Material Occupation

February 7 through April 7, 2012

The artists represented in Material Occupation challenge the idea that abstraction is a rarified concept that bears little relation to everyday experience. Using familiar patterns, structures, designs, and systems, these artists explore the cultural associations inherent in prosaic materials. Traditional art-making gestures are replaced by actions equated with manual labor, such as staining, pasting, bleaching, mending, stretching, taping, daubing, recycling, and tearing. Drawing on a wide range of materials and references, these artists apply a keen eye and a steady hand as they transform house paint, thread, old and newly woven fabric, industrial tape, and other ordinary materials into poetic abstract forms. The decorative, the contemplative, and the marginalized thus take precedence in work that proposes an alternative relationship to Modernist abstraction.

Artists include, Caetano de Almeida, Sarah Crowner, Josh Faught, Elana Herzog, Marietta Hoferer, Sam Moyer, Anja Schwörer, and Melissa Thorne.

Curator: Corinna Ripps Schaming, Associate Director/Curator, University Art Museum.
Material Occupation will be documented in a fully-illustrated catalogue with essays by Michelle Grabner and Corinna Ripps Schaming.


Sarah Crowner
Untitled, 2011
Gouache on sewn canvas
Diptych: Each panel 58 x 36 inches