Last week’s group of senior artists set the bar high for thesis exhibits, but the artists this week have managed to meet it. The gallery showing has a jam-packed six exhibitions on display by Kathryn Bofshever ‘09, Sasha Portis ‘09, Elizabeth McClellan ‘09, Nicole Irizarry ‘09, Lena Shichijo ’09 and Yale Yng-Wong ‘09. The artists utilize take advantage of what seems to be every inch of wall space in Zilkha Gallery.

Elizabeth McClellan’s “Sediment” uses all the wall space given to her and more, with works that hang off the wall and onto the ground. The drawings depict the beauty of nature in a way that is realistic, but also reimagined through the eyes of the artist.

Relying primarily on graphite, watercolor and charcoal, McClellan uses a restricted color palette to forge a symbiotic relationship among the tones. It is this weird harmony that infuses the drawings with their own murky and fogged reality.  McClellan emphasizes the temporal nature of her muses – her sediments and landscapes – by aging the paper, which appears decrepit and torn.  In this sense, the work is a testament to the process of the artist–viewers are as conscious of the finished product as they are of the tearing, stepping, rubbing, wetting and crumpling that went into it.

“My drawings are based off environments I spend a lot of time in, each of which I associate with specific emotions, memories, and fantasies,” McClellan said. “I wanted to convey a sense of the physical experience of each space by focusing on the physicality of the paper and material, and shifting from traditionally rendered depictions of space to abstracted marks based off natural patterns. I drew outdoors and let the drawings rot, stain, and collect mud, then worked from memory and imagination in my studio to carve out my ideal version of each environment.”

In the painting “Recall,” Katie Bofshever, like McClellan, relies on a restricted palette of cool colors to create blurred, almost spectral landscapes. Despite initial impressions, the paintings are strikingly colorful and the artist’s gestures are strong and noticeable. Her  larger-than-life canvasses depict common enclosed spaces such as hallways or rooms with windows. She renders them with a dreamy blurriness that seems to suggest the decay of memory, or some alternate reality that we all may wander into.

The ghostly quality of the passageways and objects is so powerful that nothing seems to possess autonomy. Everything is as if it were a reflection in a pool – the pool of our memories, in which nothing is as we once understood it, but merely the vestiges of a distant past.

“I would say that my series is about memory and dislocation,” Bofshever says. “I tried to achieve a sense of uncomfortable familiarity through the distortion of interior spaces. My goal for the viewer was to create an emotional experience and a sense of uneasiness.”

Yale Yng-Wong’s “Placeless Progression” speaks to similar feelings of being lost and lacking any perceivable linear movement through a space. “Placeless Progression” is an architectural piece formed from a passageway draped in black cloth.  The cloth is controlled by string, which is pulled by the viewer’s steps on a narrow felt rug. The drapery moves in such a way that the viewer always seems to be walking into an opening, while the space behind them continuously disappears.  “My installation deals with the psychology of architectural compression and expansion,” Yng-Wong says. “In order to move from the main Gallery to North Gallery, you must progress through what is essentially a void. The large piece of fabric opens and closes just enough to make space for you to pass.”

It’s a strange and almost claustrophobic experience to have a passage move around you, rather than the other way around. Further disorienting the viewer are waves of indiscernible sounds, which keeps you from getting a firm grasp of where exactly you are.

“The idea is that by constricting and disorienting the senses, you can heighten the experience of a destination,” Yng-Wong says. “The lack of continuity between where you started and where you arrive makes the destination more novel and unexpected.”

Nicole Irizarry’s “untitled” is an architectural installation that magnifies the qualities of the limestone blocks that comprise the foundations of Zilkha Gallery. Huge foam blocks extend from the wall, harnessing the space itself and the space of the viewer. The gray hues complement the limestone and emphasize their scale and simplistic beauty. In this way, Irizarry highlights both the architectural aspects of the building itself and the sculptural ones that the architect most likely intended.

The installation is both playful and somewhat unnerving, as the protruding blocks enter the viewer’s space whether the viewer likes it or not. There is something powerful about the scale of the foam blocks (which match that of the limestone ones); they seem almost like Legos for giants.

“I changed [my idea] halfway through and decided it should be site-specific,” Irizarry says. “I chose the North Gallery because it’s my favorite space and I was interested in exaggerating the features of the space.” The pictures seem almost like vacation slides; they’re so personal and casual that viewing them feels t voyeuristic.

Despite this, the photographs are clearly crafted, with imagery that is stark and well-composed. There is a sense of banality that can be taken from the subject matter, but there is also a distinct sense of the simple existences of these documented moments. The action of photography gives it a sense of power that reflects the quirky mentality of the photographer.

Lena Shichijo’s “Graphic Design” illustrates foods with colorful, eye-catching geometric patterns. The patterns are cute and have an almost domestic feel, as though they were lifted from kitchen in the 1950s.  These designs are meant to compliment a set of vegan recipes for dishes like broiled asparagus, mini-baked donuts and chai-latte cupcakes. Although it may sound slightly strange, the pairing works– the designs are modern, clean and really do call to mind the foods that they represent.

“I really enjoyed realizing that the process of making the designs and the prints felt a lot like cooking to me in terms of working with the materials in a tactile way and choosing the colors,” Shichijo says.  “I always thought of making the designs an extension of enjoying the recipes, it’s another way of engaging with the food.”