The Ghosts of Coleridge explores the suspension of disbelief in contemporary art and includes work from the artists Jeana Baumgardner, Tyler Coburn, Christina Gundersen, Rebecca Hackemann, Peter Kreider, Chris McCaw, Trever Paglen, Ryan Sullivan, and Mary Temple.

At the turn of the 19th century, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth co-published a book of poems in which they sought to examine the everyday and the overlooked. Coleridge’s contributions were directed towards the extraordinary and supernatural, yet with a “semblance of truth sufficient to procure…the willing suspension of disbelief,” while Wordsworth tried to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by “awakening the mind’s attention from the lethargy of custom.” It is this dual approach to exploring ‘the real’ that inspired “The Ghosts of Coleridge,” a group exhibition organized by the 2009 Masters Degree candidates in FIT’s Art Market: Principles and Practices program. Artists in the exhibition invite viewers to ponder the seemingly irreconcilable; to look at our belief in the incredible, disbelief of the everyday, and the shifting area in between. Through them, we see that the extraordinary is often right before our eyes.

Jeana Baumgardner paints ordinary domestic interiors inhabited, or haunted, by amorphous, colorful presences which seem to go unnoticed by the people and pets within. Whether the presences are truly unseen, willfully ignored, or disbelieved is impossible to determine.

Tyler Coburn, using a variety of media, frequently examines the construction of political identities in the recent and historical past. Near mythic figures are humanized by actual size depiction and the transition of power takes place behind a parted curtain.

Christina Gundersen’s grisaille paintings of falling horses are at once unsettling and beautiful. These common, yet spectacular, moments of failed control are suspended in time, leaving the viewer to wonder the outcome.

Rebecca Hackemann’s 360° anamorphic drawings explore cultural and historical ideas surrounding the mirror and its reflection, vision and perception. The verity of reflection is in doubt, as the viewer knows the mirror is distorting – yet translating – the reality of the artist’s double-drawings.

Peter Kreider highlights a strangeness in the unnoticed or under-recognized objects of daily life. In tweaking the familiar, he emphasizes the constant pull between the desire to know and the willingness to question what we think we understand.

Chris McCaw shoots with large-format, homemade cameras, exploring and testing the boundaries of analog photography. In Sunburned, extended exposures leave the sun’s trajectory literally burned into the vintage paper negative.

Trevor Paglen’s photographs give form to operations and traditions that normally exist on the peripheries of public knowledge. Documenting government bases, military operations, distant surveillance mechanisms and elaborate layers of obfuscation, Paglen bears witness to that which is hidden from us and yet is there to be ‘known.’

Ryan Sullivan classifies his paintings as ‘Conceptual Romanticism.’ Using found notebooks, diaries and other personal writings, Sullivan channels his subjects to create portraits of people he’s never seen.

Mary Temple’s painted installations investigate the relationships between architecture, memory, and illusion. The sly affect of her trompe l’oeil light and shadows alters viewers’ environmental perception, making an ordinary occurrence seem delightfully unexpected.

“The Ghosts of Coleridge” is a collaborative curatorial project by the 2009 candidates for the Master of Arts degree in Art Market: Principles and Practices at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Curators: Sabrina Berns, Amanda Bodner, Meredith Buck, Victor de Matha, Yoonjeong Lim, Margaret Loughlin, Victoria Manning, Kris Nuzzi, Christine Prisco, Jennifer Rizzo, Malissa Saghehei and Miyuki Urbanek.