Jason Lahr and Krista Hoefle

Reception: Sunday, November 10 — 2-4 pm, Hershberger Art Gallery

Exhibit Description:

Jason Lahr’s paintings and works on paper combine darkly comic texts with appropriated images to create shifting narratives of working class male identity as shaped by popular culture. The images are pulled from a wide range of popular and sub-cultural ephemera while the texts that he writes are fragments that suggest their excision from a larger story, and give the reader/viewer flashbulb glimpses at moments of narrative action. His work combines the visual language of digital culture with traditional painting techniques and references to illustration, print media, and graphic design to create an intertextual web which addresses the articulation of masculine identity as manifested in Generation X and which is filtered through feminism and identity politics/criticism.

Through the reinterpretation of virtual interactions and objects into physical spaces, Krista Hoefle investigates the underlying -or- hidden aspects of videogame structure that are otherwise not apparent during regular game play. Although she uses a wide variety of media (digital prints, screenprints, ‘zines, objects, video), the spatial dislocation (or translation) from the virtual to the physical positions the work within the realm of sculpture. When working within a videogame itself, Hoefle is performing or programming applications that subvert the regular rules of the game, particularly from a (cyber)feminist point of view.

Artist Bios:

Jason Lahr received his M.F.A. in drawing and painting from Penn State University and his B.F.A. in painting from Clarion University. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Painting at the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, IN. He is represented by Packer Schopf Gallery in Chicago, IL. For more information visit: www.jasonlahr.net

Krista Hoefle received her MFA in Sculpture from Penn State University, and her BFA in Furniture Design from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Her work has been exhibited and screened internationally in numerous venues. Recent exhibitions and screenings include: LVL_GRNDER, solo exhibition at Packer Schopf Gallery (Chicago, IL); The Almost Metal Collective group exhibition at A+D Gallery, Columbia College (Chicago, IL);Mystery Science, a two-person exhibition with Edie Fake at Tryk Tryk Tryk Gallery (Copenhagen, Denmark); Ah Wilderness at Ebersmoore Gallery (Chicago, IL); Mischief Night at the Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago, IL); Two Minute Film Festival at the Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh, PA); Video Dada at Room Gallery, University of California (Irvine), curated by Martha Gever; Paper City and X at Mixed Greens Gallery (NYC).

Krista has had residencies at Anchor Graphics (Chicago, IL) and The Experimental Television Center (Owego, NY), and was a Visiting Artist in the Sculpture area at the University of Tennessee (Knoxville, TN). Her work has been reviewed in regional and national publications such as Sculpture Magazine, Art Papers, The Wall Street Journal and TimeOut Chicago.

Krista has upcoming exhibitions at the Palmer Museum of Art (Pennsylvania State University) and will be a part of a video compilation Disruptive Film: Everyday Resistance to Power edited by Sherry Milner, Ernie Larson and Jill Godmilow.

You can find Krista in World of Warcraft performing and playing as Kryzzik, a Goblin Mage, on the Emerald Dream server in World of Warcraft.For more information visit: www.kristahoefle.com