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End of Nowhere, Tynan Kerr and Andrew Mazorol, 2010

Shows presenting the work of a group of artists who all received the same fellowship can often feel a bit awkward. The only thing bringing them together is money.

MCAD/Jerome Fellowship Program Director Kerry Morgan says the emerging artists who were picked for this past year's fellowship have influenced one another:

Morgan says something else these artists share is a desire to stretch themselves and their art in new ways.

Indeed, just as the stars of musicals, overcome with emotion, burst into song, these artists have burst into new dimensions. Steven Accola gives you the chair from his studio on which to browse through a book, and one of his paintings still rests on his easel, as though you're just stopping by for a visit. Tynan Kerr and Andrew Mazorol, who paint collaboratively on the same canvases, make an offering of painted twigs in the middle of the gallery floor.

Caroline Kent, whose work is heavily influenced by a recent trip to Iceland, found that to capture the immensity of the mountainous landscape, she had to leap off the wall.

Cathedral in the Heights, 2010 by Caroline Kent

plaster, wood and colored lights, 72" x 31" x 52"

Morgan says what she finds most exciting about the work of this group of fellows is how their work is simultaneously accessible and elusive.

The pieces involving the most work are likely those by Tony Sunder, which at first glance least resemble paintings. Sunder's varies dramatically across the room, from a video of kids gleefully racing bikes to a couple of smears of paint on a piece of notebook paper glued to the wall. Sunder says he's playing with people's expectations of art:

In his artist statement Sunder wrote "Its not that I believe art does not have power, I just believe that art's power is only there when there is no language for it."

The 2009-2010 MCAD/Jerome Fellowship Exhibition runs through Sunday on the MCAD campus in Minneapolis. 

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Marianne Combs

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The exhibition of Jerome Fellowship artists at MCAD features four painters not satisfied with the traditional practice of painting.

Paintings seeking to be something more

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