Encounters on the Frontier: UPSIDEDOWNLAND

For Immediate Release:     7/14/2015          Contact: Andrew Purchin 831 345-5044 andrew@andrewpurchin.com

Encounters on the Frontier:      UPSIDEDOWNLAND

Everybody knows that we are right-side up and they are upside down.  Or is it the other way around?

Mohsin Shafi, Pakistan and Andrew Purchin, USA met by chance in 2011 in the digital cloud.  Through the cadences of their voices and the gestures of their bodies, the pair initiated a collaborative creative relationship, that contrasts the conflicts between their cultures and states. 

In 2014 the duo created an exhibit in Lahore, Pakistan which was entitled, Encounters on the Frontier.  Now with the spin of the globe, the world gets turned upside down.

The Residency:  July 23 – August 7  Go to www.andrewpurchin.com/news to find out about the open studio hours.  To be announced after July 23rd.

The Workshop:  Participants will be guided through experiences that will in part, inform Mohsin and Andrew’s new work and exhibit.     Sunday July 26th  2-4pm Free! Space is limited.  Register: Andrew@andrewpurchin.com

The Exhibition:  August 7 – August 16th.   Wednesday – Sunday 12-5pm or by appointment.

First Friday Reception:  August 7  6-9pm

Artists Talk and Reception:  Saturday August 15th 2-4PM

All events are at the Radius Gallery: 1050 River Street #127 Santa Cruz, CA 95060  - On the Tannery Art Center Campus (831) 706-1620  

Shafi Purchin, Wild Wild East West, 2014 Mixed Media on Canvas 12’ x 12”

The Game of Crustopoly, 2014 wooden frame, toy horses, string, Jolly Green Giant String Beans can,  Mitchell’s Chick Peas can,

 dirt and twigs from Santa Cruz and Lahore, dice with the words “Muslim,” “Jew,” “East,” “West,” “Brother,” “Sister.”

Two artists in search of the antidote to the growing absurdity in society and its ideologies.

Bios:  

Mohsin Shafi is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Lahore, Pakistan. He received his Masters Degree and BFA Degree, both from the oldest school of art in Pakistan, the National College of Arts in Lahore. He continues to serve his alma mater as visiting faculty in the MA Visual Art Department of Fine Arts. Shafi has showcased his work at some prominent galleries in Pakistan, he has also been part of some international shows in last few years. Among prominent practice/achievements Mohsin is an active member of the ‘Awami Art Collective’ (A group of artists & activists intervening the public space for the cause of peaceful co-existence & celebration of diversity. 

Shafi’s works are intricate, layered and complex. They make use of public access images from newspapers and magazines, photographs culled from the Internet, sewn together to form elaborate compositions that speak directly of the political milieu of his time. His solo project ‘Sadaism’, which was an adaptation of “Dadaism” texts and manifestos, reproduced almost exactly but with his local imagery was exhibited and found little tolerance and had to be shutdown within the two hours of public opening at a local gallery in Karachi, Pakistan because of its irreverent portrayals of political mandarins. The show had stimulating optics in the vein of hard-hitting caricatures and parodies like Jesus Charlie, the real wheeler-dealers of power were re-clothed with layers of collaged cutouts to reveal and image that was the sum of many ugly parts. 

Shafi’s work investigates the blurred edges between identity and the intentions of identity. With his collages, ensembles, video works and installations, He often engages ostensibly local narratives and challenges supposedly familiar images that have become established in the collective understanding. His collages create the fantasies of dream and phantasmagoria, while seamlessly synthesizing elements of pop-culture, surrealist thought, and pictorialism. The public and private merge into a single narrative much like the way in which Shafi fuses images and words. Through these images he probes the small spaces between lucidity and madness, intimacy and alienation, desire and ambivalence, the living and the absent.

Shafi was part of the Vasl Artists residency in 2010 in Karachi – Pakistan and was an artist in residence at the Rondo Studios, Graz; Austria in 2012. Besides being part of some major collector’s collection in Pakistan, His work is in permanent collection of The Museum of Sacred Art – MOSA in Belgium and been recently acquired by the Department of Book Art at the Mills College, San Francisco for their permanent collection. His work has been written on in local and international publications and been used as covers for the books by Agnar artúvertin, Martin Walser, Gabriel Rosenstock and others. 

Mohsin’s participation in selected exhibitions include “MileStone” at The Sanat initiatives, Karachi - Pakistan (2015) ; “Parrhesia” at Koel Gallery, Karachi - Pakistan (2015) ; “Alternative Methods” at Full Circle Gallery, Karachi - Pakistan (2015) ; “Forms of Devotion” at The Museum of Sacred Art, Radhadesh - Belgium (2015) ; “Manifesto” at Taseer Art Gallery, Lahore – Pakistan (2015) ; “India Art Fair” with ArtChowk the Gallery , Delhi – India (2015) ; “Sadaism” at The Sanat initiatives, Karachi - Pakistan (2014) ; “Bookish Intimacies” at A.Muse Gallery, San Francisco - USA (2014) ; “Close together” with Vbb Living room art, Houston - Texas (2014) ; “Encounters on the Frontiers” at the Zahoor al Akhlaq Gallery, National College of Arts, Lahore - Pakistan (2014) ; “Being with you and not being with you..” at the Twelve Gates Arts, Philadelphia - USA (2014) ; “The Circus” at Taseer Art Gallery, Lahore - Pakistan (2014); “Misaf film festival” at The Living Arts Centre, Mississauga - Canada (2014) ; “Stet”,  Lahore Literary Festival at Alhamra Art Council, Lahore - Pakistan (2014) ; “Punjab Art council Show at Alhamra Art Council, Lahore - Pakistan (2013) ; “Picture Perfect” at ArtChowk Gallery, Karachi - Pakistan (2013) ; “Somewhere Else” at DrawingRoom Gallery, Lahore - Pakistan (2012) ; “Alien Autopsy” at Kuntra La Kunsthre, Graz - Austria (2012) ; “Surfaces” at Rondo Studios Graz -Austria (2012) ; “The Noose” at Canvas Gallery, Karachi - Pakistan (2012) ; “Dirt Under my Nails” at Khaas Gallery, Islamabad - Pakistan (2012) ; “Letters to Taseer” at Drawing Room Gallery, Lahore - Pakistan (2012) ; “Degree show” at Zahoor-ul-Ikhlaq Gallery, National College of Arts, Lahore (2012) ; “Categorical Inaccuracy” at Vasl, Karachi - Pakistan (2010) ; “Lakh War Sadkay” at Alhamra Art Gallery, Lahore - Pakistan (2010) ; “Art Trail” at Phizz Fest Phibsborough Arts Festival, Dublin - Ireland (2010) ; “Beneath the Surface” at Rohtas 2, Lahore - Pakistan (2010) ; “Exposed” at The Ireland Institute, Dublin - Ireland ; among many others.

 Andrew Purchin is an interdisciplinary artist who practices painting, performance and psychotherapy.  Born and raised in Studio City, California Purchin started painting seriously when he was 16. His father made educational films and this influenced Purchin’s painting practice which is almost anthropological in that he paints the movement of what is in front of him.  Purchin often makes his studio be at sites where something significant has happened.

In the last twenty years, Purchin has been painting on site, be it landscapes or at events such as weddings, memorials or at historical moments.  Purchin puts himself in the middle of things, capturing the movement and the mood. Purchin has created on site paintings at the 2009 and 2013 Presidential Inaugurations, the “We Are One” concert in Washington DC and at TEDx Santa Cruz in 2014. 

In 2010, Purchin founded the “Artists Everywhere Project” in which he installs artists who create work in public so as to shift the paradigm so that art-making will be as popular as the playing of sports and the shopping for things. These efforts have developed into “The Creative Witnessing Project”—making art at sites of tension, conflict and violence.

Purchin collaborated with artist Lisa Hochstein in 2011 to create “Doings and Undoings” a day-long performance installation at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, MAH involving on site painting and tearing and manipulating a 1000 foot roll of paper.

At the same time Purchin campaigned for the making of art everywhere by everybody and made art in public at the Republican and the Democratic national conventions in the summer of 2012.  He organized “A Thousand Artists: A Public Art-Making Installation” at the 2013 Presidential Inauguration in which over a hundred people made art amongst the spectators and was featured in numerous media outlets including the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Post and KQED radio’s California Report.

In 2011 Purchin began a collaborative art making friendship with Pakistani Artist -Mohsin Shafi via the Internet: creating portraits via skype, videos, installations and collages.  In May of 2014 the two met in person for the first time to create the exhibit “Encounters on the Frontier,” at the Zahoor-al-Akhlaq Gallery at the National College of Arts in Lahore, PakistanPurchin recently received a grant from Arts Council Santa Cruz to create Part II of “Encounters on the Frontier” with Mohsin Shafi at the Radius Gallery in July of 2015. 

Purchin has been an artist in residence with The Fields Project on two occasions in which he lived on farms in Ogle County, Illinois sharing his art process with the farmers as he painted scenes from their lives. Purchin’s work has been published in American Artist, in the Santa Cruz Cultural Council Calendar for 2007-2008 and most recently in the Catamaran Literary Reader (issue six). Purchin was awarded a partial fellowship to Vermont Studio Center where he was artist in residence in 2005. Purchin’s work has been exhibited and honored in many venues including the office of California State Senator Bill Monning, The Triton Museum in Santa Clara, Lana Santorelli Gallery in NYC (Chelsea), The Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, the Santa Cruz Art League, The Santa Cruz Institute of Contemporary Arts, Sanchez art center and Atelier Gallery. Purchin has been juried into Santa Cruz County Open Studios Art Tour for ten years.

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Andrew Purchin                 831) 345-5044   andrew@andrewpurchin.com