January 2010

 YOUNG VISIONARIES EXHIBIT

On Friday, February 5th, the DIVA Center will proudly present Young Visionaries, an interdisciplinary exhibition that will introduce the Eugene-Springfield area to the work of 12 extremely promising emerging artists from across the country. 

We are very excited about the opportunity that this show will provide for art lovers in our region to experience some of the most distinctive contemporary art being produced today.  

We sincerely hope the body of work presented in Young Visionaries will serve to expand and enhance the on-going dialogue about contemporary visual arts in our community and beyond.

None of the participating artists have ever before shown at DIVA, and the vast majority will be making their Eugene debuts from the East Coast, Midwest, Portland, San Francisco, and Canada.

The exhibit Opens Friday February 5th and continues through March. Admission is free but donations are welcomed. Gallery hours: Noon to 5:00PM Monday through Saturday.

Participating Artists:

Kristin Beaver:  Kristin Beaver is an artist from Illinois currently residing in Detroit.  She creates wonderfully traditional oil paintings that are also, somehow, not.  Her work is a contemporary re-imagining of the portraiture of Sargeant, Whistler, Henri, Glackens, et al.  As a painter she is powerful, and her sometimes awkwardly posed subjects reflect that power.   

Kristin received her MFA from Wayne State University, and has since shown with the likes of Bo Bartlett, Fernando Botero, John Chamberlain, Eric Fischl, David Hockney, Alex Katz, Robert Longo, Kim McCarty, and the Andy Warhol estate.  Her recent solo exhibition at the David Klein Gallery was met with acclaim.  She is a 2009 recipient of the Kresge Artist Fellowship.

Joshua Newth: Joshua Newth is a Canadian with an American citizenship, born in Toronto and currently residing in Michigan.  He creates brilliant, delicate drawings that illustrate not only mankind’s capacity for destruction, but also the inherent possibility of its redemption.  The drawings are totems executed on crumbling paper—for when eventually the substrate disintegrates, so too will its contents—a symbolic erasure of mankind’s capacity for its own undoing.

Josh received his MFA from Wayne State University, and has spent the last few years showing regionally throughout the Detroit Area.  He most recently participated in It’s Not Perfect…But We Try at WORK: Detroit, a University of Michigan gallery space; and Undomesticated at Plan B Gallery in Plymouth, of which he is the co-director.  He teaches drawing and painting at Wayne State University, Schoolcraft College, and Oakland University.

Nicholas Jones: Nicholas Jones is generally not to be found.  He creates wonderful paintings that illustrate the transient nature of time and existence in general.  Repetitive and brightly colored, they provide an almost meditative space in which viewers can find themselves lost.              

Nick received his MFA from Wayne State University.  The recent months have found him designing the Glass Rock LP cover for Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace Records, and participating in Undomesticated at Plan B Gallery in Plymouth.

Daniel Sperry: Danny Sperry is an artist and musician residing in the Mexicantown area of Southwest Detroit.  Danny makes jokes.  His work, frequently prefabricated and covering all media, uses a wry, but generous sense of humor to illustrate what it means to be human when there is so little one can control.  Operating on a micro level, Danny’s work frequently depicts tiny defeats wrought by entropy, and the equally small, temporary victories eked out by man as he uses his limited means to make his space / life better, more successful.  Sometimes, though, a joke is just a joke.

Danny plays in the Child Bite, who just released a series of split 7-inches.  They are awesome.  His artwork was most recently featured in It’s Not Perfect…But We Try at WORK: Detroit.  He currently lives next to Wolf Eyes’ practice space.

That Evil Mess: That Evil Mess is an art and design collective of heavy-metal-loving contributors located in the United States, Canada and Norway.  Operating anonymously, its members promote the aesthetics that arise out of entropy; address the positive visual and psychological aspects that result from the faults, follies, and failings of the urban landscape; and use archival theory to identify and catalog “unofficial” spiritual practices and odd interconnections in society. 

Kassie Teng: Kassie Teng is an artist and educator living in Massachusetts.   Her work references the very act of drawing, which is manifested in relatively large, site-specific works on paper.  Her works are lyrical abstractions that embody the raw appeal of drawing’s pure physicality.

Kassie received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Her work was recently seen in the solo exhibition, Drawings, at the Dana Hall Art Gallery in Wellesley, MA.

Drew Iwaniw:  Drew Iwaniw is an artist and printmaker from Tillamook, OR.  His printmaking is exciting and inventive, a rallying call against the staid technicians frequently jockeying for position in print shops around the country. 

Drew Iwaniw was born and raised in the coastal forests of Oregon. He received his BFA with a concentration in Printmaking from Oregon State University in 2004 where he studied with Yuji Hiratsuka.  Drew attended graduate school at the University of Wisconsin in Madison where he received his MA in 2007 and his MFA in 2008.

Chris Knight: Chris Knight is an artist living in Portland, OR.  His paintings are beautifully dream-like narratives that seem to long for an ideal past that may or may not have ever existed.  His work seems to evoke past masters of commercial illustration and design—without being beholden to them—while adapting all that was great about their work in such a way as to be relevant to contemporary art today.  This is no small feat. 

Chris Knight holds an MFA in painting from the University of Wisconsin—Madison and was the recipient of the 2007 WK Rose Fellowship in the Creative Arts and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant.  He currently teaches painting at Portland Community College and Oregon College of Art and Craft.

Liam Devowski: Liam Devowski is and artist and graphic designer living in San Francisco, California.  Liam’s work straddles the worlds of fine art and graphic design, referencing both, and refusing to make distinctions between the two.  His work, sometimes referencing the self-help books of the Seventies, is warm and giving, funny and kind.

Liam is the head honcho of Teenagers in Love (a clothing company), and the creative director of Neon Gray (a multidiscipline art / design kinship focusing on typography, photography, print, packaging, tactile design, and art direction).  He previously worked for Receiver Design and Giant Robot.