Walker Art Center's Teen Arts Council Presents Teen-Curated Hot Art Injection IV Exhibition at the Soap Factory
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Walker Art Center's Teen Arts Council Presents Teen-Curated Hot Art Injection IV Exhibition at the Soap Factory

“Everyone needs their fix of Hot Art Injection IV and this year’s Teen Arts Council delivers maximum effect. A salad bowl of media and a hot plate of artists, this year’s work is like a potluck: diverse and multidimensional. From installation to claymation, bronze statues to rap performers, the show assembles the best work of adolescent artists in the state. With an art injection as exciting as this, get it while it’s still hot.” —Laura Gantebein, WACTAC member

From July 1 through August 13, the Walker Art Center’s Teen Arts Council (WACTAC) presents the fourth installment of the exhibition Hot Art Injection at the Soap Factory in Minneapolis. The exhibition, curated by members of WACTAC, highlights a range of art, from paintings, sculptures, and photo-illustrations to spoken word and music.

Nick Lalla has one regret about helping curate the 2000 teen art show Hot Art Injection while a member of the Teen Arts Council: not including the Lego dinosaurs. That year, WACTAC considered more than 300 works submitted by area teen artists, from “hardcore Eva Hesse–looking things with latex” to works that featured Barbie parts, American flags, and pieces of meat. But one that didn’t make the cut, despite Lalla’s fierce lobbying, was a series of “insanely intricate Lego dinosaurs” made by a 13-year-old. Some argued it was particularly gifted craft, but not art, while others saw it as wry conceptualism. “We ended up being too arty for our own good,” he laments.

Now 22 and a recent graduate from the New School in New York, Lalla is an intern in the Walker’s Education and Community Programs Department, where he can observe a new group of WACTAC curators organize the fourth Hot Art Injection. During several marathon curating sessions in April and May, WACTAC members sorted through slides, audio and video clips, and digital images of artwork submitted by teen artists in the metro area. Through open voting and boisterous debate, the group arrived at the final selections for the show.

But what they choose and what’s delivered to the Soap Factory for installation can be wildly different, says Lalla. Slides don’t always accurately represent the art’s scale or materials. In one instance, he says, “We thought we were accepting a portrait of somebody’s indie-rock boyfriend, but when we got it, it was a painting of Thom Yorke from Radiohead cut out of Rolling Stone with some background texture added in.” The same is true of one of this year’s more challenging works, a piece that, if the slides are a proper indication, depicts two girls fashioned from cardboard and stitched-on fabric, with faces drawn with pencil. “Man, it was creepy,” says Emmanuel Mauleon, a four-year WACTAC member and recent graduate of St. Paul Open School. “I was fighting for it; it was like David and Goliath. I said, ‘Obviously, we’ve been talking about this for 20 minutes, so there’s something about this that people will connect with.’ “

Sparking interest—or controversy—is part of the teens’ goal to present a diverse representation of how young artists in the area see the world. Sometimes this aim means overcoming personal tastes to look at technical skill or ways that a work might relate to others in the exhibition or the Soap Factory galleries. In the age of digital reproduction, several works stood out, including hand-thrown pottery and traditional photography, simply because of the technical proficiency of their makers. Kate McDonald, a WACTAC member who attends St. Paul Academy, was impressed by a photo that at first glance looked like it was digitally manipulated. “It was a double-exposure of this girl, and her face was a flower,” she says. “I was blown away that it wasn’t Photoshopped. I probably wouldn’t have been as impressed if it had been done in two seconds on a computer.”

Mauleon, who’s seen the Soap Factory’s gritty environs transformed into a showcase for previous Hot Art Injection installations, insists that it’ll be, like the space itself, specific to this area. “It’ll have a Midwestern funk to it,” he promises. Witt Siasoco, Walker teen programs manager, says the exhibition serves teen artists by providing a “professional and unpatronizing” way to exhibit new art. In terms of what visitors to the show will experience, he says this art is “as contemporary as can be. Teenage artists are reacting to what is happening on the news, what’s happening in pop culture. From a rapper describing life on the north side to customized Nikes, this art takes the pulse of the culture. In that sense, these artists aren’t so different from the ones featured in the Walker galleries.”

The Soap Factory is located at 518 Second Street SE, Minneapolis (www.soapfactory.org).

List of Artists

Michael Aitken, International Falls
Lilly Ball, Minneapolis
Christopher Betchell, Excelsior
Grant Bielfeld, Robbinsdale
Mickey Bloom, St. Louis Park
Ellie Bryan, Minneapolis
Noelle Bullock
Paula Carley, Victoria
Christine Cole, Virginia
Bridget Collins, Minneapolis
Javier Corral
Flannery Cunningham, St. Cloud
Solveig Elinghue, Woodbury
Shaka Farr, Minneapolis
Meagan Finnegan, Pine Island
Ashley Fleck, St. Paul
Jose Franco
Geoff Freeman, St. Paul
Laura Gantenbein, Minneapolis
Carson Giblette, Savage
Patrick Goggin, Arden Hills
Vlad Gruin, Hopkins
Peter Hagerty, South St. Paul
James Hart, South St. Paul
Whitney Hazelmyer, Minneapolis
Jessie Ingvalson, Caledonia
Sylvia Ezra Izabella, Chaska
Shannon Joyce, St. Paul
Juxtaposition Arts, Minneapolis
Ariel Kagan, St. Paul
Sean Keith, St. Paul
Jacob Adam Kersting, Prior Lake
James Kleiner, Plymouth
Dustin Kleingartner, St. Paul
Ariel Knutson, Minneapolis
Minha Lee, Savage
Emily Lemanczykafka, St. Paul
Brita Light, St. Anthony
Kim Lukaszka, Prior Lake
Emmanuel Mauleon, St. Paul
Kate McDonald, Minneapolis
Malyse McKinnon, Minneapolis
Elissa Meyers, Minnetonka
Basanti Miller, Minneapolis
Jonah Miller, St. Paul
Jason Mitchell, Savage
Laura Mobley, Duluth
Sam Montgomery/Doctor Delusion, St. Paul
Kristina Mooney, St. Paul
Jamie Mosel, Minneapolis
Ann O’Neill, Edina
Ian O’Neill, Prior Lake
Mosunmola Ogunlana, Minneapolis
Yoko Okumura, Minneapolis
Nick Olson, St. Paul
Jasmine Omorogbe, Minneapolis
Allison Osberg, Excelsior
Dustin Passofaro, Prior Lake
Jennifer Peters, Minneapolis
Liz Peters, Minneapolis
Amy Pollock, Jordan
Célestine Pueringer, Stillwater
Chloe Robins, Northfield
Anna Rouse, Richfield
Allan Salmi, International Falls
Andrew Joseph Sandberg, Golden Valley
Sarah Schewe, Eden Prairie
Andi Schmidt, South St. Paul
Willy Scwartz, Minneapolis
Adam Selon
Mark Severson, South St. Paul
James Shaff, St. Paul
Kari Jo Skogquist, Elk River
Kristina Joy Smith, Red Wing
Alex Smith, St. Paul
Jack Sutter, Minneapolis
Tara Syde, Belle Plaine
Diwa Tamrong, Minneapolis
Ricardo Vasquez-Ortiz, Eden Prairie
Alan Wade, Minneapolis
James Wold, Minnetonka
Beth Anne Zaiken, Rochester
Christopher Ziolkowski, Rochester

Related Event:

Hot Art Injection IV Opening Night

Saturday, July 1, 7–10 pm
The Soap Factory
Hot Art Injection IV kicks off with a wide array of music performances by high school students. Performers include Formulated Response (prog rock), Flannery Cunnigham (pianist), Viceburgh (rock), Doctor Delusion (hip-hop DJ), Jasmine Omorogbe (spoken word), American Dream (Northside rap), The Battle Royale (electro-rock), and Mosunmola Ogunlana (singer).