ON VIEW
May 9 – 18, 2024
EXHIBITION OPENING
Thurs, May 9, 5 – 7 pm
May 9 – 18, 2024
EXHIBITION OPENING
Thurs, May 9, 5 – 7 pm
www.dreweastwood.com
@drew_eastwood_art
Drew Eastwood (b. 1997, Michigan, USA), currently resides and works out of Portland, Maine. Eastwood has attended Saginaw Valley State University where they earned a Bachelors of Arts degree with a minor in graphic design and is a recent graduate from Maine College of Art & Design where they obtained their Masters of Fine Arts degree. Their work has been published internationally and are continuing to exhibit regionally, most notably in the upcoming MFA Thesis Exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Portland, ME; and previously at Gallery263, Cambridge, MA; NOTCH8 Gallery, Portland, ME; the UAG, Saginaw, MI. Eastwood’s work has been internationally published twice in ArtIt Magazine's Voice of Artists publication series (Issue 12 - Portrait & Figure and Issue 16 - 100 Artists Bringing Figures to Life). While also being published within a SVSU produced literary art magazine titled, Still Lives, which is nationally recognized by American Scholastic Press.
As human beings we seek so hard to categorize everything, our feelings, our emotions, our gender. How can we faithfully do this when our past selves are no longer the ones we recognize? How can art be a catalyst to liberate our souls? With an artistic practice rooted in bricolage, my work seeks to unpack, digest, and reconcile a life grown up in a male body. Where masculine stoicism and masochistic ideals have perpetuated outdated Western views on masculinity, putting on a straight jacket of societal expectations constraining generations of men. Approaching bricolage as a conceptual framework and a physical process I am able to re-construct a new masculine and cultural identity; envisioning a future that resists archaic gender preconceptions.
From our mass media culture I draw inspiration for drawings, paintings, collages and murals, allowing my work to freely live in spaces that both collapse inwardly as singular objects while also expanding outward to construct whole worlds. This fluctuation is what grants the work agency to live within the margins, separate from the singular binary that we have been reduced to in the West. Though speaking primarily around the subversion of masculinity and promoting the multitude of ways men can exist in this world; the work can show an experience that can be universal in nature. We are all harmed by a stifling set of traditions underneath the extended reach of the patriarchy.
@drew_eastwood_art
Drew Eastwood
Drew Eastwood (b. 1997, Michigan, USA), currently resides and works out of Portland, Maine. Eastwood has attended Saginaw Valley State University where they earned a Bachelors of Arts degree with a minor in graphic design and is a recent graduate from Maine College of Art & Design where they obtained their Masters of Fine Arts degree. Their work has been published internationally and are continuing to exhibit regionally, most notably in the upcoming MFA Thesis Exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Portland, ME; and previously at Gallery263, Cambridge, MA; NOTCH8 Gallery, Portland, ME; the UAG, Saginaw, MI. Eastwood’s work has been internationally published twice in ArtIt Magazine's Voice of Artists publication series (Issue 12 - Portrait & Figure and Issue 16 - 100 Artists Bringing Figures to Life). While also being published within a SVSU produced literary art magazine titled, Still Lives, which is nationally recognized by American Scholastic Press.
As human beings we seek so hard to categorize everything, our feelings, our emotions, our gender. How can we faithfully do this when our past selves are no longer the ones we recognize? How can art be a catalyst to liberate our souls? With an artistic practice rooted in bricolage, my work seeks to unpack, digest, and reconcile a life grown up in a male body. Where masculine stoicism and masochistic ideals have perpetuated outdated Western views on masculinity, putting on a straight jacket of societal expectations constraining generations of men. Approaching bricolage as a conceptual framework and a physical process I am able to re-construct a new masculine and cultural identity; envisioning a future that resists archaic gender preconceptions.
From our mass media culture I draw inspiration for drawings, paintings, collages and murals, allowing my work to freely live in spaces that both collapse inwardly as singular objects while also expanding outward to construct whole worlds. This fluctuation is what grants the work agency to live within the margins, separate from the singular binary that we have been reduced to in the West. Though speaking primarily around the subversion of masculinity and promoting the multitude of ways men can exist in this world; the work can show an experience that can be universal in nature. We are all harmed by a stifling set of traditions underneath the extended reach of the patriarchy.
The MFA Thesis Exhibition for the Class of 2024 is a multidisciplinary exhibition unified by an urgency each of these MFA candidates expresses for what they see as fundamental to our shared experience of an increasingly disconnected world. With an emphasis on the personal, and at times the anecdotal, the artwork featured by these 12 artists varies in media to include ceramics, installation, painting, performance, photography, printmaking, video, sculpture, and zines. Seen together, these thesis projects hybridize a range of conceptual themes and material approaches as they relate to visual culture, the political landscape, and contemporary art practice. The nature of this work and research demonstrates the caliber and cultural relevance achieved by these graduates of Maine College of Art & Design’s Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art program. Our studio-based curriculum creates a transformative learning experience and is designed to encourage students to follow where their work leads them, supporting them to define a sustainable vision for their own art practice through individualized research, critical analysis, and curatorial experimentation.
Institute of Contemporary Art
at Maine College of Art & Design
522 Congress St. Portland, ME 04101
Gallery Hours:
Wed–Sun, 11:00am–5:00pm,
Thursday, 11:00am–7:00pm