Periodically, BRIC invites artists and arts professionals to create a Short List of some of their favorite artists in the BRIC Contemporary Artist Registry curated around a common theme.

The artworks chosen here represent an exploration of order and chaos. Complex scientific systems or the analysis of everyday data serve as a starting point to understand, organize, and embrace that which is out of our control. Systematically exploring various perspectives, these works express a need to find order in chaos across nature and culture.

Julie Tremblay uses lit and colored aluminum mesh to create sculptures that reference her interest in chaos and control. With an eye on fractal geometry and quantum mechanics, she looks for repeated patterns around her as a means to investigate elements of chance and control in her work.

Rachel Wren's paintings explore a tangible presence of atmospheric properties, expressing through her process fundamental particles that compose all matter. These compositions suggest "the universal duality between structure and randomness, order and chaos, the known and the unknown."

Valerie Hallier explores the process of exhaustive study in all of its absurdity and beauty. In this installation, she cataloged every object she owned over ten years in a systematic and hierarchal process. This desire to understand and obsessively order the world around her suggests a seemingly sensical and practical human need, while also conjuring ideas around identity and isolation.

Julie Kamlesh Kumar's work explores systems, disrupted rule structures, and selforganization. She often builds immersive environments activated by light that draw attention to the ephemeral and permeable systems affecting her materials. This installation provides various levels of visibility, drawing attention to elements of chance and perception in understanding our environment.

Sui Park's work considers our surroundings from various perspectives through exploring the transformative quality of her materials and spaces. In Blue Print, there is an eerie meeting of nature and culture in which seemly alive and organic forms intrude upon and mimic the man-made.

Elizabeth Fonacier's painting considers our unique perceptions of reality and the human experience. Her interest in quantum theory acts as a starting point in which she considers paint an illusionary substance, influenced by our awareness of its presence. Through her process she draws attention to our individual truths versus illusions as it relates to the natural world.

Ian Cohcran's work explores the layers and structures that compose all objects and matter. Through the formation of his sculptures, he references the physical properties we are all bound to by the universe, and our relationship to objects and space around us.

James Clar looks to our perceptions of culture and identity as a result of media and technology. This piece is one of three sculptures which visualize the trajectory of the bullets that killed Malcolm X, King Faisal, and Amadou Diallo. In this way each seemingly chaotic moment is reduced to mathematical terms.

Lisa M Kellner explores the relationship between abstract forms in nature and manmade objects. She finds inspiration in everything from mold growing over subway tiles to subdivisions carved out of farmland. Her painting process alternates control over spontaneity of wet paint, a relationship she describes as being "between dominance and coexistence."

Natalia A Zubko uses sensory, transformative and ephemeral materials such as light and every day materials that reference the natural, micro, and cosmic world. She imaginatively reuses straws and light in this case, creating an organic object that is also structured and deliberate.  

About the Short List Curator

Kelly Schroer is an arts professional based in New York. She holds an MA in Contemporary Art from Sotheby's Institute in London, and has worked in commercial and non-profit art institutions in Europe and New York. Most recently Kelly was the recipient of the 2014 BRIC Emerging Curator Fellowship, and has also programmed a series of events titled "Art Jam," in which artists present a collaborative project rooted in both visual art and sound. Her next curatorial project will take place at Cuchifritos Gallery next Spring.