Twilight
January 21–March 8, 2009
Jim Campbell • Megan Greene • Kim Keever • Bennett Morris
Twilight, on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art & Design from January 21 through March 8, features the art of Jim Campbell, Megan Greene, Kim Keever and Bennett Morris. An opening reception will be held on January 23 from 5 to 8 pm.
The artists in Twilight take on Romanticism from a 21st century vantage point. Using diverse media including painting, photography, installation, and video, these artists express issues of humanity, identity, and spirituality with an elegantly sinister touch.
Eerie landscapes, omnipotent forces, images of death, and curious terrors are all common features in the Gothic Romantic tradition. One goal of this genre was to place man in meaningful context, which was often achieved by comparing the frailty of the human condition to the overwhelming and uncontrollable world. Attaining the sublime was an important ambition in Romanticism, often only achievable through horror or morbid excitement.
Each of the participating artists will deliver a free, public lecture. Jim Campbell will speak on January 22, Bennett Morris on February 5, Megan Greene on February 19 and Kim Keever on March 5. All lectures are held at noon, in the ICA at MECA&D.
Jim Campbell of San Francisco received two Bachelor of Science Degrees in Mathematics and Engineering from MIT. His work has been shown at the Whitney Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1992 he created one of the first permanent public interactive video artworks in the United States in Phoenix, Arizona. He has received a Rockefeller grant in multimedia, three Langlois Foundation grants, and a Guggenheim fellowship. As an engineer he holds almost twenty patents in the field of video image processing.
Megan Greene is a New York based artist whose delicately detailed drawings have an unusually rich and dark presence. She has exhibited her work at Hallwalls, Byron Cohen Gallery, Scope Hamptons, Pulse NYC, Baumgartner Gallery, and The University of the Arts in Philadelphia. She was a 2007 nominee for the Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award, and the recipient of a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship to New Zealand. Greene holds an MFA from Rutgers and a BFA from University of Notre Dame.
Kim Keever's large-scale photographs referencing the Romanticism of the Hudson River School "are imbued with a sense of the sublime, but also show a subversive side that deliberately acknowledges their contemporary contrivance and conceptual artifice". Kim Keever lives in New York City, and has exhibited extensively in galleries throughout the United States. His work can be found in numerous collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art and the Hirshhorn Museum.
Bennett Morris creates photographs, sculptures and installations that explore the concept of ruins. His work draws on contemporary anxieties to bring together the sublime and the horrific. Morris holds an MFA from Maine College of Art & Design, a BFA from University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, and was the recipient of a fellowship to study at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.