reveal themselves slowly but satisfyingly. The summation of these elements equals an experience of the sensation of life. Not merely a simulated spectacle of life for the benefit of the ruling class, but an authentic and even innocent act of revelation that can only be produced by those unspoiled by the demands of industry.

Emily Zeek is a transmedia and social practice artist from Littleton, Colorado who works with themes of feminism, sustainability, and anti-capitalism. She has a BFA in Transmedia Sculpture from the University of Colorado Denver and a BS in Engineering Physics from the Colorado School of Mines.

[1] From my interview in person with Silvia Minguzzi.

[2] For a good resource on the depiction of the human shadow see Robert Bly, A Little Book on the Human Shadow (New York: Harper One, 1988).

[3] Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, translated and annotated by Ken Knabb (Bureau of Public Secrets, 2014), p. 4.

[4] Ibid., p. 2.

[5] Ibid., p. 4.

[6] From my interview by email with Court Fichter. For more information about Sadie Benning, see https://www.moma.org/artists/34902.

[7] From my interview by email with Kate Zynda.

[8] Ibid.

[9] From my interview by email with Sophia Hernandez.