6: Six Artists from the MIT Visual Arts Program

May 19-May 26, 2006
Hope Ginsburg, Maximilian Goldfarb, Marisa Jahn, Jae Rhim Lee, Oliver Lutz, Ben Wood.
Guest writer: Khadija Zinnenburg Carroll, PhD Candidate and Frank Knox Fellow, History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University.

6 is an exhibition showcasing the work of artists at MIT’s Visual Arts Program, a Master’s in Science degree emphasizing critical and experimental methods in contemporary art production. MIT artists share a valorization of process and performance that translates internal experience into public invention. The six artists featured in the exhibition employ highly interdisciplinary methods resulting in work that often eludes categorization: archaeologico-institutional critique, bio-dietary-non-art, epistolary social sculpture, athletico-symbolic trickery, transmissionary soundventions, and immersive story-telling.

Bill Arning, curator of the LIST Visual Arts Center reputed for its challenging and intellectually inquisitive contemporary art exhibitions comments, “The MIT VAP artists seem to me unique in comparison to MFA candidates, and I see many different crops as a frequent visitor to all the area schools in that they emerge from the program ready to engage the culture beyond the parochial focus of the art market. Their practices are diverse and might have germinated from within many other parts of advanced cultural practice, such as anthropology, urban studies, archaeology, botany and comparative literature-yet they do not slight the need for poetry, wit and beauty in engaging the general public in what might be considered obscure topics. They have clearly taken advantage of the diversity of MIT’s brain power and programs. Their focus and discipline is crucial, as is their worldliness and knowledge of international art practice and history. It will be interesting to see where their future impact will happen, but it is sure to be substantial.”