PASSAGESSpring 2015 | BFA Thesis Exhibition

Florida International University

Passages 3

Plastics.

This is the “great future” offered to Benjamin Braddock by

Mr. McGuire in the iconic 1967 film, The Graduate. It is a

future of progress and prosperity, where routes to success

are clearly mapped. It is not a future for drifters, or those

who nurse uncertainty. Yet, this is precisely what an artist

must do. An artist can take nothing for granted, must have

intense curiosity, and ask difficult questions. Challenging

conventional thinking, especially in oneself, is a necessity. It

is the artist’s task to remain exposed; a raw nerve open to

life’s best and worst, its pain and brutality, its paradoxes and

perplexity, its immense beauty and everyday magic.

In the midst of Benjamin’s post-college existential malaise,

his father asks him what he wants from his future. When

I consider the rising artists featured in this exhibition,

Benjamin’s response still rings true nearly fifty years later:

“I want it to be . . . different.”

Dustin London

Instructor, BFA Thesis II

April 2015

Passages4

PASSAGESFIU MIAMI BEACH URBAN STUDIOS

420 Lincoln Rd, Miami Beach, FL 33139

OPENING RECEPTIONFriday, April 10th, 2015, 7 to 9 p.m.

ON DISPLAYFriday, April 10th, 2015 through Friday May 1st, 2015

Paola Katherine Rodriguez

Vanessa Valdes

Aura Lacruz

Carlos Spartacus

Martha Carolina Guerrero

Jeannie Chatmonmart

Darryl Wawa

Pedro Perrez

Gonzalo Núñez Galetto

Juan Neira

FEATURING WORK BY

Passages6

Paola Katherine Rodriguez

artbypaopao.com

As a survivor of abuse, I now realize that an important thing

that was taken away from me during that time was my

voice. In my series, Broken Free, I try to promote awareness

of victimization, while empowering survivors to speak out.

Fellow survivors and I share our personal experiences with

one another as I photograph them, their intimate space,

and anything pertaining to their particular experience. They

then have the option to voice themselves through writing

on the prints. The combination of handwriting and image

juxtaposes the survivor’s past with their present. While an

image can often speak for itself, I am interested in the text’s

ability to become like a diary entry, allowing for intimacy,

openness, and vulnerability, providing insight as to where

each person stands in their healing process.

Passages 7 |

AlexC-Print

10 x 8 inches2014

Passages8 | Paola Katherine Rodriguez

“Flako”C-Print

10 x 8 inches2015

Passages 9Paola Katherine Rodriguez |

VanessaC-Print

10 x 8 inches2015

Passages10

Vanessa Valdes

valdesvanessa.wix.com/artist

Exposing myself to new processes entices me to

explore new ways to manipulate geometric forms in a

variety of mediums. These forms are seemingly simple,

yet the process by which they are created is dynamic

and physically laborious. Each piece takes on its own

life as it is torn apart, battered, coddled, and shined

into something new, becoming a monument to time

and transformation.

Passages 11Vanessa Valdes |

ThreeColored Plexiglass

Dimensions Variable2015

Passages12

Aura Lacruz

My work is a narrative of my struggles and experiences

concerning my body weight. I often felt the extreme pressure

to conform and fit into a box. Thin was everything to me, and

if I couldn’t be that, what was I? I still hear their voices: “Why

can’t I look like so and so? Why can’t you try harder, you could

be so beautiful if you were thin.” Those words are hard to

forget or ignore. So I became obsessed with the weight scale,

numbers, often weighing myself endlessly during the day. I

avoided looking at mirrors because I couldn’t stand to look at

myself, disgusted at what I saw.

My work in ceramics consists of large, juicy, rough, and

imperfect vessels. A vessel can be filled or emptied; it can

protect or restrict. It is the interior and exterior, and like one that

holds liquids and solids, to me the vessel is a container for my

own self-doubt, feelings that I’ve held inside and repressed. In

these pieces I embrace and magnify every dent, scratch, and

roll of my body, putting these “flaws” on full display.

Passages 13Aura Lacruz |

UntitledRed clay with oil paint and mixed pills

17 x 10.5 x 13 inches2015

Passages14

Carlos Spartacus

carlospartacus.com

If I see the leaves of a tree dancing in the wind, I make a

mark in reaction to their movement. If I touch the blades

of grass beneath me, or hear the distant mumbling of

a conversation, I translate these sensory experiences

into marks on a surface.

In a world filled with infinite distractions, I aspire to remain

in a state of present-mindedness, where my responses

are determined by the intensity of felt sensations.

The purring sounds of a cat can become fine lines of

rhythmic stippling, whereas the blast of a bus driving

by can materialize as a saturated brushstroke. Some

works are on paper, while others are made directly on

the wall. These pieces exist for a short time and are

then destroyed in an embrace of the transient and

impermanent nature of life itself.

Passages 15Carlos Spartacus |

By the StudioWatercolor, ink, gouache on watercolor paper

30 x 20 inches2015

Passages16 | Carlos Spartacus

Workout Watercolor, ink, gouache on watercolor paper

30 x 20 inches2015

Passages 17Carlos Spartacus |

Wall Piece No. 9Watercolor, ink on joint compound on wall

13 x 9 inches2015

Passages18

Martha Carolina Guerrero

My embroidery is part of a maternal legacy that glorifies the

labor of women. I grew up among fabrics, threads, and woman

that were heads of households. I learned about embroidery in

our family-run handkerchief factory during the 80’s and 90’s, the

worst and most violent decades in Colombian history. During my

childhood, both of my parents also did pyrography, which has

been an important part of my connection with these materials.

In my current work using similar processes, I let marks

spontaneously appear from my subconscious, exposing my

deepest memories and past experiences. I consider my work an

act of freedom and protest. In my work with horses, I am looking

to recognize everyone who has to deal with life under difficult

social circumstances. I also use the mule as a symbol for the

working people of my country who, thanks to their strength and

endurance, overcame a long period of violence. By dedicating

their lives to the cultivation of a variety of important crops they

have formed an industry that has helped the country avoid the re-

cultivation of cocaine to this day.

Passages 19Martha Carolina Guerrero |

Untitled #1Pyrography and embroidery on muslin cotton

30 x 50 inches2015

Passages20 | Martha Carolina Guerrero

Untitled #2Pyrography and embroidery on muslin cotton

25 x 18 inches2015

Untitled #3Pyrography and embroidery on muslin cotton

25 x 18 inches2015

Passages22

Jeannie Chatmonmart

Like a navigator, I am plotting my position at each given point over the course of time.

Like a cartographer, I am organizing and mapping out the tangled web of my thoughts.

Like a scientist, I am dissecting material and immaterial things in order to better

understand them.

I am none of these things, nor do I consider myself a writer, a poet, a professional. If

anything, I am an explorer, an amateur one even at that. And the path to understanding

myself has been one of the most undesirable passages I have ever set out on.

I want to put myself in a state of utter vulnerability, to enhance my own self-awareness

and to be pulled out of my comfort zone. I want to be read like an open book, all of my

secrets and intimate thoughts exposed—whether it is to be read by the world or no one

at all.

While translating my experience into the written word, I am also blurring the lines between

writing and mark-making. Words become illegible marks and marks present the illusion

of being decipherable. Having always floated between different lands and languages,

the action of putting pen to paper has become the way of grounding myself to one

particular place at one distinct moment in time.

jeanniechatmonmart.com

Passages 23Jeannie Chatmonmart |

two pens72” x 60”

Ballpoint pen on paper2015

Passages24 | Jeannie Chatmonmart

revision48 3/4” x 42”

Ballpoint pen on paper.2014

Passages 25Jeannie Chatmonmart |

detail

Passages26

Darryl Wawa

There is a very fun surprise that happens when I carefully look through the viewfinder

or at my images; I notice things, things I would normally not pay attention to, like the

step of a dog’s paw on the concrete floor, as he presses onward, that moment his

paw hits the floor, in a melting embrace that lets you know he feels the ground or

the laptop blasting light on my girlfriend’s oily, frustrated, face as she sits on a messy

table, how her fingers sank on the skin of her cheek like it was quick sand, or how the

older woman with the creepy smile that pushed her breasts towards the camera as

her granddaughter looked away and her friends smiled at the camera so vacantly

in front of one of those typical, bland Kendall apartment complexes, how her skin,

sagging and wrinkly, still had a glow of youth, or how my cat Maurice, when we first

moved in our current apartment, jumped on his little tower and looked around at the

chaos of bags and trash in this new space, seeming to ask himself, where am I? What

is this stuff? Photography allows me to investigate this curiosity for flesh and fur and

space and texture and color—bodies and their surroundings. My job is to describe

those things.

“description,

which lingers,

and loves for no reason.”

--Tony Hoagland

Passages 27Darryl Wawa |

UntitledDigital print

22 x 17 inches2015

Passages28

Pedro Perez

I feel that the processes, pieces, parts, and points of any creative attempt become

hidden with the focus being shifted to the contemplation of a final product. This

space between the start and the potential finish can be become invisible, just like the

electricity powering a fan. One experiences the function of the fan and the air, but

forgets the marvel of an electrical current that is allowing it to exist. By revealing the

process one can see each point or part as its own current.

pedro-perez-qwjt.squarespace.com

Passages 29Pedro Perrez |

Orange ScaffoldDigital Still of Digital Capture of Sculpture

2015

Passages30 | Pedro Perrez

Fractured Metallic Landscape Digital Still of Digital Capture of Environment

2015

Passages 31Pedro Perrez |

2 Digital IslandsDigital Still of Digital Capture of Sculpture

2015

Passages32

Gonzalo Núñez Galetto

In a field of light

absorbed

suspended

the permeability of matter

on trajectory transparent.

Nature, intention

vibrancy,

Interaction

stills experience.

Passages 33Gonzalo Núñez Galetto |

Untitled #6Acrylic and Oil on Panel

16.5 x 15.5 inches2015

Passages34

Juan Neira

I am interested in collapsing the space between the illusionism of painting and the

objectness of sculpture. By sanding coats of black paint from a white gessoed surface,

a resulting grey tonality reveals the structural support through a process of brute, yet

meticulous mark-making. I use the elements that are commonly understood to make

up a canvas as tools to create a state of ambiguity; a new reality where seemingly

opposing notions can coexist.

neiraj.com

Passages 35Juan Neira |

Untitled 14Sanded paint on canvas

100 x 62 inches2015

Passages36 | Juan Neira

Untitled 13Sanded paint on canvas

51 x 40 inches2015

SPECIAL THANKS TO

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