2013 UC Riverside 1st and 2nd Year MFA Exhibition

May 7 – June 30, 2013 | Reception: May 9, 2013, 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

The Riverside Art Museum is pleased to announce the 2013 University of California, Riverside, Masters of Fine Arts Exhibition, spotlighting the work of five first and second year graduate students, facilitated by UCR Associate Professor of Art, Brandon Lattu. These students work in various media, including: sculpture, painting, photography, and installation. Working towards the culmination of their thesis projects, they each approach their work with a unique voice, conceptual framework, and formal sensibility. All of the students in the exhibition are actively engaged in dialogue with an important lineage of artistic practice and the ever-evolving arena of contemporary art. Participating artists in this year’s exhibition include: Andrea Brown (1st Year), Mark McKnight (1st Year), Patrick Quan (2nd Year), Chelsea Rector (2nd Year), and Michael Shroads (2nd Year).

Artists’ Statements

Andrea Brown:“Potential Forms I – IV” are made potentials; their entire position is dependent on the act of being physically created. Labor is essential, as is material.  The form’s content is dependent on the position of its relative in conversation, on who and where the form is compared to or discussed around. The comparison then provides the form its working definition.

Imagination – with extensive reach into the timeless sphere of the subconscious, imagination is an endless source for reprising visual composites and provides rare and coveted opportunities at true newness.  Imagination is often doubted – where is the content, where is the source material, where is the influence? To this I reply, “everywhere,” (imagination’s co-dependant), giving access to a generative method limited only by material and labor.

From 2008 – 2009, I owned a light blue velveteen two part couch, purchased for roughly $100 at the Salvation Army in Plaza Midwood, Charlotte, NC. At some undefined point, I saw a Trading Spaces episode where the interior designers made a headboard using plywood, foam, fabric, and a staple gun. One day, I hope to make real furniture.

Mark McKnight: Early cartographers referred to unexplored territory as terra incognita or unknown land. Since photography’s inception, artists have used the medium to reveal and interpret new terra, thereby exposing not only the actual territories they photographed but also their own subjective and aesthetic imaginings. This is not to say these types of pictures are entirely devoid of truth—however, it is

to say these pictures lie somewhere on the periphery of it. As geographer John Wright acknowledges in his seminal essay, “The Place of the Imagination in Geography,” “the imagination not only projects itself into terra incognita and suggests routes for us to follow, but also it plays upon those things that we discover and out of them makes imaginative conceptions which we seek to share with others.”

Accordingly, my intent as an artist is to continue working in this tradition, exploiting the camera’s mimetic powers by making photographs of “real things” in the “real world,” not as a means of elaborating on the popular and pervasive discussion about photography’s inherent duplicity but because I’ve accepted my role as a kind of raconteur and relish the medium’s reputed deficiencies. 

Patrick Quan: Critical Pedagogy / industrial process / Bowerbird

Chelsea Rector:  The four (individually titled) studies for paintings and the 9 Drawings are each aggregates of nervous system information/biofeedback, an interest in painting discourse, an interest in no wave and noise music, and inquiries into poetry, prayer, and singing. Recently I went to Hawaii for the very first time. 

Michael Shroads: Sin+Noise/Filter Drawing(1) is part of a series of biomorphic algorithm drawings written in the JAVA computer language using Processing.  This new work builds upon the existing noise patterns from the artist’s previous series, Noise Drawings, by adding a sin wave and filters to the script language.  The effects of this create the striking biomorphic patterns seen in the works, recalling underwater life forms and images from electron scan microscopy. Despite their illusionistic qualities they are, however, entirely abstract works strictly determined by a two-dimensional grid.  This work is part of the artist’s ongoing investigation into the possibilities of formalizing a kind of morphogenetic abstraction determined by number.   

  1. Andrea Brown, Potential Form I, Faux fur and acrylic, 2013
  2. Andrea Brown, Potential Form IV (The Thing that Ate Itself), Polyurethane, plaster, and varnish, 2013
  3. Mark McKnight, Untitled, Silver gelatin fiber print, 2012
  4. Mark McKnight, Untitled, Silver gelatin fiber print, 2012
  5. Mark McKnight, Untitled, Silver gelatin fiber print, 2012
  6. Mark McKnight, Untitled, Silver gelatin fiber print, 2012
  7. Andrea Brown, Potential Form III, Velveteen and wood, 2013
  8. Michael Shroads, sin + noise/filter drawing, Digital print, 2013
  9. Chelsea Rector, study for a painting of where sea turtles and giraffes comes from, Flashe on linen, 2013
  10. Patrick Quan, Blue, Aluminum inkjet photos, 2013
  11. Patrick Quan, Collection, Found and made objects, 2013
  12. Chelsea Rector, study for lip balm coats painting,

Flashe on linen, 2013

  1. Chelsea Rector, 9 Drawings, Ink on newsprint, 2013
  2. Chelsea Rector, study for a wet skirt under a rock painting, Flashe on linen, 2013
  3. Andrea Brown, Potential Form II, Velveteen and varnish, 2013
  4. Chelsea Rector, study for lemonade flavors of cotton candy painting, Flashe on linen, 2013