We welcome Van Maltese as our incoming International Randal Chair in Painting this semester!

Vanessa Maltese (she/they – b. 1988, Toronto, Canada)
Multidisciplinary in breadth, Vanessa Maltese’s practice deploys various forms of trickery and illusion to pose questions about perception. Maltese is interested in the plasticity of the brain, and how conflicts of perception have the power to change our methods of thinking, even in common everyday experiences. 

Maltese received a BFA from OCAD University in 2010. In 2012, Maltese was the National Winner of the RBC Canadian Painting Competition and in 2018 they attended the Glenfiddich Artist in Residence Program. Maltese has exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions across North America, most recently at COOPER COLE, Toronto (2021); Mickey Gallery, Chicago (2020); Corbett vs Dempsey, Chicago (2019); Night Gallery, Los Angeles (2019); The Power Plant, Toronto (2018); the National Gallery Library and Archives, Ottawa (2017); Carl Louie, London ON (2017); Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York (2016); Greenpoint Terminal Gallery, New York (2016); Art Museum of the University of Toronto, Toronto (2016); and Erin Stump Projects, Toronto (2012). Maltese currently lives and works in Toronto, Canada.

Siennie Lee, a current graduate student in the Alfred/Düsseldorf Painting program has been selected for the prestigious and highly competitive artist residency program at the Fine Arts Work Center. 

Since its creation 50 years ago, the Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship has become one of the leading residency programs in the world. 

Each year, the Work Center offers 20 seven-month residencies to a juried group of emerging visual artists, fiction writers, and poets, each of whom receive an apartment, a studio (for visual artists), and a monthly stipend of $1,000 plus an exit stipend. Residencies run from October 1 through April 30. During this time, Fellows have the opportunity to pursue their work independently in a diverse and supportive community of peers. 

The Fine Arts Work Center has hosted more than 1,000 Fellows since 1968, nurturing an accomplished and far-reaching alumni network. The impact of the experience is best illustrated by the extensive list of awards Fellows have gone on to win, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, MacArthur Fellowship, Prix de Rome, Pulitzer Prize, and the Nobel Prize in Literature. 

Jiha Moon (b. 1973) is from DaeGu, Korea and lives and works in Atlanta, GA. She received her MFA from the University of Iowa, Iowa City. Her works have been acquired by Asia Society, New York, NY, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA, The Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC, Smithsonian Institute, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, Weatherspoon Museum of Art, Greensboro, NC and The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA. She has had solo exhibitions at Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, GA, Taubman Museum, Roanoke, VA, the Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC, The Cheekwood Museum of Art, Nashville, TN and Rhodes College, Clough-Hanson Gallery, Memphis, TN and James Gallery of CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY. She has been included in group shows at Kemper Museum, Kansas City, MI, the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA, the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta, GA, Asia Society, New York, NY, The Drawing Center, New York, NY, White Columns, New York, NY, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA, and the Weatherspoon Museum of Art, Greensboro, NC. She is recipient of prestigious Joan Mitchell foundation’s painter and sculptor’s award for 2011. Her mid-career survey exhibition, “Double Welcome: Most everyone’s mad here” organized by Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art and Taubman Museum has toured more than 10 museum venues around the country until 2018. 

Moon’s gestural paintings, mixed media, ceramic sculpture and installation explore fluid identities and the global movement of people and their cultures. She says “I am a cartographer of cultures and an icon maker in my lucid worlds.” She is taking cues from wide ranges of history of Eastern and Western art, colors and designs from popular culture, Korean temple paintings and folk art, internet emoticons and icons, fruit stickers and labels of products from all over the place. She often teases and changes these lexicons so that they are hard to identify, yet stay in a familiar zone.

http://jihamoon.com

Excited for our next visiting artist Vera Iliatova who will lecture on her work and have virtual studio visits with our grads!

http://monyarowegallery.com/artist.php?aID=8

We are excited to host Visiting Artist Mariana Garibay Raeke the next two weeks in Critique and Discussion. She will conduct a workshop with the grads on The Language of Making.

MARIANA GARIBAY RAEKE is a multidisciplinary artist working with a range of media that include drawing, painting, sculpture and photography.  Her work explores ideas of transformation through material explorations focused on process and color. Born in Guadalajara, Mexico and currently based in Brooklyn, Garibay Raeke holds a BFA from the California College of the Arts and an MFA from Yale University School of Art.  Her recent solo exhibitions include “closing the space between us”, The Chimney, Brooklyn; and “Every Number is One”, Transmitter, Brooklyn.  She has been an artist-in-residence at the Museum of Arts and Design, NY; Anderson Ranch Arts Center, CO; Casa Abierta, Mexico and most recently Pocoapoco, Oaxaca.  She was a founding member of Grupo < > (2015-2017) a collective focused on supporting and promoting the work of Latin-American women artists in New York and is a co-founder and editor of Asteroid and Asterism a digital publication of conversations with artists on the nature of making and matter.  Other recent projects include We Are What We Do, a fundraiser in support of immigrant rights.

The Language of Making Overview

This workshop explores the ways we communicate through our work, in conversation, and in writing. It is be based on collective dialogue grounded by presentations and written exercises. The focus is on questioning and strengthening the connections between who we are and what we do through mindful recognition and critical conversations. Aim at developing strategies to articulate intent in a way that is open and generative while examining the roles intuition, experience, personal history, contemporary issues, and acquired knowledge play in process.

APPLY NOW FOR FALL 2019

Application Deadline  Extended to March 1st!

Application 

Portfolio Submission and Requirements 

Graduate Programs

The Division of Drawing, Painting and Photography offers an international MFA Program in Painting. The program operates jointly in the School of Art and Design at Alfred University and at our studio facility in Düsseldorf, Germany. Graduate students work with American and European artists and scholars, gaining an international perspective while interacting with art communities on two continents. Through concentrated studio time, significant research opportunities, and mentoring from art world professionals, this program offers a graduate experience that prepares students to become the next generation of professional artists and arts practitioners.

Applicants must be committed to extended international study and the practice of painting. Graduate students spend three months of each academic year in Dusseldorf engaging in intensive studio work, research, and professional practices. The program encourages a diversity of approaches within the unique language of painting, and fosters critical dialogue addressing contemporary global perspectives.

Why Düsseldorf

Since the founding of its Art Academy in 1773, Dusseldorf has been a leading center of painting. The “Düsseldorf School” of painting attracted many notable artists to study in the city, including Albert Bierstadt, Georg Caleb Bingham, Eastman Johnson and William Morris Hunt. These artists went on the form the “Hudson River School” of American painting.

In the twentieth century major artists such as Paul Klee, August Macke, Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Gunter Grass and Nam June Paik were associated with the Art Academy, putting Dusseldorf in the vanguard of the development of Modern and Contemporary Art. Today internationally recognized artists such as Tomma Abts, Katharina Grosse, Peter Doig,  Andres Gursky, Rosemarie Trockel, Rita McBride and Tony Cragg continue to work and thrive in the city.

Düsseldorf has twenty world-class museums and over fifty Contemporary art galleries and non-profit exhibition spaces. In addition to the Art Academy, Düsseldorf is home to the Heinrich Heine University and the Robert Schumann University Music School. Düsseldorf attracts artists from across the globe, and is home to one of the largest Japanese communities outside of Japan. The city is both a hub and a crossroads for artists and students seeking a creative and supportive experience.

Rhine Street Fair, Altstadt