Departure as a Domestic \ Kat Chamberlin, Jennifer Grimyser, Giulia Piera Livi, Malcolm Majer, Nontsikelelo Mutiti, Michael Scoggins, and Ruri Yi  

Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA Salon) | August 26- December 31, 2020

The concern of everyday life and injustices is a response to a domestic abstract that should define politics around our civic responsibilities. The maintenance - and non-maintenance - of art reflects the politics and cultural conditions of its values. As public resources are redirected into Enterprise Culture systems, the idea of maintaining economic value displaces the values in the potential of art, creating an imbalance between object and objective.  

BIOGRAPHY

Kat Chamberlin b. 1981, The Netherlands. Born in the Netherlands and raised in Turkey, Kat Chamberlin is a Brooklyn-based artist. Her work has been exhibited across the U.S and internationally, and featured in exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, The Chicago Cultural Center, Barbara and Steven Grossman Gallery in Boston, TSA and BRIC in New York City. Kat completed her Masters in Fine Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is the recipient of a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, the Toby Devan Lewis Award and the William Dole Award.

Jennifer Grimyser was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She graduated from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2006 with a BFA in Photography and a Concentration in Book Arts, and received a MFA in Photography from Hunter College. She has presented solo exhibitions at numerous galleries including the Bronx River Art Center, Solo(s) Project House, Ground Floor Gallery, and Guest Spot @ THE REINSTITUTE. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in many group exhibitions at galleries such as Kunstverein Wolfsburg, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Lesley Heller Workspace, Center for Emerging Visual Artists, Islip Art Museum, BRIC Rotunda, Bronx Art Space, Transmitter, Present Company, and Art Institute of Chicago. Grimyser was awarded residencies at the Bronx Museum AIM Program, Center for Book Arts, Women’s Studio Workshop, Vermont Studio Center, NARS Foundation, and Chashama. She has published artists books which are now featured in several library collections including Walker Arts Center, Yale University, Rhode Island School of Design, Maryland Institute College of Art, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Grimyser currently lives and works in New York, NY. 

Giulia Piera Livi is an interdisciplinary artist originally Philadelphia, now living and working in Baltimore City. She earned  a B.F.A. from Penn State University and an M.F.A. from the Mount Royal School at the Maryland Institute College of Art  (MICA). Her work in painting and installation is an investigation of interior space and design, focusing on abstraction and  accessibility. Her immerse rooms employ color and form to work out ideas of multi-functional art objects and curated  domesticity. Livi has exhibited both nationally and internationally with recent solo shows at VisArts (Rockville, MD),  Artspace (Richmond, VA), 13|U Art Windows (Washington, D.C.), VAE Gallery (Raleigh, NC), and Arlington Arts Center  (Arlington, VA). She received an Individual Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council in 2019 and the Bethesda  Trawick Young Artist Prize in 2017. Livi is currently Associate Director of C. Grimaldis Gallery and an Adjunct Professor at MICA.  

Malcolm Majer is a designer that works in-between experimental furniture and a conceptual sculpture practice. Based in Baltimore, he uses architectural fabrication techniques to create pieces that are technically usable but intentionally indifferent to the user. His work uses geometric minimalist forms and saturated shifting colors to create objects that seem slightly removed from reality. The work reflects a departure from generally accepted tenets of furniture design, intending to disorient, deceive and possibly inconvenience the user rather than bring more comfort to the user’s physical environment. Despite the work stemming from an anti-design ethos, it has been shown internationally as collectible design and featured in design magazines such as Dwell.

Nontsikelelo Mutiti is a Zimbabwean-born interdisciplinary artist and educator. Mutiti holds a diploma in multimedia art from the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts, and an MFA from the Yale School of Art, with a concentration in graphic design. She has been a resident artist at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Recess, and the Centre for Book Arts, both in New York City. In 2015, Mutiti was awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation Emerging Artist Grant in its inaugural year. Mutiti has participated in several group shows including “Salon Style” at the Studio Museum, a special screening for “Dreamlands” at the Whitney Museum, “Talking Pictures” at the Metropolitan Museum, and “THREE: On Visibility and Camouflage” at We Buy Gold. Mutiti produces project-based works, founding Black Chalk and Co with Tinashe Mushakavanhu, a collective of writers, artists, curators, and educators that initiate research-based projects that result in publications, archival projects, and events. As cofounder of Black Chalk & Co. Mutiti has produced projects cultural projects and events. She is also artistic director for Reading Zimbabwe, a platform for archiving and publishing. Mutiti is currently Assistant Professor in Graphic Design at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Michael Scoggins was born in Washington D.C in 1973 and gained an MFA in painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2006. He has attended various prestigious residencies including the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, and Fountainhead in Miami. Michael has gained international recognition and gallery representation in Atlanta, Miami, New York, Detroit, San Francisco, Seoul and Vienna. His works have been added to some notable collections including, but not limited to, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Michael has had works exhibited in over twenty solo shows, fifty curated group exhibitions, and written about in numerous publications. He currently splits his time between Brooklyn and upstate New York.

Ruri Yi (b.  S. Korea) is an artist working and living in Baltimore City, Maryland. She graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and has shown her works in a number of solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally. Her recent paperwork series was exhibited in Queensland, Australia, and in TSA_PDF Project, New York. Ruri Yi’s works reinterpret abstract landscapes that people live in and observe everyday. Her paintings portray static images of scenes through the use of hard-edged lines, minimalist compositions, symbolic figures, and balanced color, creating a simplified version of how she sees the world. Yi’s paintings depict abstracted elements of the urban landscape and its in-between spaces. In a series of paintings grouped and arranged together, each balances with the rest to form a uniform scene or to communicate her intended message.