EXIT STRATEGIES features new artwork from the graduating MFA class of the UCLA Department of Design | Media Arts. Works span the genres of installation, painting, performance, sculpture, software, sound, and video. Artists include: Casey Alt, Estevan Carlos Benson, Zach Blas, Xárene Eskandar, Yunsil Heo, Jihyun Kim, Gil Kuno, Christopher O’Leary, Aaron Siegel, Jacob Tonski, and Pinar Yoldas.

I am the primary thesis adviser for Yunsil and a committee member for Jihyun, Gil, Aaron, and Pinar.

The opening event is 5:00-9:00 pm, Thursday, 15 May 2008, in the New Wight Gallery of UCLA’s Broad Art Center.

The Mission Statement reads:

Ours is the era of the exit strategy. Whether in military, commercial, or personal engagements, exit strategies inject planned obsolescence into every human action. Exit strategies collapse history into instrumentality: the ends justify not only the means but also the beginnings. They sacrifice openness, complexity, and sustainability to the gods of the closed, the simplistic, and the disposable. They are meager attempts to convince ourselves of the possibility for absolute control and computability in all areas of life.

We see the current cultural obsession with exit strategies as an opportunity. Our work destabilizes the concept of the exit strategy by recasting it as an ethics of escape, subversion, and nomadism. Our exit strategies are material mechanisms for prying open hermetic systems of power and representation. Our practices discover ways out. Our works plot paths for others to follow.

For more information, visit the website.

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