MSU Art Students Present Work Friday Night

By Andy Beaudoin on April 16, 2013

Last Friday, Michigan State’s Art MFA students presented their work at the Broad Art Museum. There was a great turnout — students, parents and other artsy types filled every gallery of the museum.

Yogurt Culture and Henry and Hazel Slaughter provided live music.

The MFA work proved to be thought-provoking and culturally reflective. Volodymyer Shcherbak, Steven Stradley and Rebekah Zurenko displayed paintings while Deborah Alma Wheeler and Ryan Groendyk worked in sculpture—although this was not your typical kind of sculpting.

Just outside the museum’s entrance, for example was a 1973 Mercedes-Benz, which bore an ameoba-esque design.  This is a piece of work from Groendyk; along with the car’s new exterior, the Mercedes had been modified to run off of carbon neutral fuels. The piece is meant to engage audiences in conversation about renewable energy and, of course, art.

The other sculpture, Wheeler, also used everyday objects in interesting ways. Her focus piece, Catharsis, asks audiences to think about social constructions: she took school desks and attached a rear-view mirror to it. 

For the painters, space, line and/or color seemed to be the focus of their oeuvres—especially so to Stradley, who utilizes these elements to explore the relationship between the viewer and the work itself. One piece in particular, forced the viewer to be only inches away from the piece (a wall was installed). 

Switching to Shcherbak, it was clear that line and space occupied his work as well.

Many of his pieces, quasi-post-apocalyptic in content, have lines that are sometimes straight, orderly or geometric. While others take on a much more natural or wild shape. Figures or silhouettes often stand somewhere in the piece (sometimes imitating the viewer), reflecting on what is going on in the work. 

Finally, in the basement, there was the culturally thought-provoking work of Zurenko. Her work, mixed media in style, explores the way in which we think of gender, identity and sexuality. The pieces often center around lesbianism and time, such as the piece Lesbian Ancient Aliens

The night was a huge success and the Broad provided an excellent atmosphere for these young, up-and-coming artists.

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