Graduation show 2022: FUTURE

From June 25–30, Minerva Art Academy and the Frank Mohr Institute present the work of graduated students in a comprehensive exhibition on the grounds of an old strawboard factory. 

Factory De Toekomst (The Future) in Scheemda, Groningen (the Netherlands) houses the works of 23 graduated master’s students of the Frank Mohr Institute, in addition to all graduated artists, teachers and designers of the bachelor’s programmes. With this exhibition, the masters Painting, MADtech and the first graduates of the study programme interRelational Art Practices (iRAP) conclude their two-year research by presenting their graduation works to the public.  

In addition to the exhibition, the work of all graduated master’s students is showcased in an extensive catalogue, consisting of texts by the students themselves and guest writer Elisabetta Cuccaro’s reflections on them. The result is a journey in a space created by a multiplicity of perspectives and voices, sparking new dialogues, conversations, and maybe new futures. 

The highlights below give you a glimpse of what you can expect.  

Gemma Carson (Painting) 
“Painting is a spiritual act for Carson. Her artistic practice is the result of an intuition familiar with what lies beyond the everyday. Just like a dance set in motion by opposite forces, visibility and invisibility, figuration and abstraction, coalesce in her works. These makings revolve around faces and gazes. When pulls and pushes are balanced in their constant dynamism an image can appear, outlined and open-ended at once. Carson listens to the different planes that give depth to our reality, aware of how past, present and future can coexist, blended with memories and emotions. Her practice comes from recurrent visits to a place where flashbacks can happen and imagination and otherness overlap. (…)” 

Eva Koopmans (iRAP) 
“Koopmans’ quest for an open space of dialogue and exchange—a space not constrained by predetermined agreement—brought her from scenography to installation art, and further to interrelational art. Each development was intended to broaden the field of action by her art-making, in search of the diversity of multiple viewpoints and stories available. She believes in art’s capacity to make a difference: its ability to raise awareness by asking questions and prompting discourse. (…)” 

Riane Pater (MADtech)
”(…) And here Pater’s practice swiftly brings us deeper through the surface of things. Her actions are an ode to nonsensicality. They appeal to absurdity, finding a short-circuit that defeats logic and common sense. Bursting, a laugh opens the door to meaning, and the question ‘what-is-the-meaning-(of-life)?’ glimpses—at once absolute and terrifying. We start to feel that the solid scaffolding of sense shows its many cracks. The nonsensicality reveals the relativity of meaning and the fragility of a system built on such a premise. If meaning does not exist, then it is possible to play with it, and around it; this is what Pater’s works seems to suggest. (…)”

Texts by Elisabetta Cuccaro.

Read more about the graduated artists and the graduation show FUTURE.

Participating artists/ FMI masters: Joris Bosma, Nusch Bourne, Ana Čajić, Gemma Carson, Xuanning Chen, Johanneke Dijkstra, Martijn de Geele, Jaime González Palencia, Nanne van der Heide, Eliza Chu-Yun Huang, Eva Koopmans, Man Pan Lau, Sojung Lee, Yitang Li, Gabriela Milyanova, Dulcinea Moran, Jildau Nijboer, Riane Pater, James Seedhouse, Christina Stavrou, Katayoon Valamanesh, Paul Verheul, Yixuan Zhang.