Core Program artist residents present new work at annual showcase

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Exhibition on view April 21 through May 26, 2016
Opening Reception on Thursday, April 21, from 6 to 8 p.m.

Overview
Each year, the acclaimed Core Program at the Glassell School of Art awards residencies to artists and critical writers, culminating each spring with an exhibition and yearbook. The 2016 Core Exhibition will be held in the Audrey Jones Beck Building at the MFAH while the new facility for the Glassell School of Art, designed by Steven Holl Architects, is under construction. The exhibition features work by the following artists-in-residence: Tsutoshi Anazai, Jason Byrne, Danielle Dean, Sondra Perry, Ivor Shearer, Kenneth Tam, and Rodrigo Valenzuela. Core critics-in-residence Nicole Burisch, Andy Campbell, and Taraneh Fazeli contribute essays based on their independent research to the Core 2016 publication, issued in conjunction with the exhibition.

Biographies
Artists-In-Residence:
Tsuyoshi Anzai (first-year artist) specializes in Kinetic art and video. He creates simple-structured machines by making impromptu combinations of everyday items, exploring the relationships between humans and objects. He received his master of film and new media degree from Tokyo University of the Arts in 2011, and he has participated in artist residencies at Akiyoshidai International Art Village, Kawasaki City Museum, and the National Art Studio, Korea. His solo exhibitions include Reinventing the Real (2015), Biyong Point, Akita, Japan; and Origins Originated from Originative Originals (2014), Chimera-Project, Budapest, Hungary.

Jason Byrne (second-year artist) received his MFA in film/video from the California Institute of the Arts in 2007 and his BA in media arts and film history/theory from the University of Arizona, Tucson, in 1998. He has screened his films at the Film Forum at Hollywood’s Egyptian Theatre, the Black Maria Film Festival (where he won the award for Best Documentary), the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, and the 47th New York Film Festival. In 2010, he was named one of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film” by Filmmaker Magazine. From 2008 to 2013, he worked as the audio-visual archivist for the United Nations Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Arusha, Tanzania.

Danielle Dean (second-year artist) received her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and her BFA from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London. Her residencies have included the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York City and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. She has shown her work in solo exhibitions at the Bindery Projects in Minneapolis and Commonwealth and Council in Los Angeles, and in group shows at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Atelier Sachlink in Vienna, and the Tate Modern in London.

Sondra Perry (first-year artist) makes performance and video installations that play with slippages of identity through manifesting “paraspaces,” a term coined by science-fiction author Samuel Delany, meaning a space existing parallel to the normal or ordinary. Perry has participated in residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Vermont Studio Center, Ox-Bow, and the Experimental Television Center, and she has performed at the Artist’s Institute and Pioneer Works in New York City. She received a BFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 2012 and an MFA from Columbia University in 2015.

Ivor Shearer (second-year artist) received his MFA from Columbia University in 2010 and his BA from Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs in 2003. He attended the Whitney Independent Study Program (2011) and was a recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation 2012 Biennial Award. He works with film, video, and installation. His work has shown nationally and internationally in museums and film festivals, including the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus and the New Orleans Museum of Art. He has been an artist-in-residence in 2013 at Artpace in San Antonio, as well as a participant in in the Fondazione Ratti Corso Superiore di Arti Visive, Como, Italy.

Kenneth Tam (first-year artist) is an artist working in a variety of media, with a focus on video and object-making. His work explores the fraught spaces of the male body. He received his BFA from the Cooper Union and his MFA from the University of Southern California. He has shown in various venues across Los Angeles, including the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Honor Fraser, the Box, 5 Car Garage, and Occidental College, and he had a solo exhibition at Night Gallery in 2013. He is a recipient of an Art Matters grant and was awarded a California Community Foundation Fellowship.

Rodrigo Valenzuela (second-year artist) received his MFA in photo media from the University of Washington in Seattle; a BA in philosophy with a concentration in art from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington; and a BFA in photography with a minor in art history from the University of Chile in Santiago. He recently completed a series of residencies at Clark College in Vancouver, the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. He has shown his work in solo exhibitions at various gallery spaces in Washington and California, and in group exhibitions at the National Academy Museum in New York City, the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle, El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe in New Mexico, MOCA in Miami, and elsewhere.

Critics-In-Residence:  
Nicole Burisch (second-year critic) received her MA in art history from Montreal’s Concordia University in 2011. Her thesis was entitled “The Dematerialization of the Craft Object: Performance Art and Contemporary Craft.” She graduated cum laude in 2004 from the Alberta College of Art and Design with a BFA in ceramics. Her practice employs a multi-disciplinary approach that includes writing and criticism, curating, and artistic activity. She is the managing editor for the MAWA 30th Anniversary Book Project and has also worked as the administrative coordinator at the Centre des arts actuels Skol, as a researcher for the Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery at Concordia University, and as the cofounder and editor of Shotgun-Review.ca. With Anthea Black, she has co-authored a chapter in Extra-Ordinary: An Anthology of Craft and Contemporary Art (Duke University Press), and contributed writing to such periodicals as No More Potlucks, FUSE, and Cahiers métiers d'art/Craft Journal, and to the catalogue for the 2013 exhibition They Made a Day Be a Day Here.

Andy Campbell (second-year critic) received his PhD in art history from the University of Texas for his dissertation “Bound Together: Being-With Gay and Lesbian Leather Communities and Visual Cultures 1966–1984.” He received his MA in art history from UT as well, and his BA in art history, gender and women’s studies, and theatre from Oberlin College in Ohio. He has published numerous articles and reviews in such publications as Syllabus, Social Text, The Austin Chronicle, Might Be Good . . . and Art Lies, and contributed an essay titled “Realism Against #realness: Wu Tsang’s Full Body Quotation” to the anthology Hashtag Publics: The Power and Politics of Networked Discourse Communities (Peter Lang, Ltd.).

Taraneh Fazeli (first-year critic) is a curator, editor, educator, and researcher from New York with a practice that emerges from legacies of institutional critique and radical pedagogy. She studied at the Cooper Union and CUNY Graduate Center and previously worked within the New Museum of Contemporary Art’s Education Department (2012–15), was a Contributing Editor to Triple Canopy (2011–12), and was the Managing Director of e-flux (2008–11), where she oversaw publications such as art-agenda and organized exhibitions with artists including Raqs Media Collective, Martha Rosler, Allan Sekula, and Mladen Stilinović. Recent curatorial projects have focused on the relationship of pedagogy and language to the ontological status of the postcolonial subject and her current project, "Sick Time, Sleepy Time, Crip Time: Against Capitalism's Temporal Bullying," proposes a consideration of the temporalities of debility, disability, aging, and rest as a way of rethinking collectivity and potentially resistive to capitalism.

Opening Reception
The Glassell School of Art will host an opening reception in the Audrey Jones Beck Building on Thursday, April 21, from 6 to 8 p.m. The evening is free and open to the public, and the Core residents will be in attendance.

Location
2016 Core Exhibition
Cameron Foundation Gallery / Audrey Jones Beck Building
5601 Main Street

The Core Program
Each nine-month Core Program fellowship (renewable for a second year) gives artists and critical studies residents studio space or an office, a stipend and access to the Glassell School of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. These resources allow the fellows to further their practices within a dynamic arts community, guided by Core Program associate director Mary Leclère and Glassell School of Art director Joseph Havel, and to engage in creative dialogue with each other and with a host of visiting artists and critics. For nearly 30 years, Core fellows have been a vibrant presence within the Houston arts scene through teaching, engaging in community projects, interacting with other artists and sometimes making a permanent home here.

The Core Program is now established as an internationally regarded platform and Core fellows have proceeded to show their work at prestigious venues as the Venice, Whitney, Istanbul and Lyon biennials or assume positions at prominent national art publications, among other achievements.

The Glassell School
The Glassell School of Art is the teaching wing of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Established in 1927, it was renamed in honor of Alfred C. Glassell, Jr., in 1979, in recognition of his generous gift. The school has a reputation for outstanding training in the fine arts, and offers a wide variety of programs and classes for adults and children through its Studio School and Junior School. The Glassell Community Outreach Program serves more than 2,000 individuals, including hospitalized children and hearing and visually impaired people. The Glassell School of Art is open Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., and Friday through Sunday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The Core Exhibition Program merges the Glassell School of Art exhibition program with that of the Museum’s Core Residency Program. Visit www.mfah.org/core or call 713.639.7500 for more information.

Funding    
The Core Program at the Glassell School of Art receives generous funding from The Joseph and Sylvia Slifka Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Core fellowships have been underwritten by Joan and Stanford Alexander; Mr. and Mrs. Jamal H. Daniel; The Dickson-Allen Foundation; The Francis L. Lederer Foundation; Dr. Penelope Marks and Mr. Lester Marks; McClain Gallery; Mr. Marc Melcher; The Powell Foundation; Karen Pulaski; and The Arch and Stella Rowan Foundation, Inc.

Press Contacts
Mary Haus, Laine Lieberman, Sarah Baker, and Sarah Blair Matthews
smatthews@mfah.org / 721.649.7554