HALF MASTER
RISD MFA Painting 2016, curated by Nera Lerner

August 22 – September 6, 2015
Opening Saturday August 22, 7-10pm

The Painting Department at The Rhode Island School of Design is pleased to present Half Master, a selection of recent works by the 2016 MFA Class, curated by Nera Lerner.

One year ago the artists in this exhibition were invited to begin producing a body of work that would transform them into ‘Masters of Painting’. Our title refers to their current standing in this process.

The ten artists in this exhibition, Rosalind Breen, Danny Ferrell, Syraya Horton, Shona McAndrew, Tristram Lansdowne, Stuart Lantry, Jagdeep Raina, Paul Rouphail, Ziyang Wu, Ping Zheng work across a variety of forms, ideas and techniques, brought together by a curiosity in the transforming definition of painting.

The work in the exhibition reflects a shared interest in spaces of otherness. These range from those of gender politics, technically mediated social spaces, to the corporate politics of architecture. It is these spaces that the ten artists seek to not only examine, but to understand through a direct identification with them, so as to work from these spaces rather than towards them.

The artists in this exhibition make artworks in and about the worlds they live in. They pull their subjects from social media, historic archives, environmental change and the imaginary. They tell stories about what they see or hope to see and in the process ask us to question whether a painting really needs to look like a ‘painting’.

Half Master will open at Microscope Gallery on Saturday, August 22 from 7 – 10 PM and will run through Sunday, September 6, 2015. For more information, please contact the gallery at info@microscopegallery.com

Rosalind Breen
Canadian born, Breen was raised in Toronto and completed her BFAH at Queen’s University in 2013. She has shown her work throughout Canada and in Iceland, where she was a resident at the Gulkistan Artist’s Residency. She currently lives and works in Providence, RI.

Danny Ferrell
Danny Ferrell was born in Michigan. He received his BFA in painting from Penn State University. Exploring themes of queer masculinity and desire, Danny has shown his work in New York City and the New England area. He lives and works in Providence, RI.

Syraya Horton
Syraya Horton is native of San Marcos, Texas. She graduated from Texas State University in 2013 with a BFA in painting. Horton as shown extensively in Austin and Houston. In 2013, Horton received the Joan Mitchell Fellowship award for a residency at the Vermont Studio Center.

Stuart Lantry
Stuart Lantry grew up in the greater Los Angeles area. He graduated manga cum laude from Dartmouth College. Lantry has exhibited his work in New York City, Los Angeles, Providence and New Hampshire. He currently lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island.

Tristram Lansdowne
Tristram Lansdowne was born and raised in Victoria, British Columbia and studied at the University of Victoria before completing a BFA at the Ontario College of Art & Design in 2007. His multidisciplinary practice is focused on themes of permanence and function in relation to landscape and architecture. He has exhibited across Canada and the U.S., with recent exhibitions at the Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, and the Boston Centre for the Arts.

Shona McAndrew
Shona McAndrew was born and raised in Paris. She received her BFA from Brandeis University and has exhibited her work throughout New England. She currently lives and works in Providence, RI.

Jagdeep Raina
Jagdeep Raina is from Guelph, Ontario, Canada. He received his BFA from Western University, London, Ontario. In 2012, Raina attended the Advanced Painting Intensive Program in Paris, offered by Columbia University. Raina’s work examines the archive as an entry point for studying the history of punjabi Sikh communities amid the broader South Asian Diaspora throughout the Americas.

Paul Rouphail
Paul Rouphail is a painter working at the intersection of architecture history, pop iconography, and colloquial texts. He earned his BFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 2010. His works have been exhibited at the Miller Gallery, Pittsburgh; The Chautauqua Institution, Chautauqua, NY; The Gelman Gallery, Providence, among others. Rouphail’s work has been been reviewed online and in print including the Pittsburgh Tribune, The Chautauqua Daily (Howard Halle), and Gestalten Press’ “Imagine Architecture” (Lukas Feireiss, Robert Klanten).

Ziyang Wu
Originally from Xuzhou, Jiangsu, China, Ziyang Wu received his BFA from the Florence Academy of Fine Art in Italy. Focusing on the micro-alienation phenomenon of current Chinese society, Wu has shown his work internationally in China, USA, and Europe including exhibitions at the Milan Design Week and Medici Palace, held in Italy. Wu has also contributed as a writer for publications including Literary Newspaper, a prominent newspaper in China.

Ping Zheng
Ping Zheng’s work is based on personal memories of intense natural beauty, filtered through a process of meditative abstraction summoning Impressionist strategies of saturated color. A native of Shan Xi province, China, Zheng studied for two years in Beijing where she was introduced to “Western” art, albeit a Chinese take on the subject. At age eighteen she moved to the UK, where she earned her BA from Slade School of Fine Art, (UCL), London.


Paul Rouphail, “The President-elect and a Wanderer Contemplate the Evening”, 2015, oil on canvas, 18 x 22 inches – Image courtesy of the artist