Posing is a multimedia group exhibition of works by eight emerging artists. The exhibition investigates the correlation between compliance and control particular to the primarily visual act of posing. Each artist participates in the conversation on posing (arguably started by Craig Owens and the “Pictures” generation nearly twenty years ago) by tapping into a particular aspect of the act.

The artists in Posing unpack the current cultural condition by employing or rejecting today’s technologies while incorporating traditional techniques and approaches to the figure. Through mimicry, repetition, and imitation, the original (be it a person, object or gesture) is often evoked at the same time the re-creation is asserted before the viewer. Through frozen moments and acts of homage, the artists in this exhibition either reveal or circumvent the relationships – and inherent power structures – between artist, model, viewer, history, culture and media.

Alex Forman photographs miniature figurines of the American Presidents. They share gestures of entitlement, stature and perfected public bearing. Her photographs hold the formation of masculinity up for scrutiny, embodying expectations about power and leadership.

Valerie Lamontagne and Amy Talluto expand the discussion of gender roles using images of the female body, acting as both artists and models. Lamontagne looks to historical precedent by overlaying her own photographic image onto Balthus’ paintings of adolescent women. In her classically skillful renderings, Talluto mimics the poses of Sports Illustrated swimsuit models. As she vulnerably exposes her own “imperfections,” Talluto subverts accepted cultural standards and re-possesses the female body.

Like Talluto, Yi Chen and Yoshio Itagaki create works that expose the practices of an image-conscious civilization. Chen paints figures from the back pages of popular Chinese magazines. Despite their blurred faces, westernized clothing and postures, the young teens appear fragile in their purchased identities. Itagaki uses computer montage to exaggerate the disconnection between person, place and presentation. He places his smiling subjects, whose dress signifies participation in culturally defined roles (bride/groom/geisha), in the incongruous locale of the moon. Itagaki’s images highlight the fabrication of experience.

Kate Clark and Nikhil Chopra utilize conventions of portraiture, drawing on the genre’s seductive attempts to extend time and mortality. Clark reconstructs the faces and postures of animals that have undergone taxidermy to mimic human gestures and expressions. The confrontational sculptures demand attention with their arresting presence. In Chopra’s performance (presented on video) the artist sits motionless inside an exquisite vanitas painting, a reminder of the death present in every moment’s passing. In contrast to these classic treatises on morality, Chopra’s still character invites contemplation on the past and present issues of colonialism, exoticism and excess.

Chris Kaczmarek’s interactive video installation ruptures the relationship between observer and observed. Kaczmarek’s timely installation provokes questions about current surveillance methods. Push Button incites consideration of the ways in which citizens participate (knowingly or otherwise) in the collection of information and the undefined parameters of how that information can be used.

Curated by Andrea Cote and Joelle Jensen,