Isa Newby Gagarin: Sea of Fecundity
3rd Floor Emerging Artist Series
September 24 – November 13, 2011
Atrium Gallery
Opening reception: Saturday, September 24
The title of the exhibition, Sea of Fecundity, takes its name from a mare, or lunar sea, located on the moon. Fecundity has a number of meanings, the foremost being a biological term—the capacity to reproduce. It can also refer to intellectual productivity and creative imagination. The exhibition operates as a proposal for a book designed to be added to the "Dead Sea Library”, an imaginary bookshelf conceived by the artist. This library is hypothetically located on the shores of the Dead Sea, lying between Israel and Jordan. People visiting the Dead Sea could select a book off the shelf and read it while floating on their backs in the water.
The focus on the lunar landscape and the moon itself relates to the artists’ research surrounding Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet cosmonaut and the first human to travel into space. Sharing the same last name offered the artist an opening for the development of a personal history connected to this particular narrative. The forty blue panels included in the exhibition each contain a painted circle, with a representation of the moon and various photographic reproductions under glass. These photographs, sourced from National Geographic magazine, join with the repeated image of the moon and become both rhythmic and repetitive. Effectively acting as stills from a film, the sequence possesses a cinematic quality, an echo of circles and images forming a sculptural short film as the viewer walks past. These images depict three distinct situations—a six-year-old girl from New Guinea slaughtering a pig; men adoring themselves before a ceremony using a mirror with an image of Elizabeth Taylor on its reverse, and a collage created by the artist depicting a woman looking over a balcony at the sea.
Artist Biography
Originally from Mililani, Hawai'i, Isa Newby Gagarin currently lives and works in Minneapolis, MN. Her work has been exhibited at Art of This (Minneapolis, MN); Midway Contemporary Art (Minneapolis, MN); The Soap Factory (Minneapolis, MN); and Synchronicity (Los Angeles, CA). She has participated in projects at artist-run spaces in Minneapolis, including: Dressing Room, They Won’t Find Us Here, 1419, SELLOUT, Plateau, Gallery 100, Sound Gallery, Joe’s Chicken Shack and SELTZER. Gagarin earned her BFA in Painting from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2008. She has also produced a number of artist books, including projects published by Location, Hot Off The, Art of This, and Dressing Room. For additional information, please visit: http://isagagarin.com
3rd Floor Emerging Artist Series
Rochester Art Center continually strives to engage community members of all ages in the creation, contemplation, and appreciation of the visual arts. As a non-collecting institution, the Art Center focuses it efforts on presenting temporary exhibitions throughout the year featuring established local, national and international artists, as well as emerging artists from diverse backgrounds working in a variety of media.
In 2004, Rochester Art Center initiated the 3rd Floor Emerging Artist Series—an exhibition program dedicated to promising young artists working in the state of Minnesota. Since its inception, the series has reflected shifting trends in contemporary artistic practice and production, and has helped to facilitate the creation of new bodies of work in a variety of media including photography, installation, sound, painting, drawing, sculpture and film. Now entering our sixth year, the 3rd Floor Emerging Artist Series continues to support emerging artists and to provide a dedicated forum for the exhibition of exciting new work.
The 3rd Floor Emerging Artist Series is made possible through funding by The Jerome Foundation.