Practical joy. Iowa Research Online. University of Iowa. Mary NaRee Laube University of Iowa. Theses and Dissertations.

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1 University of Iowa Iowa Research Online Theses and Dissertations Spring 2012 Practical joy Mary NaRee Laube University of Iowa Copyright 2012 Mary NaRee Laube This thesis is available at Iowa Research Online: Recommended Citation Laube, Mary NaRee. "Practical joy." MFA (Master of Fine Arts) thesis, University of Iowa, Follow this and additional works at: Part of the Art Practice Commons

2 PRACTICAL JOY by Mary NaRee Laube A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Fine Arts degree in Art in the Graduate College of The University of Iowa May 2012 Thesis Supervisor: Professor John Dilg

3 Copyright by MARY NAREE LAUBE 2012 All Rights Reserved

4 Graduate College The University of Iowa Iowa City, Iowa CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL MASTER S THESIS This is to certify that the Master s thesis of Mary NaRee Laube has been approved by the Examining Committee for the thesis requirement for the Master of Fine Arts degree in Art at the May 2012 graduation. Thesis Committee: John Dilg, Thesis Supervisor Isabel Barbuzza David Dunlap Susan White

5 To my late mother, Katherine Laube, who taught me strength, resilience, and unconditional love. To my dear friend, Megan Dirks, who will forever inhabit a warm place in my memory. ii

6 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES... iv INTRODUCTION PRACTICAL JOY HETERONOMOUS PAINTING iii

7 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. What Makes the Elephant Charge his Tusk? Peppermint Blueprint Practical Joy Preservation Hundreds of Leagues Away Slippage Frigid Polar Sea Hiding Place The Eve is Near Pretending to be One Mississippi Two Mississippi Practical Joy (Installation View) Practical Joy (Installation View) Practical Joy (Installation View) Practical Joy (Installation View) Practical Joy (Installation View) Practical Joy (Installation View) Practical Joy (Installation View) Practical Joy (Installation View) Practical Joy (Installation View) iv

8 22. Practical Joy (Installation View) Practical Joy (Installation View) Practical Joy (Installation View) v

9 1 INTRODUCTION I consider the home to be a container that not only shelters our physical bodies but also harbors our memories and daydreams. My work simultaneously embodies warmth and sterility to question the notion of absence and how a void emerges only to reveal the presence of something else. My work is an investigation of loss, where the exchange between searching and hiding is continually at play. I am attentive to my own sense of urgency to preserve memory while simultaneously being aware of the impossibility of such an endeavor. Although my work suggests vacancy (visually and metaphorically), art making provides me the opportunity to reimagine the void through an uncanny and sometimes painful confrontation with my own memories. I will be presenting my work in two parts. The first section is dedicated to recent paintings that comprise my M.F.A. thesis exhibition: Practical Joy. The second section will investigate Practical Joy as an installation. I will raise questions regarding the relationship between my paintings and the exhibition space in order to situate my work into a contemporary discourse.

10 2 PRACTICAL JOY The home is a place that recalls the past; the curve of a railing, the smell of carpet, or the color of light shining through a window perform as bookmarks in our memory. It is a location often cherished and loved by its inhabitants. It embodies the potency of nesting, birth, and safety. When the home experiences any form of adverse change, it has the potential to harbor tragedy. In such moments of augmentation, emotional contradictions occur, where the uncanny emerges through the conflation of both ease and discomfort. Once a place of refuge, the domestic habitat can transform into a complex world layered with haunted memories, projected contrivances, and mundane iteration. The title Practical Joy emerged from several emotional incongruities that are present in my work. The emptiness of each room, the congested architecture, the harshness of each edge, and the sparsely populated brush strokes render these spaces emotionally distant and sometimes cold. The color, altered perspectives, and various levels of abstraction implicate a sense of lightness, pleasure, and play. The following works employ the marriage of flattened abstraction and illusionistic space in order to represent the uncanny through the telling of my own personal narrative.

11 Figure 1. What Makes the Elephant Charge his Tusk? Acrylic and oil on panel, 24 x

12 Figure 2. Peppermint Blueprint. Acrylic and oil on panel, 24 x

13 Figure 3. Practical Joy. Acrylic and oil on panel, 24 x

14 Figure 4. Preservation. Acrylic and oil on panel, 36 x

15 Figure 5. Hundreds of Leagues Away. Acrylic and oil on panel, 24 x

16 Figure 6. Slippage. Acrylic and oil on panel, 24 x

17 Figure 7. Frigid Polar Sea. Acrylic and oil on panel, 24 x

18 Figure 8. Hiding Place. Acrylic and oil on panel, 24 x

19 Figure 9. The Eve is Near. Acrylic, oil, and contact paper on panel, 24 x

20 Figure 10. Pretending to be. Acrylic, oil, and contact paper on panel, 24 x

21 Figure 11. One Mississippi. Acrylic and oil on panel, 12 x

22 Figure 12. Two Mississippi. Acrylic and oil on panel, 12 x

23 15 HETERONOMOUS PAINTING Echoing has become an important aspect of my work, where characters, patterns, and gestures appear in several different iterations. I am interested in challenging the notion of the autonomous art object and am attempting to form relationships that exist within and beyond the borders of each work. The provocation of the frame s edge is a way to investigate the painting as an object that speaks to and from its exterior. One of my objectives is to challenge the boundaries that differentiate between the realms of painting and reality. Another objective is to question the exclusion of painting from the contemporary conversation of relational and interactive work that dismisses it as a non transitive art form. To begin this investigation I will treat the installation of my work within the gallery space as a recognized project on its own where gestures within the paintings are repeated in and on the architecture of the space itself. The frame of each painting is no longer clearly identified as the termination of the narrative; rather, each painting functions as a possible character that exists within the same world as the viewer. The following images represent the installation of my M.F.A. exhibition and my recent exploration of heteronomous painting.

24 Figure 13. Practical Joy (Installation View)

25 Figure 14. Practical Joy (Installation View)

26 Figure 15. Practical Joy (Installation View)

27 Figure 16. Practical Joy (Installation View)

28 Figure 17. Practical Joy (Installation View)

29 Figure 18. Practical Joy (Installation View)

30 Figure 19. Practical Joy (Installation View)

31 Figure 20. Practical Joy (Installation View)

32 Figure 21. Practical Joy (Installation View)

33 Figure 22. Practical Joy (Installation View)

34 Figure 23. Practical Joy (Installation View)

35 Figure 24. Practical Joy (Installation View)