Full Bleed: An MFA Exhibition

Welcome to the 2024/2025 Purchase MFA exhibition

Within this shared space, the exhibition manifests as a slashing beam of light or a solid mass of concrete, a vivid brushstroke alongside a gentle crease. There are durational projects, documentation, and moving images all occupying the white-walled container, bleeding past conventional limits, challenging the defined boundaries of societal norms and grand construction endeavors, and what these limits signify for the contained and for the defiant. Here, artists suture the realms of science and art, performance and reality, the sacred and the irreverent, navigating the intersections of indigeneity, the environment, and incursion. They invite us to immerse ourselves in this communal realm, to confront the questions they pose: Where does the boundary lie? What is its nature? Are we on the fringes? How can we push the confines of this gallery space? And ultimately, who gets to be included?

Frankie Bademci (MFA 2025 candidate) 

Can something ever truly be unfixable? Frankie Bademci’s Jaw Breaker is a three-week performance artwork discussing themes of change and reconciliation. Using concrete slabs to symbolize both body and mind, Frankie illustrates the ease of self-destruction, and the difficulty of reconstruction. Over the course of the first week, he repeatedly constructs and deconstructs the concrete slabs. Although the slabs aremade whole again, each reconstruction will never be thesame. For the last two weeks, the concrete object is displayed along a video and a fish bowl calling attention to the ubiquity of mediated human experience.

Sebastian Bass (MFA 2024 Candidate) 

Delving into portraiture and intertwining still images with documented interviews, Sebastian Bass weaves narratives of community, acceptance, and culture. Through prints and video, Bass captures moments that keep memories vivid, spotlighting the narratives of black creators. His art provides an immersive experience, shedding light on the realities of black individuals in professional and academic settings - which often are overshadowed. Bass’s portraits create lasting tributes, documenting moments and meticulous attention to craft, bringing forward the significance of keeping narratives alive across generations.

Madi Jones (MFA 2024 candidate) 

Making use of the gallery columns, Madi Jones’ has wrapped them in fabric wallpapers with imagery from natural forms found in nature and the body. Using natural dyes and within the confines of darkened spaces, she employs a cyanotype printmaking technique that allows beams of sunlight to slip through, creating unique and unexpected shapes and contours across the surfaces. The play of light and shadow temper the rigidity of the structure.

Bibi Knockers (MFA 2024 candidate)

Bibi Knockers, presents “Heart Attack Feeling”, a neo-burlesque performance that explores her experiences with culture and gender. This performance combines themes of Judaism with burlesque dance, showcasing Knockers’s personal journey.

The performance begins with BiBi in traditional Jewish attire arranging Shabbat candles. She wears clothing resonating with the past to respond to the culture today. Through the gradual shedding of clothing, she challenges societal norms while embracing her sexuality. As more of her is revealed, the importance of bodily diversity is emphasized. Her transformation concludes with a profound celebration of culture, as she becomes a living menorah.

Jody Rasch (MFA 2025 candidate)

Jody’s art invites viewers to see the ordinarily invisible, revealing the microscopic elements of our own bodies, the images radio astronomy and the workings of the sub-atomic. By marrying art with science, he paints the unseen, transforming it into abstract, yet elegant forms. His works hint at their scientific roots and with close inspection uncovers individual dots reminiscent of the starting point of each painting. Jody’s technique not only demystifies scientific concepts but also makes them aesthetically remarkable. His paintings embody countless hours of meticulous organization and selection, resulting in patterns that echo contemplative nature.

Adam Linn (MFA 2024 candidate)

Adam Linn contorts animacies of object and animal to render a space of coexisting contradictions. Using a language of cartooning and eroticism, Linn questions themes of sexuality, gender and representation within an anthropomorphic worldview. Forms and colors pulsate with exaggerated gesture, seducing access into a constantly morphing space of hyper articulation. Adam’s practice is composed of a close and intimate drawing technique combined with a looser, wet-on-wet painting process. This in between process of drawing and painting mirrors the hybridized subjects within Linn’s compositions.

Wendy Lipp (MFA 2025 candidate) 

In her paintings, Lipp brushes against realism, but ultimately reshapes it, infusing the canvas with a sense of the extraordinary. Her commitment lies in conveying an understanding that transcends recognition of the shapes depicted, inviting the viewer to engage with a deeper, more metaphysical meaning. With the vibrant energy of her brushwork and palette, Lipp aspires to spark novel lines of thinking, fostering fresh perspectives and potential for positive transformation within our collective community.

Jessica Maffia (MFA 2024 candidate) 

Jessica Maffia’s transformative, ethereal video-sculpture pays tribute to her New York roots through the use of materials sourced from the local environment, specifically earth from the Broadview construction site. Small windows into the Earth vessel offer a glimpse at shifting video projections. As the viewer steps away, the artwork takes on a new dimension with imagery of the artist walking through the sparkling waters of the Hudson River, bringing this earth sculpture to life.

Pam Panzarino (MFA 2024 candidate) 

 

Pam Panzarino crafts her ceramic art using stoneware clay, employing the coil and pinch methods to shape her creations. Her approach, while instinctual, is deeply influenced by the organic forms found in nature and the human anatomy. Through multiple firings, her pieces exhibit the beauty of decay and imperfection, resonating with the transient essence of life and the corporeal form.

Liz Pope (MFA 2025 candidate) 

Liz Pope invites the viewer to embark on a journey filled with wonder, where the familiar becomes eerily uncanny. Through the distortion of scale and perspective, she merges elements of nature into an environment that becomes unrecognizable. Liz constructs her own canvases and focuses on mixed hues of the color green. The canvas explores a space where the once familiar takes on an altered form. Invoking a sense of ambiguity, she depicts a transformative experience of self-discovery and possibly opens the mind to something extraordinary.

Mariella Lehner (exchange - Vienna Austria) 

Mariella Lehner reimagines Sir John Everett Millais’ “Ophelia” (1851-2) by showing an enlargement of her face, almost submerged in liquid and covered with lantern flies, which are considered an “invasive species” in North America. These insects symbolize the tension between intrusion and belonging, resistance and resignation, persistence and acceptance. The title suggests a state of flux, leaving it unclear whether the figure is undergoing a transformative process or facing impending demise. In their most recent works, Lehner addresses the collective grief we share over the gradual decline of our environment as we know it today-a profound sorrow that goes far beyond the mourning of an individual being.

Nena Smith (MFA 2025 candidate) 

Nena Smith is an artist contemplative about their life’s meaning and their artistic narratives as they address themes related to time before “the end of the world.” Drawn to both beauty and tragedy, Nena often portrays the nurturing bond between their mother and the children in her care. Their art, echoing a personal longing for maternal closeness absent in their own childhood photos, invites a sense of intimacy. Inspired by her mother’s work as a domestic helper, Smith uses a mirror from her home, overlaid with pastel, to depict her mother’s tenderness towards a child she cares for. By revealing the mirror beneath, Nena prompts viewers to reflect, literally and metaphorically, on their place in the story.

Leah Thornton (MFA 2024 candidate) 

Leah’s work engages with color, daily life, and disorientation. Through playful elements Leah’s work challenges the hierarchy of value and representation within the queer community. And Leah loves going on long walks. Do you like to walk? Highlighting ordinary and mundane objects she encounters walking, the found objects have a specific significance for Leah. She melds mediums (painting and photography) and concepts (reorientation and realism) to create her work.

Henriette Weber (exchange - Hamburg Germany) 

Henriette Weber’s work explores implicit power dynamics present in modern architecture, emphasizing public surveillance and deliberate design of spaces. Utilizing interactive installations, Weber brings viewers exposure to the subtle awareness of being watched. Her work comments on societal structures shaping spaces we inhabit. This is communicated through a variety of materials; ranging from folded paper to spacious installations which engage with viewers, evoking nuanced atmospheres. The subjective nature of her work invites viewers to exercise personal interpretation of the ambience created based on observation. This gives viewers an agency to derive personal meaning, which defines the artwork’s significance.

The above interpretive writings are the result of a collaborative effort undertaken by Professor Melissa Forstrom, Maass Gallery Director Greg Wharmby, and Professor Benjamin Santiago. In this (second) iteration, the collaboration is designed to connect students and build community at Purchase College and specifically in, Exhibition Practice and Management (Arts Management & Museum Studies), the Visual Arts MFA program, and Community Design (Graphic Design).

The pamphlet and all graphics associate with this exhibit are designed by: Gabriella Soares guided by Professor Santiago and aided by fellow students in the Community Design course.

Thanks to Exhibition Practice and Management  students:

Garrett Abell, Sarah Boyle, Alyssa Cascioli, Abraham Chaljub, Briana Diaz, Steven Lamy Jr., Zharia Miller, Jani M. Morales, Sofia Rishel, Quinn Russell, Silvia Velarde, Julia Viscusi

Special thanks to gallery staff and art installers at The Richard and Dolly Maass Gallery:

Garrett Abell, Emma Eager, Julia Ettkin, Eva Heisman-Gibbons, Sedejah Lance-Stewart, Me’ilani Nelson, Ava Salman