Nancy Hart / Shan Shan – Artists-in-residence

INAUDITA! e Fusion AIR // Artist-in-residency Program
presentano le due artiste ospiti della galleria nel mese di giugno
Nancy Hart (USA) e Shan Shan (China-USA)

Informale, sociale, speciale!
Passa un paio d'ore tra le fresche frasche di Piazza Peyron, 9G
mercoledì' 28 giugno dalle 19 alle 21!
incontra le artiste,
goditi una bibita fresca.

ENJOY!


ABOUT SHAN SHAN
● Shan Shan​ is an experimental filmmaker, video artist, and electronic musician. Her film and installation work has been shown in the U.S and internationally.
Working with both analog film and digital video, Shan Shan is very interested in the visual experience that can’t be contented by conventional dialogue. Her research centered practice focuses on exploring digital humanities and socio-political interactions. Shan Shan is currently an Assistant Professor in Media Arts at Sacred Heart University, Connecticut, USA.

Installation
● This work is part of a larger project that explores the creation of human life and the formation of human presence based on simulation theory​.

● In this single-channel projection, audiences are being challenged to consider beyond​ the dimensions and abstractions.

● The mirror reflections and the upside down ladder examines the ways in which digital reality and artificial objects have the power to alter the functions and foundations of the society​.

After all, in this dystopian age, I shall hope that this work would give you some comfort and relief.


ABOUT NANCY HART

Nancy Hart is a tenured Associate Professor of Art at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin. She earned a BFA in painting from Virginia Commonwealth University, in Richmond, Virginia and a MFA in painting from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. In 2004, Nancy Hart was the recipient of a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship to Bulgaria. She has had grants to study printmaking in Prague and to attend artist residency programs at Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, Italy, and La Macina di San Cresci in Greve in Chianti, Italy. She has also received faculty travel awards to study in Italy over the last thirteen years.
She has also taught drawing and art history in study abroad programs in Italy and led student group trips to England, France and Italy.
Her artist books, collages, and drawings have been shown in exhibitions in Cuba, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, South Korea, Switzerland, the UK and the USA.
“The Dada and Fluxus art movements have influenced my mixed media works, especially with the use of found objects and collaged images. I am interested in pairing different elements and images in a way that can alter their original meaning to create something unexpected.”

Installation: Science Series

Working in collage, different elements and images may be explored in ways that transform original meanings to create something entirely unexpected.

The “Science Series” includes collages and drawings that investigate parallel elements between art and science, such as the relationship between geometric forms and patterns found in both science and abstract art. The pages and shaped images are often round to mimic viewing images through a microscope. The works are achromatic, representing scientific books and illustrations from the past.

The work is related to viewing the Audubon bird prints my parents had on the walls of our family home, elementary school field trips to the Museum of Natural History in NYC, as well as my experiences working in a science museum in Richmond, Virginia. These works explore elements of collage and assemblage based on twentieth-century artists such as Max Ernst, Kurt Schwitters, Marcel Duchamp, and Joseph Cornell.

The imagery in the recent collages and artist books comes from old scientific books and encyclopedias found in used bookstores and markets in Italy during my summer travels. Two previous bodies of work, one based on birds and the other on anatomy, have been combined to form eerie compositions resembling science fiction and horror films of the 1950’s, especially Alfred Hitchcock’s film “The Birds.” The one-of-a-kind visual “books” and collages are constructed on wood and consist of unbound pages that could be read in any sequence.

The graphite drawings I created continue my interest in scientific illustrations and were inspired by visits to La Specola, the Natural History Museum in Florence along with the Museo di Storia Naturale in Venice, Italy. The taxidermy birds are both real and artificial and now are placed along with microscopic images of bacteria and viruses to create new environments, which suggest nests.

Two new books are also included in this exhibit that address the idea of geography and the intersection of different locations. I had lived in seven states in the US and have traveled to Italy for the past sixteen years, and the most difficult question I always face is when someone asks me “where I am from.”



http://www.fusionartgallery.net/air-artists.html