Ava Ravich
Frances Cocksedge
Ira Dae Young Kim
A+RT
Groundfloor Gallery
343 5th St., Brooklyn, NY
April 3rd, 2015 6-10pm
Frances Cocksedge, Ira Dae Young Kim. Matthew Lafferty, Ava Ravich, Oskar Russakis
Today’s culture commends the unique, endorses the outrageous, and applauds the defiant. In many ways, being as “specifically yourself” as possible is your most reliable ticket to success, whatever that means. However, college education is deemed a crucial step in society’s stairway to accomplishment—a setting that in many ways conflicts with idiosyncratic development. This tension is particularly relevant for the evolving artist whose recognition depends almost entirely on creating a body of work that is confidently unique and new: something that cannot be taught in a classroom, and will be completely different for each individual.
How do you develop and maintain your personal voice and method when producing from a uniform setting with a standardized grading system? How do you return to producing work exclusively for your own agenda afterwards? A+rt, a pop-up exhibition curated by Frances Cocksedge and Ava Ravich, is an attempt to reconcile this discrepancy by examining the diverse artistic styles and varied collegiate experiences of 5 emerging artists.