Artists: Alex Jansen, Brandon Monkwood, Evelyn Hang Yin, Lisa Segal
Curator: Momo (Yuntong) Wu

Connecting Perspectives
May 8, 2021 through May 30, 2021

The Progress Gallery is pleased to present, “Connecting Perspectives” an exhibition hosted in conjunction with the Sasse Museum. The exhibition includes four interdisciplinary artists with the backgrounds in archaeology, poetry, social science, and instrument-furniture design. The artists incorporate their knowledge and research with the artworks, manifesting dynamic perspectives and alternative interpretations on art. The exhibiting works in diverse forms incorporate sculpting, documenting, writing, composing, and societal investigation methodologies, which reveals the connection between multiple subjects and the logic of ideations. 

As contemporary art has been consolidated by different studies and methods, the artwork questions the definition of the boundary of art. This exhibition will examine the traditional expectation of fine art and the significance of institutional art training. Artists with multi-disciplinary backgrounds and supportive resources reveal the interaction between comprehensive study and practice, and the depth, breadth, and diversification of art.

Alex Jansen is an archaeologist, anthropologist, and artist. Alex is currently working at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. He has published, taught, exhibited, and worked nationally and internationally. His research focuses on our connection to the natural and cultural world through photography, art, illustration, and digital media. Alex uses his work as a research tool to create and explore environments in which we can experience the natural and cultural world. He is currently working on a number of publications on his research.

Brandon Monkwood Apart from building skate ramps as a kid, Brandon began woodworking while attending Otis College of Art and Design in the late 90's, but Brandon didn't learn in class. Brandon worked in a small LA furniture shop to pay my room rent. “I soon worked my way up from a 'sander' to shop supervisor. After college, I started doing custom woodwork on my own, taking nearly every commission that came my way. I built beds, bookcases, cabinets, armoires, signs and even did large painted murals. These early experiences provided me with a wide artistic arsenal that still benefits my work to this day.”

Evelyn Hang Yin Evelyn Hang Yin is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Los Angeles. Working with photography, video, text, and installation, Yin investigates how her personal experience moving between China and the U.S. informs her cultural identity. Her work is invested in issues of race, gender, history, place/displacement, and collective memory. Evelyn received a BA in Political Science and Media Studies from University of California, Berkeley and an MFA in Photography and Media from California Institute of the Arts. She was the Media and Production Fellow for Arts in a Changing America, and the Research and Archive Fellow for Hanford China Alley Preservation Society. She is a recipient of the Allan Sekula Social Documentary Fund and an alumna of the Signal Fire Wide Open Studios Program. She spoke at the 2019 Chinese American Women in History Conference in Washington D.C.

Lisa Segal “I am a Los Angeles artist and poet. In my artwork, I’m interested in the geometrics of primary shapes, but within elaborate systems of my own construct. My squares, cubes, text elements, and occasional crows, exist in the realm of multiples, in that territory where similar objects are different and different objects are similar. Working with paper elements, I set paper’s sensual nature — its fragility, strength, and response to moisture — against the rigidity and predictiveness of grids.

 I introduce chance and chaos by drawing grids over painted surfaces or employing paper with common logic systems—sometimes ledger sheets salvaged from used accounting books or digital prints of typographical elements created from phrases of my poetry. This creates unpredictable, complex surface patterns. I also build with the shapes left after I cut into the prints of my typographical elements and paper cubes. My grid/square/cube-and-typography series contrasts the sensibility of common patterning systems with the color and improvisation of my surfaces. The grid lines and cube patterns of my process often remain visible in my finished pieces. My work explores similarity versus variety, a generic cube versus a unique cube, shape versus pattern, and the progressive relationship of squares to grids to cubes.”