"Golden Hour": Intonaco and House of Mysteries, 2009 Media Installation (Video, 36x24 Poster, 57 letter-sized tiles 24x24 inches

The Des Lee Gallery presents Past Perfect, Present Tense, an exhibition of art works by the twelve students enrolled in the eponymous course offered in Fall of 2009 at Washington University in St. Louis, taught by Lauren F. Adams. The interdisciplinary course “Past Perfect, Present Tense” investigates the use of historical research as a strategy within contemporary artistic practice. The structure of the course follows the trajectory of delving into one archival topic, or set of topics, and making a series of works in that arena. Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Visiting Artist Allison Smith interacted with the class over several sessions, including student involvement in a collaborative sewing bee and a provisional photo studio to assist in the production of Smith’s work. This mode of research and production is inspired by the art works Smith will be producing for her exhibition Needle Work at the Mildred Lane Kemper Museum in the spring of 2010. This course invited students to select a research topic and create a variety of works using various media strategies, culminating in final projects resulting from semester-long explorations. Participants in the course include a range of BFA and MFA painters, performance artists, sculptors and photographers. The semester’s thematic sections were broken into “The Visible Collection,” “Making Meaning,” and “Performativity and Process.” Shadowing Smith’s studio practice has allowed the students to see up close and firsthand the opportunities and challenges of this working method. The exhibition Past Perfect, Present Tense introduces into the gallery final works that address vital theory and artistic models present in the contemporary art world, as well as providing a look at how current culture reflects and absorbs historical issues.

Kathryn Neale traveled to Pompeii, Italy in September, participating in a trek that millions have made but with a keen eye to investigate, as a painter interested in decorative surfaces, the decay and destruction wrought by the explosive eruption of Mt. Vesuvius almost 2,000 years ago. Positing Pompeii as a “literal time warp,” Neale playfully and selectively erases and transposes images of actual frescos, encountering realistic landscape and figures with an eye towards abstraction through sampled surface texture. Her material process in apprehending the fresco tradition is evident in the do-it-yourself studio ethic of making do with plaster and ripped papers and canvas, plus pigments, witnessed in the video component to her installation “Golden Hour”: Intonaco and House of Mysteries.