SPRING THESIS
EXHIBITIONS START AT
THE CENTER FOR
CURATORIAL STUDIES
MUSEUM AT BARD COLLEGE.

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.-The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College starts its
series of spring graduate thesis exhibitions with an opening reception on Sunday, March
14, from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. Graduate students Henry Estrada and Benjamin Portis each
curate an exhibition, while a third exhibition is curated by Center for Curatorial
Studies Museum Director Amada Cruz. All three exhibitions will be on view through
Sunday, March 28, open to the public without charge Wednesday through Sunday, from 1:00
to 5:00 p.m.

"Fluid," curated by Henry Estrada, explores the work of three artists: sculptor Thomas
Glassford, painter Paul Henry Ramirez, and Ethel Shipton, a conceptual artist.
Originally from Texas, near the U.S./Mexico border region, these three artists now live
in major art centers (Glassford in Mexico City, Ramirez in New York, and Shipton in San
Antonio). "Fluid" focuses on the various ways in which the works of these artists
crisscross genres, media, and styles, evoking passage and transformation. Their hybrid
art blurs distinctions between painting and sculpture, often resulting in playful
mixed-media installations. The exhibition examines the cultural affinities these
artists share even as it explores their individual styles and sensibilities.

"Sound Foundations," curated by Benjamin Portis, presents recent videos by six artists:
Jessica Bronson (Los Angeles), Amy Jenkins (New York), Christian Marclay (New York),
Daniel Pflumm (Berlin), Alyson Shotz (New York), and Screen [Le Maitre and Rosenzveig]
(Toronto/New York). The works suggest new approaches to the integration of audio in
video. Pioneering generations of video artists treated sound as an inherent fact of
television technology and explored its influence on psychology and perceptual
experience. The artists in "Sound Foundations," having internalized the formal
achievements of their forerunners, explore (and critique) audio's ability to control
subject matter in video art. Their sound references range from recordings of nature
(Jenkins, Shotz) to distillations of popular culture (Bronson, Marclay) to the music of
the machine (Pflumm, Screen).

"Variations on Themes: Selections from the Marieluise Hessel Collection," curated by
Amada Cruz, director of the Center for Curatorial Studies Museum, is an exhibition of
twelve artists from the CCS permanent collection. The exhibition, divided into three
sections-circle, cube, and body- traces the evolution from geometric form in work of
the 1960s and 1970s through the emergence of the body in recent sculpture. The circle
section includes floor pieces by Walter De Maria, Richard Long, and Jackie Winsor. The
cube section follows with sculptures by Donald Judd and Sol LeWitt, and chairs by Judd,
Scott Burton, and Jenny Holzer that introduce the theme of the body into this geometric
sculptural tradition. In the final part of the exhibition, allusions to the human body
continue in the work of Mona Hatoum and Lynda Benglis, the body appears metaphorically
in a candy spill by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and the human figure emerges in works by
Rosemarie Trockel and Tony Cragg.

The next series of thesis exhibitions, curated by graduate students Alejandro Diaz,
Jennifer Dunlop, Judy Kim, and Tobias Ostrander, will open on Sunday, April 11. For
further information about the exhibitions, call the Center for Curatorial Studies at
914-758-7598. The Museum is open to the public without charge Wednesday through Sunday,
from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m.

Website: http://www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/student/

 

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