Magnify
June 24—August 16, 2009
Paul Butler • Johan Freeman • Benny Nemerosfsky Ramsay • Jane Wildgoose
The Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art & Design will host the exhibition Magnify from June 24 – August 16, 2009 featuring artists, Paul Butler, Johan Freeman, Benny Nemerosfsky Ramsay and Jane Wildgoose. The opening reception takes place on the First Friday, July 3 from 5 to 8 pm.
Drawing upon ideas of exaltation, amplification, augmentation, and excess, Magnify brings together the work of artists who exaggerate or heighten the qualities of historical materials, events, and ideas. Digging deep into the smallest of details or making the grandest of gestures, the artwork in Magnify frames culture and history through lenses that are alternately absurd and sublime, allowing aspects of the past to assume a new place in the viewer's consciousness.
The featured artists are Visiting Faculty in the graduate program in Studio Arts at the Maine College of Art & Design, a two-year MFA that encourages research-based practice in the fine arts. The graduate program embraces an open, interdisciplinary approach that encourages students to think across boundaries in order to integrate studio practice with conceptual, archival, and site-specific practices.
Paul Butler is an artist, curator, and dealer with an interest in multidisciplinary and alternative pedagogical practices. For Magnify, Butler will host a collage party in the front gallery of the ICA, a participatory event in which the audience is invited to assist in the creation of collaged movie storyboards.
Jane Wildgoose is an artist, writer, and broadcaster with a background in design for stage and film. For Magnify, Wildgoose will recreate a section of the Wildgoose Memorial Library in the center of the ICA’s main gallery space, featuring a small coffin enshrining a lost hair of Lord Nelson. Wildgoose lives and works in London.
Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay is an artist, diarist, and aspiring bon vivant. Since 2000 his work has used performance, video, and print works as vehicles for examining the singing voice and the history of song, the rendering of love and emotion into words, and the impact of popular culture on identity. Magnify will feature two recent videos including the world premier of The Same Problem.
Jonah Freeman’s work has been primarily focused on the phantasmagoria of the constructed world. Recent projects such as Hello Meth Lab in the Sun, Black Acid Co-op, and In The Kaleidoscope Room produced historical photograph and print archives, multi-room immersive installations, as well as quasi-feature films and reconstructed novels.