Adam Benjamin Fung
ICEBERG X
September 30 - October 28
OPENING: Saturday, September 30, 7:15-10pm
Ro2 Art is thrilled to present ‘Iceberg X,’ an exhibition of works by artist Adam Benjamin Fung. The show will run from September 30 through October 28, 2017. There will be an opening reception held Saturday, September 30th, from 7:15-10 p.m. at Ro2 Art, located at 1501 S. Ervay Street in Dallas’ Cedars neighborhood.
In his newest series, artist Adam Fung recaptures the enchanting landscapes that he witnessed during his Artist Residency in the Arctic Circle. While his paintings offer a gorgeous glimpse into this frozen wonderland, Fung is also intent to provide a sobering reminder that many of these sites now look drastically different, or no longer exist, due to climate change. Fung’s work features ghostly monochromatic renditions of the various glaciers, icebergs, and seas that inspired him, paired with an unexpected, yet unmistakable, symbol of loss. The significance of Iceberg X lies in its ability to present a visual quandary for the viewer; the X reinforces the painted surface, but its transparency allows the viewer to re-enter the painting as a window into another world.
In his newest series, artist Adam Fung recaptures the enchanting landscapes that he witnessed during his Artist Residency in the Arctic Circle. While his paintings offer a gorgeous glimpse into this frozen wonderland, Fung is also intent to provide a sobering reminder that many of these sites now look drastically different, or no longer exist, due to climate change. Fung’s work features ghostly monochromatic renditions of the various glaciers, icebergs, and seas that inspired him, paired with an unexpected, yet unmistakable, symbol of loss. The significance of Iceberg X lies in its ability to present a visual quandary for the viewer; the X reinforces the painted surface, but its transparency allows the viewer to re-enter the painting as a window into another world.
Adam Fung received his MFA from University of Notre Dame and BFA from Western Washington University. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. In June 2016, Fung was an artist in residence as part of the Arctic Circle program. The summer solstice expedition traveled above 81 degrees latitude aboard a rigged sailing ship, using the port of Longyearbyen, Svalbard as a departure point. His new body of work Iceberg X arises from this direct experience in the Arctic.
Fung works primarily as a Painter and has a dynamic range of research interests that touch upon issues such as climate change, landscape, patterns and the make up of the universe. Fung’s work often arises from direct experience such a recent residency in Iceland or a 2014 road trip around west Texas and New Mexico to visit dark sky parks and observatories. In November 2017 Fung will present collaborative work with artist and fellow TCU professor, Nick Bontrager at the University of Dallas and Collin College. This work will focus on the artists’ interaction with the landscape through the lens of new technologies, including aerial and underwater drones, laser scanners, and 360 degree video.
Fung’s paintings can be found in public art collections at Microsoft, South Bend Museum of Art, TCU, and the US Department of Energy’s Fermilab, as well as numerous private collections nationally and internationally. Fung is represented by Ro2 Art in Dallas, TX and Aron Packer Projects in Chicago, IL.
Fung works primarily as a Painter and has a dynamic range of research interests that touch upon issues such as climate change, landscape, patterns and the make up of the universe. Fung’s work often arises from direct experience such a recent residency in Iceland or a 2014 road trip around west Texas and New Mexico to visit dark sky parks and observatories. In November 2017 Fung will present collaborative work with artist and fellow TCU professor, Nick Bontrager at the University of Dallas and Collin College. This work will focus on the artists’ interaction with the landscape through the lens of new technologies, including aerial and underwater drones, laser scanners, and 360 degree video.
Fung’s paintings can be found in public art collections at Microsoft, South Bend Museum of Art, TCU, and the US Department of Energy’s Fermilab, as well as numerous private collections nationally and internationally. Fung is represented by Ro2 Art in Dallas, TX and Aron Packer Projects in Chicago, IL.
Arctic cartography often depicts the lines of latitude ending at the Arctic Circle leaving only an X marking the north pole. As I traveled the Arctic in the summer of 2016 as a participant on the Arctic Circle Artist Residency and Expedition this map-territory relationship stuck with me. At the time I was immersed in a stark, rocky, frozen world as we traveled aboard a sailing ship. I approached this trip with a list of words to speak to the landscape and the intent of creating a film using a drone and underwater camera. Upon completion of my film project, an immersive three channel endeavor paired with a voice that speaks to/merges with the landscape, I returned to my trove of imagery from the Arctic with the intent of forming a new series of paintings.
This new body of work is executed with deliberate attention to surfaces, in paint application, in variety of linen textures, or the use of absorbent grounds. The imagery shifts across the Arctic sea and landscape employing a pale monochromatic palette that speaks to the light and disorientation of the Arctic summer’s endless day. Each image is rendered directly from photographs that I took during the residency in the high Arctic, including an image of the pack ice edge at 81 degrees north, about 500 miles from the north pole. These seas, glaciers, icebergs hover in a moment of static illusion that must be negotiated by the formal presence of an X. Each image presents a visual quandary for the viewer as the X reinforces the painted surface but it’s transparency allows the viewer to re-enter the painting as a window into another world.
These landscapes no longer exist as depicted, having shifted in the duration a year of winter’s snow and summers melt. The larger question at hand is- in what form will these places exist, if at all, in the coming years, decades, or millenniums?
This new body of work is executed with deliberate attention to surfaces, in paint application, in variety of linen textures, or the use of absorbent grounds. The imagery shifts across the Arctic sea and landscape employing a pale monochromatic palette that speaks to the light and disorientation of the Arctic summer’s endless day. Each image is rendered directly from photographs that I took during the residency in the high Arctic, including an image of the pack ice edge at 81 degrees north, about 500 miles from the north pole. These seas, glaciers, icebergs hover in a moment of static illusion that must be negotiated by the formal presence of an X. Each image presents a visual quandary for the viewer as the X reinforces the painted surface but it’s transparency allows the viewer to re-enter the painting as a window into another world.
These landscapes no longer exist as depicted, having shifted in the duration a year of winter’s snow and summers melt. The larger question at hand is- in what form will these places exist, if at all, in the coming years, decades, or millenniums?
On the Benefits of Defacing Art
George Philip LeBourdais
George Philip LeBourdais
There are lots of good reasons to deface a work of art. In 8th and 9th century Byzantium, sweeping recalibrations of how humanity should represent the divine resulted in a period of iconoclasm, the obliteration of religious images. In 1908, days before an exhibition of his ambitious Water Lily paintings, Claude Monet erupted with frustration by knifing through fifteen canvases that fell short of expectations. In 1966, the Destruction in Art Symposium in London convened artists, poets, and scientists to ask what resulted from the wreck, ruin, or disavowal of a work. Politics often provides the fuel for these destructive urges. At the time of this writing, the United States roiled in debates about whether Confederate statues that perpetuate the legacy of racism should be removed or preserved. Works of art invite these acts of calculated deconstruction for a simple reason: they have power, enough to unsettle or reform the societies that live with them.
In his Iceberg X series, Adam Fung defaces paintings not to chase demons but to rattle our complacency. The canvases depict scenes from the Arctic - icebergs, glaciers, waves - each crossed over by a stridently-toned X. What do these disruptions of otherwise pristine paintings mean?
Iceberg X operates by both fulfilling and contradicting our assumptions. Works in the series depict the Arctic as we imagine it looks, but they also distort it in provocative ways. Though each painting adopts a unique shape or size, they all represent the Arctic environment in arresting detail. Inspiration for the series came from the 2016 Arctic Circle Residency, a three-week journey Fung spent sailing aboard a tall ship around the remote Arctic archipelago of Svalbard. These works represent views glimpsed on the voyage, during which encounters with the frozen landscape and the thousand-fathom sea reached the intensity of a pilgrimage. (This author, another resident aboard the ship and not a pious man, experienced something like ecstasy each time he bathed in the Arctic sea.)
To evoke the vividness of these encounters, Fung paints in a mimetic mode. Working from photographs, he created highly realistic paintings of the scenery. Hard, bubbled holes make a sieve of a great iceberg. The sea ripples and froths as if it were inches away. Mountains and glaciers a mile away are rendered with impressive fidelity. This sharpness of detail was essential to replicating the effects of Arctic summer light, which works like a scalpel on the edge of objects.
Yet all is not as it seems. Color complicates things. In certain passages, these works do convey the amazing variety of truly arctic blues: turquoise and aqua in blue green Arctic sea gold X, periwinkle in Arctic mountains gold X, a cool graphite in iceberg quinacridone X. But colors also steer away from this realist path. Indeed, the palette of many works is more surreal than real. blood red Arctic sea XXx, one of two works in circular tondo format, conjures a shield depicting some naval massacre in the vein of the ancient poet Homer’s “wine-dark” ocean. The association, reinforced by ominous tones in other canvases, is with a violent demise. It is as if the paintings say, “This is not some remote and unspoiled landscape; its spoliation is happening now, acidifying, melting, and disappearing before our eyes.” Strange coloration is the catalyst for this reckoning. It lets us know these are more than simply pretty paintings of the Arctic.
Enter the X. It finishes the work of unsettling that color began. In the case of this tondo, three of the letters appear in different graphic styles: one small, another large, a third slanted in blocky outline. You may try to look past them; good luck with that. X marks a spot on the surface of the canvas that becomes impossible to ignore. If surreal colors let us know something is amiss, the X presages that Arctic nature as it we know it will soon be missing from the earth entirely. That beautiful iceberg you imagined? Cross it off the list of endangered landscapes. Its extinction is a foregone conclusion.
By sticking intractably to the surface of the work, these X’s seek to disrupt not just our view but our way of thinking. This is a powerful effect of this kind of defacement: ideology critique. In a series of works from the mid-1980s, conceptual artist John Baldessari used a similar tactic. He put brightly colored dots over faces of people in found-photographs and film stills, as in the lithograph Studio from 1988. Five well-dressed onlookers face the easel of an artist at work. In Baldessari’s deadpan delivery, “facing” becomes an ironic term. What does “facing” mean if you have no face to begin with?
Baldessari has called these dots a way of "leveling the playing field.” (This coming from an artist who famously burned more than a decade’s worth of his own work in a crematorium. Creative destruction has many degrees.) By occluding the faces of each figure, dots paper over their individuality and invite interpretations that question the very definitions of art and spectatorship. Are we as blind to art’s meaning as the figures in the image are to the easel? Do our own identities cease to matter before the aura of the work? Studio may be playful at first, but it leads to these unsettling possibilities.
Marking the surface of an artwork in this way also alters how we understand the objects and space depicted. Like Baldessari’s dots, Fung’s X’s gut the fiction of pictorial depth. Cancelling out linear perspective in this way reminds the viewer that the image is just that—an image on a flat surface. These marks serve a blunt reminder that we are looking at a representation in two dimensions. They break the mimetic spell of the paintings, and by extension distance us from the phenomenal space they represent.
If surface defacement dashes the illusion of real space, then it requires that the artist subvert his power to create that illusion in the first place.
Let us not underestimate how hard it is to give up the ability to make a world for others to look upon; for an artist, defacing a work is painful. In creating the Iceberg X series, Fung worked to create an illusion of Arctic space that he planned to undo. Capturing the pockmarked texture of iceberg quinacridone X, for instance, took hours before the canvas, moving the brush methodically from edge to edge. The time needed to break the illusion is far less. Even Arctic mountains gold X, a work in which the gold, transparent X has grown so large it relegates the thin strip of peaks to a low and distant horizon, implies the same lesson: it is easier to destroy than to create. Read this way, Fung’s decision to cross out his Arctic landscapes can be a metaphor for anthropogenic climate change. A few hundred years of industrial development fueled by an extractive carbon economy can wipe away whole glaciers and ice sheets, forces that have shaped the earth for as long as several billion years. Fung thus stares down his own obsolesce and drags us to the mirror with him. How can art stack up against these epochal changes? What chance do we all have in the face of the catastrophes that accompany a world without Arctic ice?
We don’t need to hazard answers to such questions to get their gist. We face a future so environmentally altered that our current ways of thinking (and living) may soon be obsolete. That future is hard to imagine. Most of us would simply prefer not to try. Fung uses the X to symbolize those unimaginable changes: whatever the “Arctic” will look like in a thousand, or even a hundred years, it will not be this. By attempting to represent this impending alterity, Iceberg X savors of the French philosopher Hubert Damisch’s theory of /cloud/. One of art history’s most ambitious linguistic theorists, Damisch interprets clouds painted by the Italian master Antonio Correggio (1489-1534) as more than iconic signs. That is, the clouds in Correggio’s Renaissance cupolas do not only resemble clouds; they are also a conceptual means of designating space where the rules of earthly physics do not apply. Clouds buoy up saints and angels, fencing off a divine realm where miraculous things occur. To Damisch, clouds separate the grid-based perspective of Renaissance painting that mimics lived reality from the rapturous, unmoored heavens. Hence the setting apart of the word between dashes: /cloud/ offers a portal through the here and now to the great beyond. A theory of XicebergX might marshal the same principle to opposite effect. Rather than a portal, XicebergX is a wall. Though painted over a view that recedes in space, the X undercuts the continued relevance of landscape paintings in linear perspective. Painting a realistic iceberg represents the here and now. An X layered on a glacier represents a time when glaciers are no longer part of life on earth.
If all this begins to sound dire, it is. As we paint and write and eat and drive to work, day after day, year after year, the situation worsens. Fung resorts to defacement to unsettle us because these rhythms are exceptionally hard to change. But if one purpose of art, in Pablo Picasso’s telling, is to wash away from the soul the dust of everyday life, then it is to this lofty goal that Iceberg X aspires.
So things are perhaps as dire as this and also not. After all, Fung does not destroy his works. They are not shredded to bits like Monet’s lilies. To the contrary, they remain whole but with a different tint. Each X is painted transparently, like a lens that changes the color of everything behind it. Defacement need not end with destruction to make us see things differently. Seeing the beauty and sadness of these scenes in a new light may be enough to shift our perspective, even slightly. We may yet make real changes to our consumptive habits for the better. We may yet stem the tide of X’s that menace the most beautiful and inspiring parts of the natural world. As the climate changes, artists will go on creating, challenging us to search beyond the surface for new horizons. Defacing art may lead some of us to an about face.
Education
2008 M.F.A. Painting, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana
2005 B.F.A. Studio Art, Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington
2000 Art Foundations, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia
Gallery Representation
Ro2 Art, Dallas, Texas
Email: [email protected] Phone: 214.803.9575 Website: www.Ro2art.com
Aron Packer Projects, Chicago, Illinois
Email: [email protected] Website: www.PackerGallery.com
Solo Exhibitions and Collaborative Exhibitions (collaborative denoted with *)
2017 Iceberg X, Ro2 Gallery, Dallas, Texas
site_fjord_fjall>>blueblackgreen, University of Dallas, Irving, Texas (with Nick Bontrager)*
site_midnight_sun>>orangegreengrey, Collin College, Plano, Texas (with Nick Bontrager)*
2016 constellation atlas, Cloud Gallery, Seattle, Washington
the shape of everything, Lightwell Gallery, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma
full of infinite space, Viking Union Gallery, Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington
2015 a wave rolled toward you out of the distant past, Link Gallery, Kent State University, Trumball, Ohio
2014 Observatory, Packer Schopf Gallery, Chicago, Illinois
Color Out of Space, Brookhaven College, Dallas, Texas (with Nick Bontranger)*
Rotational Studies, Gallery 1308, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin
2013 Volumes, voids and vectors, Moudy Gallery, TCU, Fort Worth, Texas
In Visible, Fermilab, Batavia, Illinois
2012 Recent Paintings, Blue Gallery, Three Oaks, Michigan
Nebula, Optima Horizons Gallery, Evanston, Illinois
2011 Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Mt. Comfort Gallery, Indianapolis, Indiana
Dark Matter, Dark Energy, The Draewell Gallery, Judson University, Elgin, Illinois
2010 Alois is Here, To Be Continued, Vienna, Austria (with collaborator; Sonja Bendel)*
2008 Ominous, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, Illinois
Wake, The Snite Museum of Art, Notre Dame, Indiana
2007 Surface, South Bend Regional Museum of Art, South Bend, Indiana
Selected Group Exhibitions
2017 Aspen Art Fair, Ro2 Art, Aspen, Colorado
Dallas Art Fair, Ro2 Art, Dallas, TX
Thaw, University of Notre Dame Center for the Arts and Culture, South Bend, IN (curated by Lucas Korte)
Beyond Nature, Moudy Gallery, TCU, Fort Worth, TX
Chaos!, Ro2 Art, Dallas, TX
Bi-Annual School of Art Faculty Exhibition, Moudy Gallery, TCU, Fort Worth, TX
2016 Other Worlds, Other Stories, Washington Artists Project, Washington D.C. (curator: Jeffry Cudlin)
Pole saw, Lloyd’s Hotel, Spitsbergen, Svalbard (curated by Fritz Hortzman)
Dallas Art Fair, Ro2 Art Booth, Dallas, TX
Chaos!, Ro2 Art, Dallas, TX
Small works, Button Gallery, Saugatuck, MI
2015 Biannual Faculty Exhibition, TCU, Fort Worth, TX
Texas Contemporary Art Fair, Ro2 Art, Houston, TX
Water, Core New Art Space, Denver, CO (jurors: Adam Finkelston + James Meara)
Mountains to Sea, Art Science Gallery, Austin, TX (curator: Haley Gillespie)
Co Action, 500X, Dallas, TX
2014 Hunting Art Prize Finalist Exhibition, Houston, TX (jurors: Marie Bosarge, Leila Cartier, + Stephen Wicks)
Art in the Metroplex, Fort Worth Community Arts Center, Fort Worth, TX (curator: Sara-Jayne Parsons)
Experiencing Perspectives, Mercedes-Benz Financial Services, Fort Worth, TX
2013 Art Matter, Design Cloud Gallery, Chicago, IL (curator: Angela Bryant)
Biannual Faculty Exhibition, TCU, Fort Worth, TX
Objective/Subjective, Northern Illinois University Museum of Art, DeKalb, IL (curator: Peter Olson)
Faculty Exhibition, Evanston Art Center, Evanston, IL
Faculty Lounge, Montgomery Building, Fort Worth, TX
2011 Repertoire, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL
Drawing Connections, Siena Art Institute, Siena, Italy
Within the Landscape/the Landscape Within, Emily Davis Gallery, University of Akron, OH
Art Chicago, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL
Earth, Air, Fire & Water, Blink Contemporary Art, Michigan City, IN
2010 Flesh and Bone, Hyde Park Art Center and Co-Prosperity Sphere, Chicago, IL
Art Chicago, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL
Papergirl, Vienna, Austria
Collaborate, IG bildende Kunst, Vienna, Austria
Midnight snacks, 1366 space, Chicago, IL
2009 A Book About Death, Emily Harvey Gallery, New York, New York
Art Chicago, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, Illinois
Paintpresent, Lexington Art League, Lexington, Kentucky (juror: Bobby Campbell),
Contemporary American and Italian Artists on Paper, Thaddeus C. Gallery, LaPorte, Indiana
2008 Art Chicago, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, Illinois
Revision, Zolla/Lieberman in 3 Chapters, 32 years, Zolla/Lieberman, Chicago, Illinois
Awards
2016 The Arctic Circle Artist Residency and Summer Solstice Expedition, Longyearbyen, Svalbard
Research and Creative Activity Fund (Grant), Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX
Junior Faculty Summer Research Program (Grant), Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX
Coleman Ambassador, Coleman Foundation, Texas Christian University, Forth Worth, TX
2015 Instructional Development Grant, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX
Coleman Fellow, Coleman Foundation + Neely Business School, Texas Christian University, Forth Worth, TX
2014 Junior Faculty Summer Research Program (Grant), Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX
Research and Creative Activity Fund (Grant), Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX
Coleman Fellow, Coleman Foundation + Neely Business School, Texas Christian University, Forth Worth, TX
Instructional Development Grant, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX
Merit Award, Art in the Metroplex, Fort Worth Community Art Center, Forth Worth, TX
2009 Artist Grant, Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT
2008 Efroymson Fund Emerging Graduate Artist Award, The Snite Museum of Art, Notre Dame, IN
Best in Show, MFA/BFA Exhibition, The Snite Museum of Art, Notre Dame, IN
Graduate Teaching Assistantship and Tuition Scholarship, University of Notre Dame
2007 Graduate Research Grant for Antarctic Field Study, University of Notre Dame
Graduate Teaching Assistantship and Tuition Scholarship, University of Notre Dame
2006 Best Hand Drawn Illustration, "Iceberg", Indiana Collegiate Press Association
Graduate Teaching Assistantship and Tuition Scholarship, University of Notre Dame
2005 Beyond Borders Juried Competition Award, Viking Union Gallery, Bellingham, Washington
Graduate Teaching Assistantship and Tuition Scholarship, University of Notre Dame
Mary Gillis Davis Johnston Endowment for Art, Western Washington University
Art Brevis Scholarship, Western Washington University
Teaching
2013 - Present Assistant Professor of Art, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Texas
2013 Painting Faculty, Evanston Art Center, Evanston, IL
Visiting Artist, Chicago Math and Science Academy, Chicago, IL
2012 Painting Faculty, Evanston Art Center, Evanston, Illinois
2011 Visiting Assistant Professor, North Park University, Chicago, Illinois
2008 Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana
Professional Experience
2017 Herhusid, Artist in Residence, Siglufjordhur, Iceland
Curator, Beyond Nature (artists from the 2016 Arctic Circle expedition), Moudy Gallery, TCU, Fort Worth, Texas
Visiting Artist, Santa Monica College, Santa Monica, California
Juror for Fort Worth School District Chair of Excellence, Visual Arts, Teaching award, Fort Worth, Texas
2016 The Arctic Circle Summer Solstice Expedition 2016, Longyearbyen, Svalbard
Visiting Artist, Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington
Visiting Artist, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma
TCU Faculty Led Study Abroad, Panama + Nicuaragra
Juror for Fort Worth School District Chair of Excellence, Visual Arts, Teaching award, Fort Worth, Texas
Curator, Idea Launch Gallery, TCU School of Business, Fort Worth, Texas
Portfolio Reviewer, ISAS Fine Arts Festival, San Antonio, Texas
2015 Mock Interviewer, College Art Association Conference, New York, New York
Visiting Artist, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana
Juror for Fort Worth School District Chair of Excellence, Visual Arts, Teaching award, Fort Worth, Texas
Portfolio Reviewer, ISAS Fine Arts Festival, Country Day School, Fort Worth, Texas
Curator, Idea Launch Gallery, TCU School of Business, Fort Worth, Texas
Chancellor Scholarship Interview Panelist, TCU, Fort Worth, Texas Christian University
2014 Juror for Fort Worth School District Chair of Excellence Visual Arts teaching award, Fort Worth, Texas
Curator, Idea Launch Gallery, TCU School of Business, Fort Worth, Texas
2013 Painting and Drawing Coordinator, Evanston Art Center, Evanston, Illinois
2012 Visiting Artist, Department of Art and Art History, University of the South, Sewanee, Tennesse
Guest Critic, North Park University, Chicago, Illinois
Painting and Drawing Coordinator, Evanston Art Center, Evanston, Illinois
2011 Visiting Artist, Myers School of Art, University of Akron, Akron, Ohio
Guest Artist / Lecturer, School of Art, Design, & Architecture, Judson University, Elgin, Illinois
2009 Artist in Resident, Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, Vermont
Guest Critic, School of Art, Design, & Architecture, Judson University, Elgin, Illinois
2008 Assistant Curator of Exhibitions, South Bend Museum of Art, South Bend, Indiana
2006-08 Graduate Student Union, Departmental Representative, University of Notre Dame
Publications and Media
2017 Autonomous Art Systems, guest co-editor, Media-N journal, fall issue
Roundup: Science & Technology at CAA: 2017, Sci Art Magazine, Feb. 2017
New American Paintings (online), Arthur Peña, April 15th, 2017
Public Knowledge lecture w/ Nick Bontrager, Iceland, WOB, Fort Worth, TX
Herhusid Artist in Residence Interview, N4 TV, Akureyri, Iceland
An uncommon journey, TCU magazine, Winter issue, Fort Worth, TX
Art Students explore mortality, TCU this week, May 15th, Fort Worth, TX
2016 Moby Dick Marathon (reader), Frank Stella exhibition, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, TX
2015 Art Professor headed to Arctic Circle, TCU this week, November 23rd, 2015, Fort Worth, TX
2013 Fort Worth Fall Gallery Guide (Image), Fort Worth, TX
2012 In Visible, an artist’s perspective of the universe, Jessica Orwig, Fermilab Today, 11-15-2012
2011 Within the Landscape/the Landscape Within, Catalog, Emily Davis Gallery, University of Akron
Dark Energy, Dark Matter (review), Dan Grossman, NUVO, September 5th issue, Indianapolis, Indiana
Case Study: Adam Benjamin Fung, Jeriah Hildewine, Chicago Art Magazine, Chicago, Illinois
2009 Paintpresent, exhibition catalog and book, Lexington Art League, Lexington, Kentucky
Notre Dame Review, no. 28, Summer/Fall 2009, Front and Back Cover Art
2008 Antarctica (video), Department of News and Information, University of Notre Dame
Selected Public and Private Collections
Microsoft Art Collection, Redmond, Washington
Fermilab Permanent Collection, Fermilab - US Department of Energy, Batavia, Illinois
South Bend Museum of Art, Permanent Collection, South Bend, Indiana
Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Texas
Glass Flake International, Jacksonville, Florida
Stephan Sigrist, Zurich, Switzerland
William Lieberman, Chicago, Illinois
Susan Roth Romans, Dallas, Texas
Tim Vermeulen, Washington, DC
Larry Karaszewsk, Los Angeles, California
Russell and Umilla Stead, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Jason Hoyer, Indianapolis, Indiana
2008 M.F.A. Painting, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana
2005 B.F.A. Studio Art, Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington
2000 Art Foundations, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia
Gallery Representation
Ro2 Art, Dallas, Texas
Email: [email protected] Phone: 214.803.9575 Website: www.Ro2art.com
Aron Packer Projects, Chicago, Illinois
Email: [email protected] Website: www.PackerGallery.com
Solo Exhibitions and Collaborative Exhibitions (collaborative denoted with *)
2017 Iceberg X, Ro2 Gallery, Dallas, Texas
site_fjord_fjall>>blueblackgreen, University of Dallas, Irving, Texas (with Nick Bontrager)*
site_midnight_sun>>orangegreengrey, Collin College, Plano, Texas (with Nick Bontrager)*
2016 constellation atlas, Cloud Gallery, Seattle, Washington
the shape of everything, Lightwell Gallery, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma
full of infinite space, Viking Union Gallery, Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington
2015 a wave rolled toward you out of the distant past, Link Gallery, Kent State University, Trumball, Ohio
2014 Observatory, Packer Schopf Gallery, Chicago, Illinois
Color Out of Space, Brookhaven College, Dallas, Texas (with Nick Bontranger)*
Rotational Studies, Gallery 1308, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin
2013 Volumes, voids and vectors, Moudy Gallery, TCU, Fort Worth, Texas
In Visible, Fermilab, Batavia, Illinois
2012 Recent Paintings, Blue Gallery, Three Oaks, Michigan
Nebula, Optima Horizons Gallery, Evanston, Illinois
2011 Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Mt. Comfort Gallery, Indianapolis, Indiana
Dark Matter, Dark Energy, The Draewell Gallery, Judson University, Elgin, Illinois
2010 Alois is Here, To Be Continued, Vienna, Austria (with collaborator; Sonja Bendel)*
2008 Ominous, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, Illinois
Wake, The Snite Museum of Art, Notre Dame, Indiana
2007 Surface, South Bend Regional Museum of Art, South Bend, Indiana
Selected Group Exhibitions
2017 Aspen Art Fair, Ro2 Art, Aspen, Colorado
Dallas Art Fair, Ro2 Art, Dallas, TX
Thaw, University of Notre Dame Center for the Arts and Culture, South Bend, IN (curated by Lucas Korte)
Beyond Nature, Moudy Gallery, TCU, Fort Worth, TX
Chaos!, Ro2 Art, Dallas, TX
Bi-Annual School of Art Faculty Exhibition, Moudy Gallery, TCU, Fort Worth, TX
2016 Other Worlds, Other Stories, Washington Artists Project, Washington D.C. (curator: Jeffry Cudlin)
Pole saw, Lloyd’s Hotel, Spitsbergen, Svalbard (curated by Fritz Hortzman)
Dallas Art Fair, Ro2 Art Booth, Dallas, TX
Chaos!, Ro2 Art, Dallas, TX
Small works, Button Gallery, Saugatuck, MI
2015 Biannual Faculty Exhibition, TCU, Fort Worth, TX
Texas Contemporary Art Fair, Ro2 Art, Houston, TX
Water, Core New Art Space, Denver, CO (jurors: Adam Finkelston + James Meara)
Mountains to Sea, Art Science Gallery, Austin, TX (curator: Haley Gillespie)
Co Action, 500X, Dallas, TX
2014 Hunting Art Prize Finalist Exhibition, Houston, TX (jurors: Marie Bosarge, Leila Cartier, + Stephen Wicks)
Art in the Metroplex, Fort Worth Community Arts Center, Fort Worth, TX (curator: Sara-Jayne Parsons)
Experiencing Perspectives, Mercedes-Benz Financial Services, Fort Worth, TX
2013 Art Matter, Design Cloud Gallery, Chicago, IL (curator: Angela Bryant)
Biannual Faculty Exhibition, TCU, Fort Worth, TX
Objective/Subjective, Northern Illinois University Museum of Art, DeKalb, IL (curator: Peter Olson)
Faculty Exhibition, Evanston Art Center, Evanston, IL
Faculty Lounge, Montgomery Building, Fort Worth, TX
2011 Repertoire, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL
Drawing Connections, Siena Art Institute, Siena, Italy
Within the Landscape/the Landscape Within, Emily Davis Gallery, University of Akron, OH
Art Chicago, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL
Earth, Air, Fire & Water, Blink Contemporary Art, Michigan City, IN
2010 Flesh and Bone, Hyde Park Art Center and Co-Prosperity Sphere, Chicago, IL
Art Chicago, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL
Papergirl, Vienna, Austria
Collaborate, IG bildende Kunst, Vienna, Austria
Midnight snacks, 1366 space, Chicago, IL
2009 A Book About Death, Emily Harvey Gallery, New York, New York
Art Chicago, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, Illinois
Paintpresent, Lexington Art League, Lexington, Kentucky (juror: Bobby Campbell),
Contemporary American and Italian Artists on Paper, Thaddeus C. Gallery, LaPorte, Indiana
2008 Art Chicago, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, Illinois
Revision, Zolla/Lieberman in 3 Chapters, 32 years, Zolla/Lieberman, Chicago, Illinois
Awards
2016 The Arctic Circle Artist Residency and Summer Solstice Expedition, Longyearbyen, Svalbard
Research and Creative Activity Fund (Grant), Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX
Junior Faculty Summer Research Program (Grant), Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX
Coleman Ambassador, Coleman Foundation, Texas Christian University, Forth Worth, TX
2015 Instructional Development Grant, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX
Coleman Fellow, Coleman Foundation + Neely Business School, Texas Christian University, Forth Worth, TX
2014 Junior Faculty Summer Research Program (Grant), Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX
Research and Creative Activity Fund (Grant), Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX
Coleman Fellow, Coleman Foundation + Neely Business School, Texas Christian University, Forth Worth, TX
Instructional Development Grant, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX
Merit Award, Art in the Metroplex, Fort Worth Community Art Center, Forth Worth, TX
2009 Artist Grant, Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT
2008 Efroymson Fund Emerging Graduate Artist Award, The Snite Museum of Art, Notre Dame, IN
Best in Show, MFA/BFA Exhibition, The Snite Museum of Art, Notre Dame, IN
Graduate Teaching Assistantship and Tuition Scholarship, University of Notre Dame
2007 Graduate Research Grant for Antarctic Field Study, University of Notre Dame
Graduate Teaching Assistantship and Tuition Scholarship, University of Notre Dame
2006 Best Hand Drawn Illustration, "Iceberg", Indiana Collegiate Press Association
Graduate Teaching Assistantship and Tuition Scholarship, University of Notre Dame
2005 Beyond Borders Juried Competition Award, Viking Union Gallery, Bellingham, Washington
Graduate Teaching Assistantship and Tuition Scholarship, University of Notre Dame
Mary Gillis Davis Johnston Endowment for Art, Western Washington University
Art Brevis Scholarship, Western Washington University
Teaching
2013 - Present Assistant Professor of Art, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Texas
2013 Painting Faculty, Evanston Art Center, Evanston, IL
Visiting Artist, Chicago Math and Science Academy, Chicago, IL
2012 Painting Faculty, Evanston Art Center, Evanston, Illinois
2011 Visiting Assistant Professor, North Park University, Chicago, Illinois
2008 Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana
Professional Experience
2017 Herhusid, Artist in Residence, Siglufjordhur, Iceland
Curator, Beyond Nature (artists from the 2016 Arctic Circle expedition), Moudy Gallery, TCU, Fort Worth, Texas
Visiting Artist, Santa Monica College, Santa Monica, California
Juror for Fort Worth School District Chair of Excellence, Visual Arts, Teaching award, Fort Worth, Texas
2016 The Arctic Circle Summer Solstice Expedition 2016, Longyearbyen, Svalbard
Visiting Artist, Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington
Visiting Artist, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma
TCU Faculty Led Study Abroad, Panama + Nicuaragra
Juror for Fort Worth School District Chair of Excellence, Visual Arts, Teaching award, Fort Worth, Texas
Curator, Idea Launch Gallery, TCU School of Business, Fort Worth, Texas
Portfolio Reviewer, ISAS Fine Arts Festival, San Antonio, Texas
2015 Mock Interviewer, College Art Association Conference, New York, New York
Visiting Artist, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana
Juror for Fort Worth School District Chair of Excellence, Visual Arts, Teaching award, Fort Worth, Texas
Portfolio Reviewer, ISAS Fine Arts Festival, Country Day School, Fort Worth, Texas
Curator, Idea Launch Gallery, TCU School of Business, Fort Worth, Texas
Chancellor Scholarship Interview Panelist, TCU, Fort Worth, Texas Christian University
2014 Juror for Fort Worth School District Chair of Excellence Visual Arts teaching award, Fort Worth, Texas
Curator, Idea Launch Gallery, TCU School of Business, Fort Worth, Texas
2013 Painting and Drawing Coordinator, Evanston Art Center, Evanston, Illinois
2012 Visiting Artist, Department of Art and Art History, University of the South, Sewanee, Tennesse
Guest Critic, North Park University, Chicago, Illinois
Painting and Drawing Coordinator, Evanston Art Center, Evanston, Illinois
2011 Visiting Artist, Myers School of Art, University of Akron, Akron, Ohio
Guest Artist / Lecturer, School of Art, Design, & Architecture, Judson University, Elgin, Illinois
2009 Artist in Resident, Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, Vermont
Guest Critic, School of Art, Design, & Architecture, Judson University, Elgin, Illinois
2008 Assistant Curator of Exhibitions, South Bend Museum of Art, South Bend, Indiana
2006-08 Graduate Student Union, Departmental Representative, University of Notre Dame
Publications and Media
2017 Autonomous Art Systems, guest co-editor, Media-N journal, fall issue
Roundup: Science & Technology at CAA: 2017, Sci Art Magazine, Feb. 2017
New American Paintings (online), Arthur Peña, April 15th, 2017
Public Knowledge lecture w/ Nick Bontrager, Iceland, WOB, Fort Worth, TX
Herhusid Artist in Residence Interview, N4 TV, Akureyri, Iceland
An uncommon journey, TCU magazine, Winter issue, Fort Worth, TX
Art Students explore mortality, TCU this week, May 15th, Fort Worth, TX
2016 Moby Dick Marathon (reader), Frank Stella exhibition, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, TX
2015 Art Professor headed to Arctic Circle, TCU this week, November 23rd, 2015, Fort Worth, TX
2013 Fort Worth Fall Gallery Guide (Image), Fort Worth, TX
2012 In Visible, an artist’s perspective of the universe, Jessica Orwig, Fermilab Today, 11-15-2012
2011 Within the Landscape/the Landscape Within, Catalog, Emily Davis Gallery, University of Akron
Dark Energy, Dark Matter (review), Dan Grossman, NUVO, September 5th issue, Indianapolis, Indiana
Case Study: Adam Benjamin Fung, Jeriah Hildewine, Chicago Art Magazine, Chicago, Illinois
2009 Paintpresent, exhibition catalog and book, Lexington Art League, Lexington, Kentucky
Notre Dame Review, no. 28, Summer/Fall 2009, Front and Back Cover Art
2008 Antarctica (video), Department of News and Information, University of Notre Dame
Selected Public and Private Collections
Microsoft Art Collection, Redmond, Washington
Fermilab Permanent Collection, Fermilab - US Department of Energy, Batavia, Illinois
South Bend Museum of Art, Permanent Collection, South Bend, Indiana
Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Texas
Glass Flake International, Jacksonville, Florida
Stephan Sigrist, Zurich, Switzerland
William Lieberman, Chicago, Illinois
Susan Roth Romans, Dallas, Texas
Tim Vermeulen, Washington, DC
Larry Karaszewsk, Los Angeles, California
Russell and Umilla Stead, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Jason Hoyer, Indianapolis, Indiana
