Level Up: Main Gallery

May 8 - June 17, 2023
M-F: 10:00 am-7:00pm
Sat: 10:00 am-4:00 pm

Opening Reception: Saturday, May 13, 5-8 pm
Artist & Curator Talk: Saturday, June 3, 2023, 2-4 pm

Featured Artists: Kelsey Bogdan, Claudia Cappelle, Marie Gauthiez, Boram Kim, Lindsay Mueller, Sookkyung Park, Elaine Qiu, Jill McCarthy Stauffer, Amelie Wang, Jiazi Yin, Tara Youngborg

Level Up spotlights the work of early-career visual artists from across the Mid-Atlantic region by presenting the work of current and recent students. Eleven artists were selected through a competitive jurying process from four area institutions: American University (Marie Gauthiez, Lindsay Mueller, Jiazi Yin), Maryland Institute College of Art (Jill McCarthy Stauffer, Amelie Wang), Towson University (Claudia Cappelle, Sookkyoung Park, Tara Youngborg), and the University of Maryland (Elaine Qiu), along with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Bo Kim) and Columbia College Chicago (Kelsey Bogdan).

When viewing a collection of work, we search for common threads among the artists as part of the human instinct for categorization. The artists represented here are learning and creating in a specific time and place, which can incubate certain styles or ideas. Still, they come from different backgrounds and generations, and that common thread can prove elusive. At a glance, the quality overwhelmingly present among the painters in the exhibition is a sense of abstract architectural space, as exemplified by Every Today at Sundown, 2022, by Marie Gauthiez. Amelie Wang’s interior scenes suggest a conflict between external and internal stimuli. In Untitled, 2022, a pair of figures sit together while the room around them simultaneously overlaps and evaporates.