MAEP Artist Talks: Emmett Ramstad and Lindsay Rhyner

Join us on Thursday, February 18, at 7 p.m. to hear Emmett Ramstad and Lindsay Rhyner discuss their MAEP shows.

Emmett Ramstad: Touching Each Other
Ramstad’s work explores the intimate ordinary. Shaped by an interest in queer archival practices, his sculptures originate from collections of donated objects, such as toothbrushes, socks, and underwear, and become minimalist monuments to bodies and their detritus. His exhibition detaches grooming from the realm of the private and the domestic into the communal. Ramstad’s exhibition includes darning lessons in the Period Rooms and a daily sock-sorting in the gallery.

Lindsay Rhyner: Material Worlds
Rhyner’s textile wall hangings are loosely based on found-photographs and postcards from the 1940s. The imagery depicted in the postcards and photographs is of a seemingly idyllic time. Pictures of exotic places, agriculture, war, tourism, and monuments were rendered in oversaturated color and rigid composition—a window to a perfect world that never existed. By translating these worlds into fabric and using reflective materials, like sequins, reflective fabrics, and rhinestones, Rhyner forces us to look beyond the frozen image and to take a closer look at the materiality of the wall hangings themselves.