An Exhibition of The LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting | MICA Graduate Class of 2024

Opening Reception: 5-7 pm, June 7, 2024

Visit by appointment only. Contact: ag@artinggallery.net

Arting Gallery is pleased to announce “Objects Have a Double Life,” an exhibition of work by the 2024 graduating class of the LeRoy E.Hoffberger School of Painting, MFA, Maryland Institute College of Art. The show opens June 7th – July 7th, 2024, and is curated by Hoffberger Interim Director Stephen Ellis.

Artists included: Maria Dobbs, Matthew Hillock, Dee Liu, Maren Magyar, Dr.Antoinette Myers Perry, Gillian Moore, Tim Moran, Taj Poscé, Jes Scarlett, Micaela Tardivo, Ellery Thompson, and Amelie Wang.


The text below was constructed by Hoffberger Professor Fox Hysen from reflections written by the artists themselves about each other’s work.

Objects have a double life; Artists use objects from their imaginations as signifiers to cope with difficult life circumstances. This fluid way of creating art from emotions evokes correspondences. A sense of play and chance; he still plays the same old bad cards.

WhatI saw fighting for space in the composition: ideas, memory, reflection, figurative language, shadows, and relationships. I could see a rigorous attempt to build language through opacities, color, and mark making.  She was raised in an environment around friends, thinking she needed to do all these fancy things, eating at nice restaurants, going to nice hotels etc. But now I really want to make space in myself for different things. I don’t define my success like societal success anymore.

The dynamics of shared meal spaces: interrogating the stories told and created around the table. She renders figures as buffoonish symbols, whose mannerisms and interactions indicate the limited scope of their awareness.

A connection to land, landscapes, memory, and water: carving out a space of recognition and refuge, black women, black queer people, women, and queer women. Our point of view is looking across a pond to a large thick tree trunk and grassy scene. As we go deeper into the painting the scene begins to melt away into elements of distorted colorful shapes and forms.

The present is alive. This is an oil painting painted on the back of the canvas.The traces of staples and wood chips are clearly visible.

They refer to their experience growing up in China, where strict boundaries are enforced, that they had learned to never cross the line, and to maintain themselves through acts of refusal. Although they struggle with the limitations and expectations of painting, they describe their relation to it as a kind of religion. Their studio is littered with evidence of this devotion.

The fire and burning are a metaphor for inherited trauma or social histories that a man was born into, a bridge that connects his subject matter to the form.

May 29, 2024