The Soap Factory Presents WORKING FORCES and MATHEW ZEFELDT: DESKTOP 11/12

The Soap Factory presents a group exhibition featuring the work of 13 emerging artists from across North America. Selected from The Soap Factory's annual open call for submissions juried by our Program Committee and curated by Jehra Patrick.

Working Forces assembles 10 projects from 13 artists which employ a range of ideologies from production and consumption, the professionalization of the artist, corporate identities, manual functions, languages of management, objects of labor, support structures, and art as industry. The 1960s heralded the notion that art work, in addition to the acts of making, also describes the occupation of the artist-as-producer, and yielded the term 'art worker.' Currently, artists continue to assert their voice not only as a working class, but as agents of social change amidst a new boom of increased entrepreneurship, professionalization, and artistic cooption. Conceived for the Soap Factory, in Minneapolis's post-industrial zone and home to Midwestern work ethic, the exhibition considers 'art as a place for work,' the workplace, and art's role in the making - and unmaking - of economic status, class, labor, gender, race, and social dynamics.

Participating artists:

Jack Pavlik
J. Myszka Lewis
Anna Campbell
Adam Caillier and Michael Mott
Katayoun Amjadi
The Shaft
Heather R. Buechler
Lindsay Foster & Mimi Cabell
Jordan Weber
Kameelah Rasheed

Located in our upstairs Galleries - One, Two, and Three

MATHEW ZEFELDT: DESKTOP

A forthcoming exhibition of paintings and installations by University of Minnesota Professor Mathew Zefeldt. This exhibition features paintings that are completely analog in terms of process, but that reflect our contemporary reality of screen culture. Operating as Director, Zefeldt works with a specific cast of characters: bricks, two-by-fours, statue heads, gradients, dutch still life paintings, paint rags, junk food, patterns, video game characters, gestural marks, and emojis in compositions inspired by smartphone home screens, desktop arrangements from personal computers and the aesthetics of image editing software.

Located in our new basement exhibition space, Gallery Four

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