SPIRITUS Lecture

SPIRITUS 
Felicia Feldman • Kate Clark • Steve Forster 
Curated by Beth Giacummo 
September 9 - November 13, 2023 
 
Gallery Events 
Lecture with Kate Clark & Steve Forster 
Thursday, October 3 at 11:00 AM 
Gleeson Room 102 
 
Reception 
Thursday, October 3 from 4:30 - 6:30 PM 
Memorial Gallery in Hale Hall 

Farmingdale State College Memorial Gallery presents SPIRITUS, featuring the work of Felicia Feldman, Kate Clark, and Steve Forster, Curated by Beth Giacummo, on view from September 9 - November 13, 2023.  The Farmingdale community is invited to join us for a special lecture with artists Kate Clark & Steve Forster which will be hosted on Thursday, October 3 at 11:00 AM in Gleeson Room 102.  A reception with all three artists will also take place on October 3 from 4:30 - 6:30 PM at the Memorial Gallery in Hale Hall .
 
SPIRITUS explores the boundaries between human and animal, realism and surrealism, blur into an evocative tapestry of hybrid beings. The exhibition featuring the works of Kate Clark, Felecia Feldman, and Steve Forster delves into this intricate interplay, presenting a collection where hyperrealistic humans intertwine seamlessly with animals, or animals exhibit human traits. This amalgamation transcends mere visual spectacle, inviting viewers to explore profound questions about identity, nature, and the interconnectedness of life forms.
 
Kate Clark's practice of creating hybrid human-animal sculptures merges highly conceptual and contemporary sculpture with the traditional art of taxidermy. Her sculptures embody primal, cultural, ancient, and contemporary forces, interweaving the natural world with societal complexities.
 
Clark hand-sculpts human portraits, covers them with the animal's hide and details, and seamlessly merges the head with the animal body. Her process creates metaphor, myth, and suggestion. Each sculpture fluidly combines traits that are both human and animal, domestic and foreign, male and female, powerful and fragile.
 
She focuses on the energy, emotion, and nuance of storytelling. By using aspects that are both animal and human, these parallels and contrasts broaden the viewer's concept of identity. Faced with the impending dehumanization of AI, her sculptures serve as a reminder that humans are intuitive, creative, self-aware, and full of possibility.
 
Felicia Feldman has always had a drive to create and express. Her main purpose for making art is an investigation into the unconscious, Magical Realism, and simply creating something beautiful. Throughout her lifetime, she has been involved in many forms of art, including music, dance, and acting.
 
For Felicia, inspiration comes from solitude and reverie. She often struggles to fall asleep at night, using this time to connect the everyday events she has experienced. She creates "what if" scenarios incorporating elements of the surreal and fantastic.
 
As an adoptee from a different country, most of Felicia's current works explore dual personalities: the person she has become and the person she might have become if she had remained in Korea. She is also interested in the broader concept of doppelgangers, contemplating the emotions one might feel upon encountering a complete stranger with their face and how they would choose to interact with them.
 
Steve Forster believes that great work is created through a dynamic tension between opposing ideologies. He aims to achieve this in his work by mixing contemporary culture with antiquity, collage with academic painting, and new materials with traditional techniques. In his current work, he creates visual fields of digital and physical realities that allow for numerous interactions and relationships to occur. By creating this type of world, one can comment on and respond to any sort of concept or idea.
 
Forster's most recent work features several themes that present twinning as a metaphor for the collision of spirit, thought, and body. Broadly speaking, each painting reflects on our physical self as half-awake to our subconscious spirit, and the layered realities that produce the stories around us. Whether it is Ophelia in a digital stream or the body and spirit of a person waiting for the sun, these paintings contain motifs that engage concrete thought in a subtle way. They also juxtapose the past, present, and future of the figures in a continuous narrative through both composition and palimpsestic qualities.
 
Together, the works of Clark, Feldman, and Forster create a thought-provoking exhibition challenging viewers to reconsider their understanding of identity and the natural world. By presenting human and animal forms in such intimate and intertwined ways, the exhibition underscores the interconnectedness of all life forms and the artificiality of the boundaries we often impose. It is a call to recognize the shared essence that binds all beings, human or otherwise.
 
Kate Clark, Felecia Feldman, and Steve Forster invite us to embark on a journey of introspection and empathy. They challenge us to see beyond the superficial differences and embrace the deeper connections that unite us with the animal world. This exhibition uses the power of art to transform perceptions and inspire a more compassionate and inclusive worldview.
 
SPIRITUS, features the work of Felicia Feldman, Kate Clark, and Steve Forster, Curated by Beth Giacummo will be on view from September 9 - November 13, 2023.  We invite all to join us for a special lecture with artists Kate Clark & Steve Forster which will be hosted on Thursday, October 3 at 11:00 AM in Gleeson Room 102.  A reception with all three artists will also take place on October 3 from 4:30 - 6:30 PM at the Memorial Gallery in Hale Hall.