October 29, 2015 – January 24, 2016

Michelle Fagan started her abstract macro photography practice as a personal project in 2010. Fagan’s large format giclée prints on canvas are hyper-magnified portraits of the interiors and details of flowers. At first glance viewers often interpret her prints as paintings, as lines fall out of focus and colors blend and blur, allowing a painterly dance to unfold across each canvas.

February 27, 2015 - APRIL 26, 2015

Jennifer Nevitt’s installations, paintings, and sculpture refer both directly and indirectly to the spaces we occupy, both physically and psychologically. Utilizing common materials related to these environments, her work is concerned with the temporal nature of the body and the notion of acting an as ever-changing vessel.

June, 2015 – September, 2017

RAC is proud to announce the installation of Burnt Matchstick, a newly commissioned large-scaled sculpture by artist Karl Unnasch, beautifully installed in the Remick Sculpture Garden. This work, resembling a burnt matchstick, is constructed of welded steel and colored glass and is illuminated from within with a solid state LED system, making it visible at night from many viewing perspectives. Standing 40 feet tall, this work represents many things to Unnasch—evidence of an impactful event, fire as a metaphor for both saving and taking life, and the physical relationship to the human figure. This artwork will be a colorful incorporation into a city with few established large public works.

April 30, 2015 - June 07, 2015

Matt Winkler explores art-making using various materials and methods—such as drawing, cut paper, paint, photography, and collage—in an attempt to represent the experience of place. Based on images and drawings of his surrounding landscapes, both rural and urban, Winkler incorporates multiple layers of imagery and material and often combines meticulously detailed handdrawn or painted images with faster, more intuitive processes. Winkler is interested in exploring how landscape and place may be represented within the field of contemporary drawing and painting.

March 11, 2015 - March 20, 2015

“Surviving Tsunami Waves: the Exhibition of Resilience through Arts and Narrative,” sponsored by Mayo Clinic Dolores Jean Lavins Center for Humanities in Medicine, Rochester Art Center (RAC) and University of Minnesota Rochester (UMR) will be held from March 11-20, 2015. This event explores how resilience and healing are connected to arts and narrative and community engagement.

October 26, 2015 – January 3, 2016

These works are the result of collaborative, small-group painting exercises with 1st and 2nd graders enrolled in Session 1 of Rochester Art Center’s Total Arts Day Camp, which took place June 15 – 26, 2015.

March 05, 2015 - April 19, 2015

Chris Rackley’s studio practice includes drawing, painting, and video making. Recently Rackley has been interested in building contraptions that generate live video of fictional astronomical objects. These contraptions consist of televisions connected to small cameras that are accompanied by mixed media sculptural arrangements, establishing dynamic relationships between two-dimensional moving images and three-dimensional structures. In this on-going series, Rackley explores the disjointed relationship between observation and knowledge in regards to attempts to understand fundamental reality. Inspired in equal parts by particle physics research, science fiction tropes, and filmmaking strategies, Rackley’s video sculpture generates an experience of looking and connecting disparate parts through two distinct medias, unified here.

October 2, 2015 – January 3, 2016

The exhibition Existential Crisis showcases the captivating filmography of contemporary filmmaker Akosua Adoma Owusu. This presentation will include five films of varying lengths, which subtly weave together fiction, parable, and autobiographical experiences. These works embody the artist’s response to popular culture, tensions evolving from the African diaspora and dispersion of cultural tradition, while recapitulating methods of traditional storytelling.

February 27, 2015 - June 07, 2015

Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck’s mixed media installations explore the mingled effects of cultural diplomacy, government propaganda and corporate advertising strategies. Drawing from a multitude of sources, the artist embarks on a global dérive to tease out public secrets and recontextualize them in the contemporary moment. For this exhibition, Balteo Yazbeck and Farzin present work from four sprawling series– Cultural Diplomacy: An Art We Neglect, (2007-2013), Modern Entanglements, U.S. Interventions (2006-2015), Chronoscope, (2009-2015), and Israeli Nuclear Arsenal, (2004-2013).

July 20, 2015 - October 13, 2015

Nicole Havekost (b. 1970) is an artist living in Rochester, Minnesota. Her own work is varied in media and technique, but linked by her interest in material and process. Her work has a delicate and feminine quality, but one that is driven by her particular obsessions. Recently, Nicole was a fiscal year 2013 recipient of an Artist Initiative Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. She spent the month of June as an artist-in-residence at Starry Night Retreat in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. She recently exhibited work in both Washington state and Maryland, as well as in Minneapolis. Nicole earned her BFA in Printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA in Printmaking from the University of New Mexico.

January 08, 2015 - February 22, 2015

Kjellgren Alkire creates interdisciplinary work that considers multiple binaries located in doubt and certainty, language and its failure; individual and collective politics; and agriculture and its various subcultures. Using critique, and his own body, he deconstructs masculine archetypes in film and in live performances before an audience. In his performances Alkire pairs male characters with text, graphics, and installation to simultaneously interrogate and celebrate subcultural production of identity and mythology. For his exhibition Long Haul Alkire will create a site-specific installation and performance that will utilize the architectural space in and around Rochester Art Center. The gallery will function both as a stage for the artist’s performance and act as an exhibition space containing photographic and sculptural work that define Alkire’s fictional environment.

December 10, 2015 – February 7, 2016

Exploring both an individual and cultural fascination with natural disasters, artist Chad Rutter sources images of floods, landslides, and other natural phenomena online. Digitally altering and removing some of the visual content, Rutter creates hand-drawn landscapes by projecting these digitally-processed images onto paper. Addressing how the media’s propagation of repetitive, sensationalist streams of photos and coverage enables rapid, detached consumption, Rutter’s drawings intentionally obscure this familiar visual information—deliberate exercises in slowing down the experience of viewing these images.