Over the last four weeks, I daydreamed about my final post for my contribution to Art21 Blog’s Open Enrollment column. Since January, my final semester at San Francisco Art Institute had taken a darker, more socially and politically relevant turn with my interest in American cults and hate groups like the KKK and Westboro Baptist Church. My personal on-going artistic endeavor of a secret brotherhood known as the Society of 23 went from a philanthropic supporter of fine arts to a mischievous band of misfits. I found myself ironically using the rhetoric of hate to continue my wild obsession and addiction to contemporary art.
In those terms, I only thought it appropriate to ironically trash this year’s SFAI MFA graduate exhibition for my final blog post. I wanted to share some images of my classmates’ artworks while complimenting it with such poor reviews that you would feel compelled to investigate my claims and visit their websites. From my research as a hater, I find that the more you hate something, the more other people want to know why. It’s the best PR ever! I wanted to pull out classic texts from Plato, Greenberg, Adorno, Smith, and Saltz and maneuver a fancy critical analysis that dangerously went where no review of a graduate show had gone before. But, like any good life lived as a dérive, something can happen overnight and change everything.
I’ve learned that irony is a wonderful strategy for communication in this age of Facebook – the other is secrecy. As a brother of the Society of 23, I’ve had to keep a lot of secrets. It’s nice to quietly giggle to myself when others want to know something that I’m not at liberty to say. So in those terms, I’d like to share a handful of artwork from the 72 newly-crowned SFAI MFA students sans my personal thoughts. Love it or hate it, this is the stuff that grad school’s made of…
Daniel Samaniego
Daniel Samaniego
Walt Ohnesorge-fick
Walt Ohnesorge-fick
Hadass Gerson
Hadass Gerson
Renée Rhodes
Renée Rhodes
Adrianne Rubenstein
Adrianne Rubenstein
Yael Zaken
Yael Zaken
Massimo Pacchione
Massimo Pacchione
John-Mark Ikeda
John-Mark Ikeda
John David Lopez
John David Lopez
Mick Lorusso
Mick Lorusso
Roby Saavedra
Roby Saavedra
Jeffrey Augustine Songco
Jeffrey Augustine Songco
And there you have it! Two years of graduate school went by faster than it took to de-install my work from the MFA show. Whether it was ironic or super secret, I did pretty much everything and anything I could get away with at school. Not only did I curate two group shows but I protested two, too. Getting an MFA is so silly, isn’t it? Thank god the Art21 Blog was there for me to write about the whole thing! Now go back and reread all my posts – it’ll either be the best promotion for higher education or the best deterrent from wasting the most formidable years of your life. Good luck in all your endeavors, and no matter what, have fun with what you do – and don’t forget to blog about it!
