Adaptations for the Understudy: 2017 MFA Thesis Exhibition 1

Exhibition on view: March 14-18, 2017
Artist talk: Friday, March 17, 5pm
Opening reception: Friday, March 17, 6-8pm
Featuring Jose Luis Benavides, Lorenzo Gattorna, Liz McCarthy and Roni Packer

The School of Art & Art History at UIC and Gallery 400 are proud to present the 2017 MFA Thesis Exhibitions. A series of three one-week MFA Thesis Exhibitions offer a rare opportunity to view works by up-and-coming artists completing their degrees in Studio Arts, Photography, Moving Image, and New Media Arts this spring.

Jose Luis Benavides is a writer, filmmaker and visual artist. He explores narratives of identity, place and community through an extensive research and archival practice. He writes for New City and teaches for Community Arts Partnership in Education. He is a 2016 Luminarts Finalist and his work has shown most recently at Links Hall.

Lorenzo Gattorna is a filmmaker and curator originally from New York. Recently, his work in cinema embraces a revisionist, remodernist view, engaged with the styles of Slow Cinema and Dogma 95. His short films have screened at venues worldwide, including the Chicago Underground Film Festival, Image Forum, LOOP Festival and the New York Film Festival.

Liz McCarthy is a transdisciplinary artist. Through research and studio production, she explores how different materials develop meaning through use and origin, and applies physical performance as a potential agent to re-inscribe meaning.

Born and raised in Tel Aviv, Israel, Roni Packer is a painter who prefers the paint and canvas to the pictorial space. Tearing, flipping, re-weaving, and carving are in the spectrum of her practices, through which she maintains an active-passive-aggressive relationship with the images and objects of her production.