Rochester Art Center presents Lamar Peterson: Suburbia Sublime, the first survey exhibition of his work that includes painting, collage, drawing, and a newly commissioned outdoor sculpture. For over a decade, Peterson lived and worked in Brooklyn and relocated to Minneapolis in 2011. This exhibition is a comprehensive overview of the artist’s career since he completed graduate school in 2001 and considers the vibrant painted images that poignantly examine American middle-class culture through a re-contextualization of both historical and contemporary racial stereotypes. With adroit handling of ink, gouache, acrylic, and oil paint, a distinctive color palette combined with surface treatment ranging from the super flat and hard edge to expressive and loose brush, Peterson confronts black expression, iconic and non-iconic representation of American masculinity, and the incongruity of all.

Kelsey Olson produces photographs that utilize a wide array of technical processes, from traditional darkroom techniques to the physical altering and manipulation of the photographic paper itself. Taken as an installation, these works are viewed in multiple arrangements, from standard framing to free standing structures that permit the viewing from multiple perspectives. Three-dimensional works are also created, further challenging the notion of the photographic object. She has previously exhibited at Party at My Parents’ House in Prior Lake, MN in 2011 and GAS Gallery in Minneapolis in 2013.

Rochester Art Center is eager to launch our new Teens As Curators Series—an exhibition program that is dedicated to promising young curators and artists working and living in the state of Minnesota. Pamala Pater is our inaugural Teen Curator to kick off this exciting new program. Currently Pamala is a student at Triton High School in Dodge Center and is enrolled in PSEO (Post Secondary) program at RCTC. The Teens as Curators program offers a unique and educational experience for young curators and artists to exhibit their work in a world class art institution.

Max Menning is a printmaker with an affinity for carving wood. Favoring reductive methods, he is intrigued with the rendering of light and transparency through a binary lens: subtracting from a plane to produce at times an illusory myriad of monochromatic values. He finds the medium engaging because of limitations it imposes on the creation of an image, as the grain direction and density somewhat determine its physical integrity. The consideration only of what will and will not transfer ink isolates an exploration of shape, space, and orientation in a manner different from those of more forgiving additive methods. Menning’s process of staging values creates a kind of topography, which parallels his artwork as an exploration of the ordered environment, regarding both human civilizing forces and a greater ecological reality that we’ve yet to fully comprehend. He finds himself caught between considerations of individuality and a calculating brutality, inspired by a wilderness imputed to value only action. His work in this exhibition includes illustrations on wood that illuminate his planning process.

Rochester Art Center is thrilled to conclude the RAC² 2013 – 2014 season with the wildly imaginative work of Rochester artist Jennalee Grassle Whiting. Addressing the sometimes stifled imagination of adults, Whiting creates highly detailed illustrations of friendly animals, child-like characters, and the female figure with more than a touch of whimsy. The bold color palette and intricate details in her work open your mind to a world of enchantment. Always Ever, Never After is Whiting’s first solo exhibition and will include a collection of drawings and paintings, sculpture, and a site-specific mural in the gallery.

Rochester Art Center is pleased to kick off another season of its RAC² exhibition series, showcasing the diverse artistic talent from Rochester and the surrounding area. We are thrilled to begin with Andrea Grimm’s installation, Colossal Wood Pile on view September 11 – November 2, 2014. Colossal Wood Pile is an ambitious installation made entirely by the artist collecting different species of felled regional trees, cutting them to a specific size, and applying a precise color system of paint to a ring on each individual log that corresponds to an artist derived color chart that charts a story about the life of and ultimate demise of each tree. The project evokes notions of spirituality, temporality, and subtly refers to the storied lineage of the land art movement started in the 1960s.

Jon Allen and Tom Erickson make their collaborative debut with an exhibition of newly created video and drawing that envisages a constructed route around Rochester.

David Andree’s practice continues the conversation of artistic tradition as it relates to the notion of landscape. Through the use of painting, drawing, sculpture, video, and sound, Andree’s interdisciplinary approach to art making originates from the desire to investigate the concept of locating one’s self within the constant flux of landscape through multiple sensory experiences. His work is created in the field utilizing a wide array of media responding to the changing qualities of geography, topography, and explorations of place.

Joel Jannetto’s paintings are orchestrated messes of color, line, and texture—highly original studies of the basic elements of 2D design. He balances busy, textured areas with flat sections of color and negative space, thus scattering manic clusters of scribbled lines throughout the picture plane. The subjects that appear in the work (strange atypical figures and other oddities) are a sum of visible, unblended forms. Multiple layers of media add to their physical and visual depth. The paintings, once finished, are spectacular alien environments.

For the first 3rd Floor Emerging Artist Series exhibition of 2014, Minneapolis-based artist Jonathan Kaiser will transform the RAC Atrium Gallery with a site-specific installation titled Blind Arcade. Utilizing the long, narrow configuration of the space, Kaiser will construct a series of wooden arch structures that both physically and visually suggest a corridor within a corridor. These arches will become proportionally smaller as the corridor progresses directionally east, tapering toward a false vanishing point, and creating an illusion of distance to the viewer just entering the space. Throughout the gallery, a haphazard collection of small, improvised sculptures and found objects will be also be situated—objects informed by Kaiser’s research of classical architecture combined with fragments of everyday contemporary detritus.

Teaki Garcia’s exhibition, Urheimat, refers to the geographical origin of a language. Garcia’s work acts as a visualization of language very particular to Rochester, specifically Mayowood, and explores how the experience of growing up in proximity to the Mayo Brothers’ property influenced her life as an artist.

Crist Dahl uses photography, video, and mixed media to understand complex relationships between memory, distance, and personal events that take place over the course of generations. In his images, through a physical deterioration of various media, he veils past moments to create a layered ambiguity. His newly created narrative erodes through time with the inaccuracies and subjectivity of memory. In the end, the work, like memories, are new entities onto themselves; a manifestation of the present, real and flawed.