Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition
November 5 - 17, 2016
Artists featured: Ariana Kolins, Emily Quinn, Roberta Restaino, Kim Shively.
Ariana Kolins’ socially-engaged practice examines community exchange, emotional labor, and representation. Through collecting mundane objects and enacting repetitive gestures, she records her experiences and questions the function of the archive, while advancing a convivial and laborious program. Emily Quinn’s large-scale paintings interiorizes the fragility of domestic spaces. She uses muted colors and elevated vantage points, highlighting the indeterminable threshold between security and uncertainty. Roberta Restaino works at the intersection of printmaking and ceramics. Extracting subtleties from the biological world, her investigation of the natural world can be characterized as aesthetic and ontological. Kim Shively explores Denver’s gentrification at its most poignant—in real time, we see residents who are “not ready,” setting the stage for one “last party.” Through hand-drawn maps and nametags, Shively orients us to those who have no choice but to “ride it out,” offering a dystopian collage of Denver’s past, present, and future.
—Carrie Miller, Alexander Penn, and Sara Sisun