UC Berkeley's Master of Fine Arts graduates invite viewers to slow down, breathe deeply, and take their time at this exhibition of video, sculpture, drawing, painting, collage, and photography.

Berkeley, CA, April 23, 2007 - The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) presents fer·ma·ta: The 37th Annual University of California, Berkeley Master of Fine Arts Graduate Exhibition, on view from May 18 through June 10. This exhibition is part of a tradition that has continued for almost forty years, in which M.F.A. graduates have the opportunity to present their work in the museum galleries and, in the process, gain valuable experience working in a professional museum setting.

fer·ma·ta takes its title from a musical term for a pause of unspecified length. It is the artists' way of reminding visitors that they should slow down, take a deep breath, and devote their time to the act of looking. The seven artists featured in the exhibition are Lindsay Benedict, Ali Dadgar, Kara Hearn, Bill Jenkins, Alicia McCarthy, Joe McKay, and Jenifer K. Wofford.

Kara Hearn and Jenifer K. Wofford draw upon some of the most familiar forms of popular culture in their work. Hearn explores the high drama of blockbuster films by creating fictional vignettes in which she is the star. Wofford uses the conventions of comics and graphic novels in her drawings that share immigrants' experiences with a larger audience.

Ali Dadgar's large-scale mixed media collages combine the universal with the personal, playing with ideas of inclusion and exclusion in the context of his own Iranian background. The personal also features in Alicia McCarthy's paintings - in which she interweaves painted lines to suggest interconnectedness of her interactions with others - and in Lindsay Benedict's photographic essay of "silent conversations." Bill Jenkins creates objects that are somewhere in between sculpture and drawings, often resembling relics that have been unearthed from a forgotten landscape. Joe McKay works in photography and video to create digital interventions in the urban landscape, which he presents through a utopian or dystopian lens.

Public Program

Artists' Talks
Sunday, May 20, 3 p.m.
Gallery 3
Each of the artists featured in fer·ma·ta will speak informally about their work, and answer questions from museum visitors.

About BAM/PFA
The UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) aims to inspire the imagination and ignite critical dialogue through contemporary and historical art and film, engaging audiences from the campus, Bay Area community, and beyond. BAM/PFA is one of the largest university art museums in the United States in both size and attendance, presenting fifteen art exhibitions and five hundred film programs each year. The museum's collection of more than 15,000 works includes exceptional examples of mid-twentieth-century painting, including important works by Hans Hofmann, Jackson Pollock, Eva Hesse, and Mark Rothko, as well as historical and contemporary Asian art, early American painting, Conceptual and contemporary international art, and California and Bay Area art. The PFA film and video collection now includes the largest group of Japanese films outside of Japan, as well as impressive holdings of Soviet silents, West Coast avant-garde cinema, seminal video art, rare animation, Central Asian productions, Eastern European cinema, and international classics.

Credit Line
The annual MFA exhibition at BAM/PFA is made possible by the Barbara Berelson Wiltsek Endowment.

The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Additional support is provided by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Koret Foundation, the Bernard Osher Foundation, Packard Humanities Institute, the Henry Luce Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Columbia Foundation, the Christensen Fund, the William H. Donner Foundation, San Francisco Foundation, Gap Inc., other private foundations and corporations, and our individual donors and members. Major endowment support has been provided by the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation and by George Gund III.

Gap Inc. is proud to support First Impressions: Free First Thursdays at BAM/PFA. For more information about Free First Thursday gallery tours and screenings visit our website at bampfa.berkeley.edu.

Museum Information

Location: 2626 Bancroft Way, just below College Avenue near the UC Berkeley campus.

Gallery and Museum Store Hours:
Wednesday and Friday to Sunday, 11 to 5; Thursday, 11 to 7. Closed Monday and Tuesday.

Admission:
General admission is $8; admission for seniors, disabled persons, non–UC Berkeley students, and young adults (13 – 17) is $5; admission for BAM/PFA members, UC Berkeley students, staff and faculty, and children under 12 is free; admission for group tours is $3 per person (to arrange a group tour, call [510] 642-5188). Admission is free on the first Thursday of each month.

Information:
24-hour recorded message (510) 642-0808; FAX (510) 642-4889; TDD (510) 642-8734

Website: bampfa.berkeley.edu

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