Past Residents
Past Resident2010: Foundation for a Civil Society
Dušica Dražić
Dušica Dražić works with installation, performance and photography and carries a special interest in art in public space. Focusing on the search for abandoned, forgotten spaces in the urban structure of modern cities and exploring the transformation of these spaces, she rethinks them in terms of cultural continuity, symbolic irregularities and individual actions. In Dražić’s production, concept and form are of equal importance in opening the work to multi-layered interpretations, that is, for developing new ways of seeing. Dušica Dražić explores the ambivalent interrelationship between a citizen and a city, their mutual support and protectiveness and at the same time isolation and destruction. Dražić searches for spaces without order, spaces of irregularity, difference, flexibility and intuition. Dušica’s works deal with micro-histories of a locus and are also an act of narration.
Dušica Dražić was born in 1979 in Belgrade, Serbia, where she currently lives and works. She graduated from the faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade in 2004, and finished an MFA in Public Art and New Artistic Strategies at the Bauhaus University Weimar in 2006. Since 2006 Dušica Dražić is also a part of the collective “usually4” with K. Freino (PL), S. Hopkins (UK/KEN) and Teresa Luzio (P). In 2010 Dražić received the Dimitrije Bašičević Mangelos Award (Serbia) and the Young European Artist Trieste Contemporanea Award (Italy) and was granted a DAAD scholarship in 2005/2006.
Events & Exhibitions
The Power to Host
June 15–July 29, 2011
Dušica Dražić, Dead-End Street, 2009, Installation, Dimension variable. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by K. Freino.
Dušica Dražić, The Winter Garden, 2010, Installation. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by D. Dražic.
Dušica Dražić, Prelom - Breach, Break, Breakage, Failure, Fraction, Infraction, Rupture, Split, Layout, 2008, Installation, Dimension variable. Courtesy of the artist. photo by G. Micevski.
Dušica Dražić, One Home In Rydygiera 45a, 2006, Installation, Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by D. Dražic.
Dušica Dražić, Young Serbians, 2006, Video performance. Courtesy of the artist.
Past Resident2011: Artadia
Michael Jones McKean
Michael Jones McKean’s work plays with the poetic potential in objects, materials and their arrangement while pointing toward the possibility of a larger narrative or allegorical structures. His sculptures skid across time, organizing disparate objects into unifying constellations that make appeals to the imagination while also seeking a re-articulation of our ancient involvement with forms, meaning, representation, and poetics.
A recipient of numerous awards, McKean was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2010 and recently a Nancy Graves Foundation Award and an Artadia Foundation Award. McKean has participated in numerous residencies including The Core Program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; The Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, RI; The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, NE; Central Michigan University as the Stephen L. Barstow Fellow, MI; The Archie Bray Foundation in Montana and ThreeWalls in Chicago, IL. His work has been shown extensively nationally and internationally including the Quebec City Biennial, Grand Arts in Kansas City, MO, DiverseWorks in Houston, TX; The Bemis Center in Omaha, NE; Horton Gallery in New York City, Project Gentili in Italy and Berlin and ThreeWalls in Chicago, IL. McKean is currently an Assistant Professor in the Sculpture and Extended Media Department at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Michael Jones McKean, Certain Structures And Predetermined Sequences, 2008, Hand-knotted Persian wool rug circa 1968, cardboard, tar, wig, pine tree branches, popular wood, burlap, paint, wax, and glitter, 204 × 168 × 60 in. (518.16 × 426.72 × 152.4 cm). Courtesy of the artist.
Michael Jones McKean, The Wake, 2008, Pine, 1000 pounds of clay, orchid flower arrangement, glass vase, formed sheet metal, paint, insulation foam, canvas, plaster, gold leaf, paper mache, and 1970’s camping back pack , 780 × 156 × 204 in. (1981.2 × 396.24 × 518.16 cm). Courtesy of the artist.
Michael Jones McKean, The Possibility Of Men And The River Shallows, 2007 , Plywood, dimensional lumber, foam board, paint, 800 gallon acrylic water tank, 10 horsepower special effects fan, 1986 J1 Super Jumbo Promax boom box, fragments from the Teignmouth Electron (a boat involved in a failed attempt to circumnavigate the earth), brass, chainsaw cut/first aid kit, flashlight, night lights, florescent lighting, freezer, fog machine, custom spring, plexi-glass, house plants, grow lights, jet pump, 2 sump pumps, 60 gallon water tank, misting nozzles, water filters, pressure gauge, exhaust fan, industrial dehumidifier, carpet, one ton of clay, 5000 watt sound system, 12 volume reference library, VFD drive, 2 iPods, 1983 Ocean Pacific wind breaker, gold leafed papier-mâché conquistador helmet, sword, jug, spoons, banjo, and harpoon, dismantled papier-mâché river raft, papier-mâché helm, anchor, cemetery stones and barrels, hand made clothes and death/theater masks for Donald Crowhurst, Hernando DeSoto and Albert Ayler, Hall and Oates’ LP H20, Hall and Oates’ One on One (1982), and Albert Ayler’s Love Cry (1967). Courtesy of the artist.
Michael Jones McKean, She Hangs Above To Spit And Sing, 2010, Wood, paint, gold leaf, aluminum, paper, conch shell, and magazine cutout, 83 × 64 × 22 in. (210.82 × 162.56 × 55.88 cm). Courtesy of the artist.
Michael Jones McKean, Other Progress, We Hope This Will Work Too, To Be Clear To Others, 2010, Digital print from a larger installation which included: 50 acres of land purchased in Abitibi, Quebec, Canada, framed inkjet prints, upright piano, 5000 year old Campo del Cielo meteorite from Argentina, petrified wood from Arizona, United States, plastic spectral prism from China, 1970’s rug from Qatar, bags of dirt, cans of mussels, wood, paper mache, package of tissues, velvet, medicated ointment, Nivea skin lotion, and bottles of orange juice and water. Courtesy of the artist.
Residents from United States
Past Resident2010: KUD Mreza Association for Arts and Culture, Alkatraz Gallery
Nika Oblak & Primoz Novak
‘The work of Nika Oblak and Primož Novak draws parallels between a society driven by personal needs and capital and their own role as artists in the contemporary art market. Infused with humor, their work adopts the visual tactics and seductive constructions commonly employed in the mass media to lure the consumer.’ (Yasmeen Baig-Clifford, Move – new European media art, 2009) Oblak & Novak have exhibited in the Sharjah Biennial 9, UAE; Istanbul Biennial, Turkey; Japan Media Arts Festival; Transmediale Berlin, Germany; and most recently in Biennale Cuvee, Linz, Austria.
Nika Oblak & Primoz Novak. Courtesy of the artist.
