Shannon Estlund: 2013 Graduate Thesis | Minneapolis College of Art and Design

Shannon Estlund: 2013 Graduate Thesis

A studio practice is the site where my search for meaning becomes physical.  Through the act of making work, the intangible can be dragged into the physical world in order to investigate it more profoundly.

My encounters with specific places are distilled into their most essential insights and, through process and manipulation, these insights are dissected, rearranged, and experimented with, all toward the singular purpose of coming toward some deeper -- though perhaps complex and incomplete -- understanding.

My paintings and sculptures focus on environments and the relationship between the individual and place. The ‘Middle of Nowhere’ is an outdoor installation that oscillates between interior and exterior, and between public and private space.

Similarly, my abstract painted landscapes invite explorations of spaces that are complicated to physically or visually navigate, yet with the potential for discovery. Through the use of extraordinary elements and spatial confusion they examine the indeterminate, unexplainable, and unknowable. My work is both a metaphorical “call to adventure,” and a means of subverting the more obvious value structures of capitalism, mass culture, and mechanized society by proposing the possibility of alternatives.

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