Fashioned

Fashioned + Curated by George Slade:
Linda Brooks, Michael Dvorak, Martine Fougeron, Nick Kline, Jessica Rowe, Ryan Wong

May 3 to July 13, 2008

Related Events

Opening Reception: Saturday, May 3
5:30 p.m. Artist Panel
7 - 9 p.m. Opening Reception

MCP presents Fashioned, an examination of how fashion and identity interrelate. Do clothes make the man, or vice versa? The photographers in Fashioned make images in which costume and character weave together, posing subtle questions about the validity of first impressions, about the endurance of clothing as a marker of identity, and about the tensions that play out between one's self and one's daily appearance. Fashioned includes the work of six artists: Linda Brooks, Michael Dvorak, Martine Fougeron, Nick Kline, Jessica Rowe, and Ryan Wong.

Linda Brooks (St. Paul) has pursued a long series of straightforward, square color portraits of teens and adolescents. The images derive strength from both the ample self-possession apparent in her subjects and from the words that each has inscribed alongside themselves in the portrait.

Michael Dvorak (Minneapolis) has been working on a black-and-white portrait project in the neighborhoods near MCP in northeast Minneapolis and west from the Center, across interstate 94 on Broadway into north Minneapolis. His portraits of young people present a mix of urban and bohemian character.

Martine Fougeron (New York City) depicts the lives and milieus of her two teenage sons in her series Tete a Tete. The boys and their friends reveal surprising takes on fashion, blending prep school uniformity with thrift store chic. They also characterize themselves through their physical ease with each other.

Nick Kline (New York City), in his series Undercover, considers the fleeting nature of apparel as seen inside plastic wrap in drycleaning shops. These photographs dematerialize fashion as they zoom in on pattern and texture, rendered abstract and apart from bodies.

Jessica Rowe (Brooklyn) portrays clothes left behind by deceased women. The large color photographs in her Remnants series, identified with the name of their owner, depict apparel seemingly cast off, like a sloughed reptile's skin, onto furniture, there to be found in random shapes by the artist.

Ryan Wong (Seattle/Hong Kong) records his encounters with Chinese t-shirts (and their wearers). The slogans play with perceptions of language and culture; are these true statements, or even logical, and do they really mean what they say? How do the shirts relate to the faces they underscore?

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