Field Station: Kathryn Andrews is organized by the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University and curated by Steven L. Bridges, Associate Curator. Support for this exhibition is provided by the MSU Federal Credit Union.
About the Exhibition
Los Angeles–based artist Kathryn Andrews (b. 1973) presents two new sculptures that reflect upon the current political climate in the United States. Constructed for the museum’s unique gallery spaces, Andrews’s works mine and meld the cultural histories of Hollywood, superhero comics, and twentieth-century art into a new mashed-up fictitious narrative. Her works also nod to the supporting role the MSU Broad played in the Hollywood movie Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) as a dramatic set. Instead of featuring the two famous protagonists, however, Andrews’s installation positions the viewer as both actor and interlocutor in a drama involving “the individual” and “the state.”
Field Station
Field Station is an annual cycle of projects that features work by artists at different moments in their careers. With a particular focus on new terrain, whether new work or a new direction in an artist’s practice, the series emphasizes the importance of research by offering a space for artists to develop ideas that may be in the early stages of conception or articulation. Field Station approaches art as a complex language that involves many forms and draws upon different disciplines, from engineering, physics, and agriculture to literature, history, and technology. The notion of a field station specifically points to the importance of experimentation and the idea of the museum as software—a flexible structure that is constantly expanding beyond its walls (the hardware), wherein artists are encouraged to collaborate across disciplines at Michigan State University. The exhibitions change every two months, allowing six artists to participate in each year’s program. At the end of each cycle, a publication will be produced to report the “findings” from the Field Station. The series is curated by Carla Acevedo-Yates and Steven L. Bridges, Associate Curators.
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