Saturday, May 14, 2022

2022 Syracuse MFA Thesis Exhibition: Steady/Retcon
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

"Steady/Retcon" is a part of a multi-venue exhibition divided among three Syracuse University exhibition spaces and featuring 27 artists. This location features the work of Studio Arts, Film and Media Arts, and Design Master of Fine Arts thesis candidates.

Traditionally a literary and cinematic technique, retcon is the abbreviation of retroactive continuity and means a new piece of information introduced to a story that alters the interpretation of a previously established narrative. Although it is a word infrequently used, it is omnipresent. Retcon is not just employed in a fictional context, read in a book, or viewed on a screen, but experienced in the world around us. In the current climate, we are absorbing new information constantly (like it or not!), and it is challenging the way we see everything — day to day, hour to hour. Our internal database is developing at record speed. What was recognized as commonplace merely a year ago is being reexamined, and at times, by the entire world in unison.

The artists in this exhibition are evaluating and reframing their personal histories, traditional standards of art-making, and history as a whole. While in everyday life, the constant introduction of so-called facts and opinions appear erratic, the investigations held within the artworks in the exhibition are much more intentional, slower-paced, steady. They are careful and curious assessments removed from the web of media and into meticulously-presented ideas.

Here we have two applications of retcon — one that refers to the daily and ever-changing knowledge that we receive, and one that reflects the new details put forth by these artists through their work that will alter our perceptions. However small, each bit of information sets into motion a new interpretation of our environment, past, present, and future.