a pdf of this press release

 CentralTrak: The University of Texas at Dallas Artist Residency
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Department of Communications
“Code Yellow Caution­Crisis­Critique: A curatorial exercise exploring systems of real and perceived warnings”
Date: April 12th ­ May 17th. Opening Reception: April 12th, 6:30pm­10pm
Location:
CentralTrak 800 Exposition Ave
Dallas, Texas
75226
Description
"Code Yellow", an exhibition being displayed in a joint show between the CentralTrak gallery and UTD Visual Arts Building,brings together six curators from various fields (art, journalism, network analysis, social activism) investigating issues of vulnerability, struggle and crisis. Works in the exhibition use humor, irony, empathy, direct or indirect action, data, graphic depiction, media manipulation, and social engagement to convey the various means humans express societal dilemma and moral anxiety. Kael Alford: Perceived Threat: The Texas Survivalists – Spike Johnson
Optic Nerve – by the women of Resolana, a program of Volunteer of America Texas. Co­curated by Jennifer
McNabb.
Mona Kasra: N0TABLE SELFLES$$ AFFECT – Andrew Blanton
Greg Metz: Caveat Emptor – curated selections by Kayla Escobedo,
Trenton Doyle Hancock, Gary Panter, Marian Henley, Mike
Presley
Laray Polk: Mazar, Texas – David Cotterrell
Max Schich: Creepy Figures – Didier Sornette
Janeil Engelstad: Zone of Resistance – Tom.š Rafa, Rudolf Sikora,
V.clav Vašků and Jana Želibsk.
Curators:
Kael Alford, http://photowings.org/?page_id=1822
American photojournalist and documentary photographer and videographer. She commenced her media career during the tumultuous wars in the Balkans between 1996 and 2003 that occurred with the fracturing of Yugoslavia. She documented the conflicts in the Middle East and the Iraq War (2003­2004) as unembedded journalist which gave her a different perspective than those who worked in conjunction with the American military. Her photographs from Iraq are included in the book Unembedded: Four Independent Photojournalists on the War in Iraq. She is a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University (2009) and has taught in the art department of Southern Methodist University (2011­2013). In 2011 she won the highly competitive Knight Luce Fellowship for Reporting on Global Religion.
Janeil Engelstad, http://www.janeilengelstad.net/map.434.html
The founder of MAP (Make Art with Purpose) and producer of the ‘Dallas MAP Project’, a festival and exhibition of projects that restore and preserve the environment, promote social justice, and advance human knowledge and well­being in the Dallas ­ Fort Worth metroplex. She is an internationally known Artist, lecturer, social practitioner, Fulbright Scholar and an advocate for critical cultural development through the arts. The MAP website, www.makeartwithpurpose.net includes open source, how­to plans for people to produce projects that lead to positive change in their own communities. Additional MAP initiatives include exhibitions, lectures, conferences and programs that inspire learning, creativity, hope and change.
Laray Polk, http://laraypolk.com/Laray_Polk.html A multimedia artist and writer living in Dallas. Her articles and investigative reports have appeared in the Dallas Morning News, D Magazine, and In These Times. As a 2009 grant recipient from The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute, she produced stories on the political entanglements and compromised science behind the establishment of a radioactive waste disposal site in Texas, situated in close proximity to the Ogallala Aquifer. Just published as Co­author with Noam Chomsky ‘Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe’
Mona Kasra http://monakasra.com/
Mona Kasra is a media artist, educator, and a PhD candidate at University of Texas at Dallas in Arts and Technology with a focus in Emerging Media & Communications. Her research is centered around the impact, power, and politics of the digital mage in the networked era. She is especially interested in ways by which digital images, coupled with social media technologies, reconstruct the extent of public awareness and action against unjust sociopolitical affairs around the world. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for Video Association of Dallas and has programmed, curated, and juried for several film festivals. Mona holds an M.F.A. in Video/Digital Art and has exhibited in numerous exhibitions both in gallery and online settings. She has also presented at several conferences including SXSW Interactive and SPE National Conference (The Society for Photographic Education), and in 2011, served as the Art Gallery Chair at SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques) in Vancouver, Canada.
Maxmillian Schich, http://www.schich.info/en/welcome.htm
Schich's current research focuses on Complex Networks in Art History and related disciplines. Looking at a number of large datasets he contributes to construct a new big picture, which is more independent from a priori artificial concepts like the traditional periods and wider than the often narrow focus of research. Max's approach is based on the fact that many key phenomena in Art History, ranging from classification to the development of visual motifs (Memnosyne), exhibit true complex network structure and dynamics. Results of his investigations will produce a further understanding of the History of Art, enable the evaluation of a wide array of database projects and provide a proof of concept for the study of the emerging Giant Global Graph of the Semantic Web. Besides his Ph.D. on 'Reception and Visual Citation as Complex Networks', Max has over a decade of experience as a research consultant working with semantic network data.
Greg Metz, http://www.gregmetzstudioart.com/
A social/political artist who works in various mediums, primarily sculptural installation in non traditional situations. He is currently working with Rick Lowe of ‘Project Row House’ on the ‘Nasher Xchange’ Project Trans.lation in Dallas.
Metz is a recipient of DMA’s ‘Otis Dozier Travel Grant’, NEA Warhol Rockefeller New Forms Initiative Grant, 3 times awarded Dallas Observer ‘s ‘Best of Dallas’ honors and winner of the Houston Art Car Parade for 3 consecutive years. Greg helped initiate ‘Project Teamwork’ Educational Initiative for the DMA and served as Lead Artist for DMA’s first ‘Visual Aids Day’ ,lead artist for the Dallas Master Plan’s first Public Arts Project. He was Co­founder and past president of D.A.R.E. , ‘Dallas Artist Research and Exhibitions, Co­founder of the ‘MAC’, McKinney Ave Contemporary and past co­chair of the Texas Sculpture Symposium. He teaches gallery and exhibition studies, interventionist art and serves as Gallery Coordinator at UTD where he has curated many exhibitions. He more recently founded ‘PAC­WE’ which organized and implemented one of Dallas’ first Flash Mob Art Actions ‘Making the Invisible Visible’, assembling a network of Artists in performing a dialogical intervention in the Dallas Arts District advocating for more healthcare options for artists. Mr. Metz has exhibited works nationally in a variety of venues including L.A.C.E. (Las Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions), National Mall in Washington D.C., Dallas Museum of Art, San Antonio Museum, Arlington Museum among others. Press Contact:
Shawn Mayer, (214) 702­9178
PRcentraltrak@gmail.com
PLEASE CONTACT FOR DOWNLOADABLE HIGH­RESOLUTION IMAGES
ABOUT CENTRALTRAK
CentralTrak, The University of Texas at Dallas Artists Residency, established in 2008, is dedicated to the creation, presentation, and advancement of the contemporary arts. As a live/work space for eight artists, it serves as a community center in the North Texas area for broad intellectual discourse around the arts. While the residency promotes artistic experimentation through its support of production, the companion gallery encourages critical engagement in a local urban context through exhibitions and related programs. By building on the forward­thinking academic resources of the School of Arts & Humanities at The University of Texas at Dallas, CentralTrak unites artists from an expansive range of creative disciplines to extend and challenge contemporary notions of artistic practice, creative expression, and the role technology plays in these processes.
CentralTrak is supported in part by the generosity of numerous donors and partners from the North Texas area and The University of Texas at Dallas.
PUBLIC INFORMATION
CentralTrak
Address: 800 Exposition, Dallas, TX 75226
Hours: Saturday 12:00 – 5:00 during exhibitions, tours available by appointment call (469) 232­7298.
Admission: Free
Visit our Website at www.CentralTrak.com for more information
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