UC Davis MFA Alumni Exhibitions: (This is Not a) Love Song and Windows

Verge Center for the Arts is pleased to announce the last installment of UC Davis MFA alumni exhibitions, Windows by Mathew Zefeldt and (This is Not a) Love Song by Elisabeth Higgins O’Connor. These exhibits are held in collaboration with the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art.

These exhibitions are the final two installments of four shows being held in celebration of the partnership between Verge Center for the Arts and the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis. Verge, in collaboration with Bay Area artist and UC Davis alumna Lisa Rybovich Crallé, is curating the festivities for the grand opening weekend of the Manetti Shrem.

Windows is a solo exhibition by Minneapolis artist, Mathew Zefeldt. Zefeldt’s paintings are influenced by the multi-tasking nature and imagery of contemporary culture. Paintings within paintings allude to society’s preoccupation with juggling several realities at once, such as having many browser windows open on a computer desktop, or the “picture in picture” feature on televisions. With repeating objects, Zefeldt points to the speed and ease in which one can clone images with Adobe Photoshop; however, each of his hand painted objects reveal the unique flaws that are made with a human hand.

(This is Not a) Love Song is by Sacramento-based artist, Elisabeth Higgins O’Connor. O’Connor’s colossal sculptures are created from quilts, bed sheets, and various domestic textiles that are layered onto armatures. The results are creatures that are reminiscent of well-loved stuffed animals, yet monstrous due to its size. Each sculpture elicits a certain pathos, with an expression that often straddles two opposite states such as tender and grotesque, light and dark, or sweet and horrific, connecting them to viewers through emotion and physicality.

At the artist reception on Thursday, September 8, enjoy drinks, music by DJ MC Ham, and food by North Bord. There will also an artist talk on Thursday, September 29,