Date/Time
Date(s) - 06/21/2019
5:00 pm until 9:30 pm
Location
Silo City
Categories
This is an ongoing installation in collaboration with Silo City
[Featured image is a detail shot of “A Millimeter of Space” by Justina Dziama]
Opening Reception Friday June 21, 2019 – 5:00-7:00pm, VIP Reception; 7:00-9:30pm, General Admission
Buffalo Arts Studio Summer Solstice at Silo City is an immersive arts event at the historic Silo City, in Buffalo, New York through an exciting partnership between Buffalo Arts Studio and Silo City.
Buffalo Arts Studio Summer Solstice at Silo City features six site-specific installations by regional and national artists, including Avye Alexandres, Brandon Geissmann, Justina Dziama, Landon Moreis, Michael Camillaci, and Sara Svisco, and rhizomedas xxx: a collaboration between ALM (Andrea Lee McCullough) and SXZ (Stephen X. Zimmerer).
The installations are designed to interact with the two buildings at the north-eastern tip of the site; the Perot Grain Elevator and Malt House. The installations are both inside and outside of the two main structures and artists have taken into special consideration the changing sunlight that moves over and across the site on the longest days of the year. The six artworks from the exhibition will remain on the Silo City site, enduring or deteriorating as part of the living arts and architectural experience embedded in this reclaimed industrial site.
Projects are spread throughout the Silo City complex. Guests will be met by the playful rhizomedas xxx’s Solstice Field; a series of kinetic, moving pennants whose translucence will cast new patterns and colors on the ground. Brandon Geissmann dispersed various textual interventions throughout the site and inside both historic buildings. The text oscillates between visible and invisible as it reflects its surroundings, mimicking the colors and features composing the architecture of Silo City.
Inside the Malt House, Landon Moreis and the artistic duo of Michael Camillaci and Sara Svisco explore spatial intervention within the context of the 1907 building originally used for malting barley. Camillaci and Svisco capture solar rays as colorful cords while Landon Moreis creates floating fiber rings that draw viewers’ attention up into the five-story structure. On the exterior of the malt House, Avye Alexandres’ installation uses mirrors angled at various degrees and hung at a variety of heights in an effort to visually splice sky within the building’s brick facade.
Inside the Perot Grain Elevator, Justina Dziama has hung a series of latex shrouds cast from the building’s facade to speak about industrial disintegration. By isolating the evidence of a material’s transformation, each sheet provides viewers a new way to relate to the junction between the natural and the industrial.
About the artists:
Avye Alexandres (Buffalo, NY)
Avye Alexandres was born in Athens, Greece, and moved to the United States at the age of six. Her work investigates the psychological ramifications of structures and space. Evolving from a background in photography, and theatre, her work encompasses immersive sculpture, locative media, and experimental digital narratives. In 2015 she graduated with an MFA in Art and Emerging Practices from the University at Buffalo and was the 2016 recipient of the Oseroff Memorial Purchase Award from Roswell Park Cancer Institute and CEPA Gallery. She has exhibited nationally and at venues such as the Burchfield Penney Art Center, The Soap Factory, and the Weismann Art Museum.
Brandon Giessmann (Calgary, Alberta)
Brandon Geissmann is a Canadian visual artist and writer who explores trauma, identity, and memory. His work frequently addresses how these concepts intersect, compound, and respond to privilege. He recently graduated from Alberta University of the Arts with a BFA specializing in Print Media + Illustration, and is pursuing his MFA at the University at Buffalo. Currently his practice addresses generational discrepancies in knowledge and sexual education, the lingering effects of the (ongoing) AIDS crisis, and considers the roles institutions have played in the conservation and preservation of these histories.
Justina Dziama (Buffalo, NY)
Justina Dziama is a recent graduate of the International Media Architecture Master Studies Program at the Bauhaus Universitat Weimar and the Masters of Architecture Program at the University at Buffalo. She has collaborated with media artist Stanzi Vaubel producing drawings and fabricating inflatable performance spaces for the Indeterminacy Festival and has gained professional experience in the field of architecture with the office Davidson Rafailidis, assisting with the production of stop motion animations exhibited at the Harbourfront Centre in Toronto, Cinema Ideal at the Lisbon Architecture Triennale, and BIO:50 the 2th Biennale of Design in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Landon Moreis (Buffalo, NY)
Landon Moreis was born and raised in Attica, New York and now resides in Buffalo, New York. He is currently studying Fiber Arts and Apparel Design at SUNY Buffalo State, with a focus on installation art and runway garment production. Moreis is best known for his gravity-defying, hand-stitched, fibrous sculptures that are created entirely out of recycled jersey knit t-shirts. His pieces have been exhibited at the Czurles-Nelson Gallery. Moreis is the recipient of the “John Jauquet Craft Art Design Award”, the “Arts and Humanities Dean’s Entrepreneurship Award”, and the “Nancy Belfer Fiber Design Award.”
Michael Camillaci and Sara Svisco (Buffalo, NY)
Michael and Sara are graduates of the State University of New York at Buffalo and each hold a Masters in Architecture. Their background is largely focused on the design of experiential forms and spaces; using innovative materials and methods, they have designed architectural installations that elevate a user’s connection with their surroundings. Collectively, their expertise is focused on ecological design and is rooted in an awareness of the measurable consequences of our actions on the environment, particularly in contemporary building techniques.
rhizomedas xxx: a collaboration between ALM and SXZ (Philadelphia, PA)
SXZ (Stephen X. Zimmerer) and ALM (Andrea Leigh McCullough) are a collaborative artist team focused on the power of design to spark interaction, deliver unfamiliar experience, and tell stories of transformative togetherness. The team directs rhizomedas xxx, a design collective dedicated to creating and curating interdisciplinary artwork and design. Based digitally, the pair maintains a collaborative space online, drawing together regularly in a shared language cultivated by seven years of collaboration and friendship. In its first season of work, rhizomedas xxx muses upon human separateness—and how multi-species kinship, kinetics, and interaction can bridge divides of separation—through speculative garden design.
Michael Camillaci and Sara Svisco, “Solis”(detail), 2019.
Justina Dziama, “A Millimeter of Space” (detail), 2019.
rhizomedas xxx: a design collective, “Untitled (Solstice Field)”, 2019.