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Space 204 welcomes alumni and new exhibit in January

Posted by on Thursday, January 3, 2019 in News and Events.

The Vanderbilt Department of Art is pleased to welcome back Conor De Mari (Bloomer), the 2017 recipient of the Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award. Conor graduated with a B.A. in Studio Arts. Conor’s exhibition is the final component of the travel grant. He has spent the last year and half traveling and creating in preparation for his return to Nashville and the Vanderbilt campus.

My Brother’s Favorite View opens on Thursday, January 10, 2019 with a reception beginning at 4:00 PM in the E. Bronson Ingram Studio Arts Center (1204 25th Avenue South).  The exhibition will be on view from January 10 to January 31, 2019. Gallery hours are Monday thru Friday, 10am to 4pm.

About the artist:

Conor De Mari (b. 1994, Boston, MA) is a New York-based collaborative artist. With a singular focus on the development and refinement of critical thought and self-reflection, Conor is intent on understanding how and why with long-term goals of large-scale pragmatic problem solving. Conor maintains few close relationships, through which he defines his ‘self.’ As such, he works exclusively within collaborative contexts, creating across a wide range of disciplines and media. My Brother’s Favorite View was devised in collaboration with Wens Ostasenko, Isaac Levien and Nathan Savoy.

Having been raised in both the historic suburb of Lexington, Massachusetts and the coastal Puerto Rican town of Cerro Gordo, Conor decided to use the award to explore his heritage and history. Upon graduation, Conor returned to Puerto Rico, working closely with artists and thinkers on the island before tracing his roots to the Mediterranean and, ultimately, back to New England.

About the exhibition:

My Brother’s Favorite View is a contemplative multimedia installation intended to invite audience members inside the childhood contexts of its creators; to invite you to share in the space we savor; to accompany our company; to spend a moment in private consideration with our presence and your own.

More than a reflection of bittersweet celebration or triumphant return, My Brother’s Favorite View is a space to actively confront the complexity of deliberate human presence — and its absence— without being asked to abandon the strange joy, wandering thoughts, or cognitive dissonance which guides us (through each other) toward unforeseen growth.

Exhibition collaborators:

Wens Ostasenko is a Parisian composer, producer, and opera singer, as well as a recent graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music.

Isaac Levien is a New York-based jazz bassist and composer who recently received his Masters in Jazz Performance from the Berklee Global Jazz Institute.

Nathan Savoy is a poet, comedian, and game designer currently pursuing a Masters in Interdisciplinary Studies at New York University’s Center for Experimental Humanities.

A special thanks to David Adewumi, James Mentz, Aidan O’Connell, Jacob Paulson, and Dan Schlosser for their continued support throughout this project.

Download the PR materials here:
Poster
PR release