Alumnus Mathieu Grenier (MFA Studio Art, 2020) has been selected as one of four fellows for this year’s AAF/Seebacher Prize for Fine Arts. The fellowship recipients study at the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts Salzburg in Austria with well-known and highly respected artists, curators and art critics from around the world. The fellowship offers the opportunity to be immersed within a European contemporary art scene, apart from their U.S. academic environment.
Since his graduation, Grenier has exhibited his work in several solo and group exhibitions, including a current exhibition curated by Elisa Guitérrez Eriksen titled Screen Fade at Blouin|Division, Montreal. This new exhibition examines the apparatus of image-making, drawing unlikely parallels between cyanotypes, with their rudimentary single exposures, and contemporary screens, with their endless available content. The works explore the rapport that humans have with electronic displays, and reconfigures the relationship by focusing on the experience of forms and the physical implications of our interaction with these objects.
The pieces presented in Screen Fade stem from Grenier’s residency at the NARS Foundation (Brooklyn, New York) in the fall of 2020, and from the discovery of a small TV repair shop a few blocks from his studio named Rafi’s TV. There, the artist sourced a series of discarded monitors, repurposing them into what would become the two bodies of work exhibited. Screen Fade is on view May 29 – July 17, 2021.
The UMFLAUF Prize Expanded is a juried solo exhibition awarded to an emerging artist in any media from the Greater Austin area, and was organized by the UMLAUF to address Austin’s ongoing need for emerging artist support. In addition to providing a professional venue for regional emerging artists, the UMLAUF Prize Expanded is awarded to artists who investigate themes most pertinent in contemporary art.
The UMLAUF is proud to announce Ling-lin Ku as the winner of the UMLAUF Prize Expanded. Ling-lin uses digital fabrication techniques to play with scale, proximity, and textures of everyday items. The objects in her installations evade categorization, thereby upending our relationship to the known.
Ling-lin received her BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2016, and her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin this year. In addition to her art education, Ling-lin has a background in music and law. Her work has been exhibited nationally, and she has been the recipient of such residencies and awards as the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) in Brooklyn, Haystack Open Studio, Maine, and the Seebacher Prize for Fine Arts, awarded by the American Austrian Foundation.
