FAYETTEVILLE, ARK. – In an exhibition titled Site Insensitivity and Social Malpractice, 10 undergraduate student art projects will be on display throughout the spring semester at the Honors College in Gearhart Hall on the University of Arkansas Campus. A closing reception celebrating the artists will take place from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Thursday, May 4. This reception is free and open to the public and will be held on site.

Exhibiting artists include Connie Cramer, Brittany Cusanek, Amanda Fuller, Wanbli Gamache, Michael I. Ramirez, Elisha Rosanova, J. Seymore, Lindsey Shackelford, Elizabeth Sheeler, Kimberly Tomlinson and Jesse Turner.

The projects were designed for a specific spaces in the Honors College and were created by students enrolled in ARTS 423V Special Problems in Sculpture: Dematerialization of the Object and ARTS 4223 Advanced Sculpture, taught by Bethany Springer, associate professor of Art. 

Students were prompted to design and build projects in response to the context in which their work would be displayed by identifying the people who occupy the Honors College on a daily basis, taking into consideration the space's physical elements and ideological institutions, and the means by which information may be exhibited, distributed and disseminated during the five-month exhibition.

As part of their investigations, students researched post-studio art practice, biopolitics, information dispersion and/or contamination, desubstantialization, identity politics in the age of social media, parafiction and plausibility, socioeconomics and post-industrial society, and object-oriented ontology.

These projects consider and re-examine contemporary art practices which are partly or largely immaterial, such as site sensitivity and social practice. A common interest in the social relationships that compose art and the capacity for art to invent social relationships runs through the exhibition. The artists approach this critically, recognizing the possibility that such relationships may be a product of negotiation between cultural institutions and dominant systems ideology. It is through this research that many of the exhibition's works function subversively, both overtly and covertly.

Support for these projects has been generously provided by the Honors College and the Department of Art at the U of A in Fayetteville.  For more information, please contact Bethany Springer at (917) 698-6031 or bspringe@uark.edu or Kendall Curlee at (479) 575-2024 or kcurlee@uark.edu