THE FLOOD
Jesse Potts
November 2—December 9, 2016
Reception
Wednesday, Nov 16th— noon
with lecture at 1pm
About Exhibition
“The Flood,” a new collection of sculpture, photography, and installation by artist Jesse Potts is currently on display at UMA’s Danforth Gallery through December 9th.
Potts multi-media installation is a collection of new works that explore the intersection of place, memory and time utilizing sculptures, photographs, and installation. These works emerged from Potts meditation on the purpose and meaning of “home” and exploration of ways that meaning can shift based on one’s perception of whether “home” is permanent or temporary. Filled with metaphors and a mash-up of symbols this exhibition suggests both stability and movement.
UMA’s current academic theme of climate change presents a significant opportunity to explore and discuss the causes and effects of climate change, but also how individual and collective efforts can make a difference. Potts installation seeks to answer how the memory of an experience is related to place and time and how those memories may be mutated, overwritten or erased by time.
Jesse Potts lives in Farmington ME, and is an Assistant Professor of Art in the Department of Sound, Performance and Visual Inquiry at the University of Maine Farmington. He has his BFA ’05 from The School of Art and Design at Alfred University and his MFA ’12 in Sculpture + Extended Media from the Virginia Commonwealth University. Potts has been an artist in residence at the I-A-M residency in Berlin, Germany, The European Ceramic Work Centre, s’-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France, and The Archie Bray Foundation, Helena, MT. His work has been included in exhibitions both nationally and internationally and reviewed by the New York Times, San Francisco Arts Quarterly and Hyperallergic.
In speaking of his work, Potts says “In many ways my work is quite straightforward. I simply spend time sifting the raw potential of mundane or routine actions. I am mining for opportunities where a slight shift of focus or subtle mediation pushes the needle from the mundane to sublime. My approach to the work is revealed through a delicate sensibility toward material phenomena and a hand that identifies familiar actions like the tick of a clock, the spin of a DVD player or quickly driving in circles. I attempt to heighten the physical interactivity within the work by hybridizing symbolic actions and the provenance of a given object. My aim is to translate our fleeting proprioceptive senses into brief events that elicit a lucid connection with the physical world.”
The Danforth Gallery is located in Jewett Hall. Gallery hours are Monday - Thursday 9:30am - 5:00 pm, Fridays 9:30am - 2:00pm.