MANDEM NEWS

ART PRINTS AVAILABLE: http://etsy.com/shop/MANDEMik Our art is an exercise in categorical violations, simulation, and narrative (translation: we are makers, rule-breakers, tricksters, and storytellers). We are radically interdisciplinary, working across the spectrum of media and materials. We look to create work that is simultaneously disruptive and beautiful. The work is deeply informed by an academic background in antiquities, mythography, intellectual history, and literary theory — our works transform the foundational myths and metaphors of Western culture to hint at a new post-postmodern (and quite often post-apocalyptic and post-human) mythos.  

[mythpunkart]

W/O Limits Exhibit + Premiere of New MANDEM Art!

Please join us for the Artists Archives of the Western Reserve for the W/O Limits: Art, Chronic Illness, & Disability exhibit opening, featuring the premiere of Mandem's “The Anarchronist Archive: The Metamorphoses of Peter K—”.

Stay tuned for the web reveal of works from "The Metamorphoses of Peter K—," and for details about the upcoming "W/O Limits" virtual artist panel discussion (on Wednesday, October 12, 2022). 

Mandem's Anarchronist Archive has been supported by The Satellite Fund, administered by SPACES and funded by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Regional Regranting Program. 

"W/O Limits: Art, Chronic Illness, & Disability" showcases the evocative work of nine Northeast Ohio artists, including Sarah Brown, Kristi Copez, Chappelle Letman Jr., MANDEM, Meg Matko, Arabella Proffer, Nate Puppets, Andrew Reach, and Kate Snow, and features a wide array of dynamic art from painting to video installations and interactive digital creations.

[mythpunkart]

MANDEM’s The Plague and the Archer was delivered today to Waterloo Arts Gallery (Cleveland, OH) for the 2021 Waterloo Arts Juried Exhibition. 

For those interested and able to visit the gallery, this diptych will be on display with the exhibit from August 6 - September 18, 2021. 

[mythpunkart]

New Prints Available

Nine new prints from our Medical Trials of the Saints series are now available in our print shop, including "St. Persephone," "Apollo, Patron of Epidemiology," "Tiamat, Maryr of the Chaoskampf," "Butterfly Eater," and "St. Vitus, Worldseer."

Visit our Etsy shop now (or check out the Shop page on our revamped website).

[mythpunkart]

That Which Surrounds You (Benicia, CA)

That Which Surrounds You A virtual exhibition at Arts Benicia (Benicia, CA) Asya Abdrahman, Juror Exhibition Dates: June 19 – August 1, 2021 Art has always been an important way to describe and convey our impressions of the world around us. For many, in the past year of lockdown and isolation, the world has been limited to that which surrounds us: our homes, our gardens, our immediate family. Yet, at the same time, we are keenly aware of the societal environment that engulfs our personal lives and communities. Selected artists share their experiences of that which surrounds them, whether interpreted literally as one’s physical surroundings and companions, the environment or allegorically as one’s thoughts, fears, hopes, feelings, values, or other concepts. Enter the Online Gallery Here

[mythpunkart]

The Cleveland Photo Fest and LGBT Center of Greater Cleveland Present: OPEN EYES OPEN MINDS: CLEVELAND QUESTS Rebecca Groynom • MANDEM • Jim Szudy

May 10th – June 30th Open M-F 10am–5pm LGBT Community Center of Greater Cleveland, 6705 Detroit Ave, Cleveland, OH 44102

Rebecca’s urban and rural architecture is presented with sharply drawn black and white lines of decaying buildings and abandoned farms, complimented by a delicate image of a curtain floating quietly behind asummer’s day open window.

Mandem is the collaborative name shared by a radically interdisciplinary queer, neurodivergent artist trio/family. Their work is drawn from Victorian portraiture as much as it is from their digitally remastered and contemporarily constructed portraits from Mythology, which use their own childhood portraits as a point of departure.

Jim’s colorfully imagined digital creations are a surrealistic counterpoint to the expressed imagery of Groynom and Mandem, allowing the viewer a fanciful insight into visual hallucinations.

[mythpunkart]

We're honored to have received a "Judge's Pick" award at the 32nd Annual Juried Photography Show at State of the Art Gallery (Ithaca, NY). Juror Jan Kather had the following to say about our work:

Digital inventions, or interventions, via photo editing programs, afford the artist new tools to create imaginary worlds that somehow exist in recognizable dreamworlds. In this mystical image, The Little Prince (Medical Trials of the Saints), the photo is described as hand colored, which I assume means “digitally” hand colored. I perceive it as an invented portrait that exists in the realm of make believe. The artist wraps their imagination around a reality so familiar, yet so strange. Although the title makes other references, I find this flower child, with a tangle of roses, thorns, and a coiling snake, conjures the gender fluid Shakespearean characters: Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, or Ariel in The Tempest.

If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumbered here While these visions did appear. (Puck, Act 5 Scene 1)

Go make thyself like a nymph o’ th’ sea: be subject To no sight but thine and mine; invisible To every eyeball else. (Prospero to Ariel, Act I Scene 2)

Check out the full exhibit: https://soagannex.art/

[mythpunkart]

"Living Figuratively" at New Masters 2 Exhibit

In case you missed it: In the Living Figuratively video series, Judy Takacs did a walk-through of the "New Masters 2" exhibit at the Florence O'Donnell Wasmer Gallery, where MANDEM won Best in Show for "Patron Saint of Stone."

Judy does a fabulous job discussing our work right around the 5:30min mark, but the whole exhibit tour is worth watching!

[mythpunkart]

Vital Arts Gallery Grand Opening Featured artist: MANDEM (October–December, 2020)

Vital Arts Gallery is located at 324 Cleveland Ave. NW, Canton, OH. The gallery is hosting a grand opening event October 30th & 31st, from 7pm-11pm. Please Reserve your time using the TICKET LINK, HERE. 

Check out THIS ARTICLE from The Canton Repository / CantonRep.com for this great coverage of the Grand Opening at Vital Arts Gallery, featuring paintings, photography, and film work by Mandem.

In accordance with COVID safety guidelines, the number of people allowed in the gallery at one time will be limited to 10 at a time (not including the cinema). Masks are required while in the building. The event is free to attend.

More information about Vital Arts Gallery:

Facebook: facebook.com/VitalArtsGallery

Instagram: instagram.com/vitalartsgallery

Website: VitalCanton.com

[mythpunkart]

46th Annual Cleveland Symposium, "Bodily Realities: Engaging the Discourse of Dis/Ability"

MANDEM​ is participating in the "Artists and Organizers Roundtable" (2pm-3pm EST) as part of the 46th Annual Cleveland Symposium​, Bodily Realities: Engaging the Discourse of Dis/Ability on Friday, October 30, 2020.  Please consider joining us for this virtual symposium (Zoom Webinar). More information (and registration link) below:

The Department of Art History and Art at Case Western Reserve University​  invites you to the 46th annual Cleveland Symposium, one of the longest-running art history graduate symposia in the United States. This year’s symposium, Bodily Realities: Engaging the Discourse of Dis/Ability, seeks to generate a dialogue about the relationship between ability and disability in the visual arts and art museums in an effort to understand the role of bodily differences in artistic practice, representation, and viewership. This symposium will address the ways in which the visual arts and artists either confirm or challenge the perceived dichotomy of the normative and non-normative physical body.

This year’s symposium will be presented virtually via Zoom Webinar on October 30, 2020. The link to register is below. After registering, you will receive a separate link to the webinar. Feel free to reach out to Katie DiDomenico and Mackenzie Clark at [email protected] with any questions.

Please note: Professional live captioning and student ASL interpreters will be provided for the duration of the event.

• Click here to view and download the digital program, including the schedule and information about our participants: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N-iXR_Zyb-xuuIHNb9JOWTVcfY_JnPcF/view

• Link to register: https://cwru.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_xpl1Ek9mSnOZYnwFz8VCPw

[mythpunkart]

St. Persephone ('The Medical Trials of the Saints' series)

This hand-colored photograph shows a child Persephone surrounded by flowers, her mouth and hands stained with pomegranate juice. Visually, it is in dialog with the photographic collage-and-watercolor techniques developed and shared by Victorian women.

For the youngest member of MANDEM, this self-portrait reflects an intense interest in nature, in collecting and arranging flowers, and in the story of the girl-child who came to control the seasons by transcending borders. For the elder MANDEM(s), it discusses a painful awareness of how winter (both literal and metaphorical) can seize a person and pull them out of the world for months at a time — and the difficulty of surrendering to that inevitability, of breaking open a celebratory pomegranate and facing the Underworld that needs our strength just as surely as the surface world does.

May St. Persephone bring solace to those in isolation, those unable to visit loved ones, and those cut off from the world and comforts they've known. Like Persephone's absence is a promise that springtime will return, your physical distance gives the gift of future life.

And for those who will soon journey into the Underworld, may you be filled with St. Persephone's resolve and fearlessness.

— Mandem

[Photo taken October 31, 2019. "St. Persephone" was to premiere at The Gallery at Lakeland in Kirtland, Ohio, for an exhibit from April–May, 2020, curated by Mary Urbas, but which closed before the opening reception due to the state of emergency.]

[mythpunkart]

MANDEM's "Medical Trials of the Saints" Wins Multiple Awards

MANDEM has recently received multiple juror awards for Medical Trials of the Saints, a series that reimagines art historical saints and mythological figures in a modern, post-human/surrealist setting.

Two paintings from this series, "Translating Theotokos" and "St. Vitus, Worldseer," together took the Best in Show award at Coburn Gallery's Compassion—the Art of Healing exhibit at Ashland University in Ohio. This exhibit focuses on the humanitarian nature of the healing process as seen through the arts. This exhibit in on view through November 13 in Ashland, OH. Visit https://bit.ly/31FeskT for more information.

Another painting from this series, "Cytokinesis," won Second Place at the OddBall Art Show at Stella's Art Gallery in Mentor, Ohio. This exhibit, celebrating the "time of year to let out your inner weird," is on view through the end of October. Read more about this exhibit in The News-Herald at https://bit.ly/31Gyn2X.

Also from the Medical Trials of the Saints series, "St Sebastian, Paion" was featured in the award-winning CAN Journal as the recipient of the NE Ohio CAN Journal Prize from the 2019 Juried Exhibition at Waterloo Arts in Cleveland, OH. Notable Cleveland artist Douglas Max Utter wrote, "The dark paintings of MANDEM have an almost cinematic power...creating personae that bleed across emotional and historical frontiers...MANDEM’s paintings are, plainly, hard to forget." This feature is in the current Fall, 2019 issue of CAN Journal, available in print or online at https://bit.ly/2MIW8mN.

Earlier this year, "Artemis and Athena, Psychopomps" from this series also took Best in Show at the 10th Annual May Show at the Gallery at Lakeland in Kirtland, Ohio.

The Medical Trials of the Saints received support in the form of an individual artist grant from the Ohio Arts Council for the 2019-2020 season.

________

Image: “The Medical Trials of the Saints: St. Vitus, Worldseer,” oils & ink painting on canvas, 48″x36″ (BEST IN SHOW at Coburn Gallery's Compassion—the Art of Healing exhibit at Ashland University in Ohio.) Prints available from https://www.etsy.com/shop/MANDEMik.

[mythpunkart]

MANDEM Featured by ALSO Gallery Website

A new artist interview with MANDEM is online at Also Gallery's blog. Find out how are we like Theseus’s Ship, the best art advice we've received, and why we're challenging dominant ideas in painting. Our #Hypermobility series has been exhibiting in Also Gallery's virtual space during the month of August, but don't worry -- it will be archived on their website if you missed the month-long feature.

[mythpunkart]

MANDEM is the featured artist for Also Gallery's August online exhibit. Check out the #Hypermobility series on their website. (There will be an artist interview posted later in the month.)

~ About the Hypermobility Series ~

MANDEM is a working team of artists, one of whom lives with the genetic disorder Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) that causes failure of connective tissue. The #Hypermobility series recenters that disability as a form of beauty, taking a metamodernist approach to the classical realist tradition of figure painting. Using studio models diagnosed with connective tissue disorders such as EDS, the series captures moments where joints hyperextend or dislocate and the body moves into broken-seeming, impossible configurations. MANDEM’s technique-oriented mixed media/oil paintings explode the line between medical documentation and art, simultaneously educating the public and proclaiming the artistic and social validity of disabled bodies.

This project began during MANDEM’s artist residency at Il Palmerino (Florence, Italy) and has since received multiple grants from the Ohio Arts Council, earned awards from organizations such as the Lippman Kanfer and Every Life Foundations, been selected for residencies at Negative Space and The Culture Palette, been presented at conferences such as the ICRE and AMS Invitational Symposium, and been published in literary journals and art magazines. Hypermobility has exhibited in Italy, England, Canada, and the United States.

[mythpunkart]

If you're in the Chicago area, please join Morpho Gallery for the 8th Annual Encaustic Exhibition, opening tonight (Friday, August 2 at 6pm). The show runs through the end of August.  Thanks to jurors Kathy Blankley Roman and Dan Addington (of Addington Gallery) for selecting our artist book Gift: Exegesis.

Here’s a blurb about this in the FSU Department of Art News.

[mythpunkart]

10th Annual May Show Video Walk-Through

Please enjoy this video walk-through of the 10th Annual May Show, hosted by Mary Urbas, director of The Gallery at Lakeland Community College. The exhibit is on display through 7/12.

Mandem's painting from the #MedicalTrialsoftheSaints series was selected as the #BestInShow by juror Mary Trapp Gray.

https://youtu.be/S8HwSE25gTU?t=1165 (Our work is featured at 19:25, but the entire video is very much worth watching!)

[mythpunkart]

Please enjoy some photos from our current work-in-progress painting in the Medical Trials of the Saints series.  You can see this WIP in person this coming Friday, 6/28, during Artful Cleveland Open Studios (Cleveland Heights, OH), part of the Final Fridays in Coventry Village event.  Our #Hypermobility series is also on display. 

Other places to see our work currently:

* Erie Art Gallery (Erie, PA), through Sunday, 6/30. We'll be there for the Closing Reception on 6/30 from 2-5pm along with the esteemed exhibit jurors: Hrag Vartanian and Sharon Louden. * The Gallery at Lakeland (Kirtland, OH), through Friday, 7/12. (We won #BestInShow.) Visit Lakeland Community College for gallery info. * Waterloo Arts Gallery (Cleveland, OH), through Saturday, 7/20. (We won the CAN Journal NEOH Artist Prize.) A great time to check out this exhibit is during the 2019 Waterloo Arts Fest on 6/29.

[mythpunkart]

CAN Journal Prize Awarded to MANDEM at Waterloo Arts Juried Exhibition

Published June 12, 2019

MANDEM received the NEOH Artist CAN Journal Prize for their painting “The Trials of St. Sebastian: Paion” at the 2019 Waterloo Arts Juried Exhibition in Cleveland, Ohio, juried by painter Anthony Mastromatteo.

The 2019 Waterloo Arts Juried Exhibition is on view from June 7 – July 20, 2019, coinciding with the 17th Annual Waterloo Arts Fest on June 29. The Waterloo Arts Gallery is located at 15605 Waterloo Rd. in the Collinwood neighborhood of Cleveland, OH.

“The Trials of St. Sebastian: Paion,” an oils and mixed media painting, is part of MANDEM’s Medical Trials of the Saints series that uses surrealistic elements to discuss medical trauma and regeneration by reimagining religious/mythical memes from art history. Another painting from this series won Best in Show at the 10th Annual May Show at the Gallery at Lakeland in Kirtland, OH which remains on display through July 12. Two additional paintings from this series are showing at the Erie Art Gallery in Erie, PA, through the end of June.

As part of the NEOH Artist CAN Journal Prize, MANDEM will be a featured artist in the fall edition of the award-winning publication from the Collective Arts Network.

MANDEM is a long-term studio resident at ARTFUL Cleveland, part of the Coventry P.E.A.C.E. Campus in Cleveland Heights, OH.