ELEMENTAL EXCHANGE is part of the thesis exhibitions and events produced by members of the MFA Art Practice class of 2014 at the School of Visual Arts.

Elemental Exchange - Ten different artists explore ideas of desire, fetish, and identity, creating a collective nakedness and vulnerability.
Curated by Rosanna Scimeca and Alan Aviel.

ALANA AVIEL is a New-York based artist whose body of work reflects the intersection of analog and digital, drawing on her traditional training in the design methods of architecture and respect for the dynamic visual aspects of film. http://www.alanaaviel.com/

ASIF MIAN is a Brooklyn based artist and filmmaker.
His work in sculpture, drawing and video is the exploration into violence, social genetics and morality in American culture. www.cargocollective.com/asifmian

KENDALLE FIASCO is an artist, semiotech, and cultural theorist who lives and works in Brooklyn. kendallefiasco.com

NAT CASTAÑEDA is a New York based multidisciplinary artist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, U.S. World and News Report, NY Daily News and USA Today. http://www.natcastaneda.com/

ROSANNA SCIMECA works with durable industrial materials, contrasted with delicate and ephemeral biomaterials, as well as fashion and architecture to create large-scale installations. Through personal and collected experiences, her work explores experiences of gender, power and fetish as a way of considering shadow aspects of the individual and the collective. She lives and works in Brooklyn. www.rosannascimeca.com

JOSH KIL is an artist of many media, including but not limited to sculpture, painting, photography, installation, and performance. His current work focuses on the nature of meaning. Presumably, form came before meaning, and most of what we call “meaning” is actually correspondences, attributions, or substitutes—it is the nature of the human mind to abbreviate experiences and surroundings in order to more quickly and effectively process one’s environment. Further inquiry into these symbols and their meanings eventually leads to such deceptively simple and dense questions as Alan Watt’s: “What does a cloud mean?” Kil’s current work incorporates symbols and archetypes, especially pulled from the Occult and the Tarot, to call attention to these attributions we automatically and unconsciously assign to the symbols, abstract and concrete, that make up our environment. Through these means he hopes to find what Julia Kristeva calls “the place where meaning collapses” (“Approaching Abjection”, Powers of Horror); where meaning reenters the world as pure form, composed and comprised of the echoes of symbols and signifiers. This pure form is analogous to our inability to experience objective reality.
www.joshkil.com
www.joshkil.tumblr.com

EDUARDO CUNHA Portuguese by birth Eduardo Cunha's work retains a clear imprint of his Portuguese-American experience. Mostly influenced by the “quiet” narratives between two cultures, his work explores concepts of heteronyms and identity. Cunha finds logic in merging parallels between people, objects and their stories. The depictions in his works are overtly autobiographical with incomplete story lines that appear to be important, but can't fully be comprehended. He calls on the viewer to complete the open-ended narrative or form a conclusion with what is seen.

Cunha believes that painting, sculpting and the explorations of various mediums are a way of sharing universal similarities. As an immigrant his work can offer a perspective that is inherently unique.

DOROTHY TROJANOWSKI implements found objects and materials, elevating their existing meaning, enhancing the power of the ordinary.

These photographs for this show were discovered in a discarded trunk in detroit… a family heirloom of no names, dates or clues to their past, and quite possibly the remnants of a generational line that naturally may have ended.

Placing these images behind materials that build homes, (in which these photos were once, probably, prominently displayed) covered over by layers of vacuum dust, new walls, and more remnants of human existence. Excavated-these photos act as the bones of today, these images are OUR family, relationships irrelevant.… we build upon what they've left behind.

Dorothy is currently thriving through the kindness of her friends and family, couch surfing through out the tri-state area. Intermittently, working on a house in Detroit, MI.
www.rubberhorses.com