RE(FORM)ER
/RE(FORM)ER: Jorge Bañales & Steven Luu
August 26–November 16 @ Fenwick Gallery
Fenwick Library, Fairfax Campus
Curated by Gloria (Jiaying) Dai and Stephanie Grimm
Opening Reception: Tuesday, September 10, 5-7PM
In RE(FORM)ER, artists Jorge Bañales (MFA ‘21 Visual and Performing Arts) and Steven Luu (MFA Candidate Visual and Performing Arts) methodically deconstruct and reconstruct carriers of memory: photographs, film negatives, and cardboard boxes remade as screenprints, experimental video, and sculptures. Working with found or discarded materials, the artists maintain an intense focus on process to investigate ideas of memory, mnemonics, and materiality.
What meanings remain with an object that gets left behind, after it has served its original purpose? What new meanings can it take?
Bañales takes up these questions, collecting and repurposing discarded film negatives and test prints from the Mason Photography Lab. These represent the accrual and abandonment of experiences: serendipitous encounters, fleeting thoughts, and the disappointment of unfulfilled artistic expectations. Using sandpaper to efface the surface of the negatives, Bañales translates each into a screenprint to create a reconstructed image. With the abandoned photographic prints, he scratches the surface and paints the discarded negative sheets to overwrite the remaining image, creating overlaps of time and narrative. Through this process, Bañales unmoors memories and experiences from their carriers, creating space for new meaning to be introduced through equally serendipitous, autonomous, or unexpected responses from viewers.
The materials that Luu uses also undergo transformation. Working with recycled cardboard, Luu crafts a series of vessels at different stages of completion—a demonstration of his continued interest in seriality, multiplicity, and mutation. This is a meditative process of reflection and attention, and each stage of construction reveals Luu’s interest in material, whether recycled cardboard, newspaper, or finishing plaster. It is also reconstitutive: boxes flattened into two-dimensional surfaces are rebuilt as three-dimensional sculptures. This is part of Luu’s ongoing dialogue with the past, and transforms memories and images into concrete objects that inhabit the present. While this process is deeply rooted in Luu’s personal history and experience, the resulting forms are imbued with universal meaning and recognition.
Co-curated by Gloria (Jiaying) Dai (MA candidate History of Art and Arts Management) and Stephanie Grimm (Art and Art History Librarian & Fenwick Gallery Manager), this exhibition provides an intimate glimpse into each artist’s creative practice, presented through distinct moments in their working processes. Surfaces, textures, shadow, and light stand in place of concrete representations, creating an aid for prompting new memories.
What experiences will viewers bring to these works? What will they find waiting?
Steven Luu: process images from “Vessel” series
Jorge Bañales
About the Artists + Curators
Steven Luu
The wounds of combat have had a profound impact on Steven Luu. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he is a survivor of the Communist oppression. For nearly 46 years, he was relocated to numerous places. Him and his family were placed in re-education camps by Vietnamese Communist when he was only 1 year old. Escaping to freedom on a small fishing boat when he was 7-year-old boy and spent over two months floating on the open sea until rescued by the British Royal Navy and taken to a Hong Kong refugee camp. In 1991, Steven and his family arrived in the United States-again-as refugees. After completing high school in 1995, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and served for 20 years as a Medic. For 11 of those years, he was stationed in Europe-spending three years in combat zones. In all his numerous deployments to the Middle East, he witnessed many violent deaths, and those experiences have had a profound psychological impact on him.
He was first introduced to art by the intensive treatment program provided by Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Steven recognizes that art allows him to present his feelings comfortably and focuses on expressing traumatic experiences creatively and non-verbally. As someone with a background in the medical field and a wounded veteran himself, he relates deeply to many service members that return home suffering from the aftereffects of deployment, such as feeling guilty or isolated. He creates his art both to help and communicate with others, focusing on mental health-related matters. Through the years, he has earned a BA in Theology and BFA with a concentration in sculpture. As an artist, he is an advocate for veterans. When the opportunity arises, he guides and encourages many fellow wounded veterans to find a new language to express their pain and emotions – the language of art. Steven is well known for producing serialized artwork; he believes the repetition method helps dedramatize his past and is a form of discipline to understand the materials.
Jorge Bañales
Originally born in Montevideo, Uruguay, Jorge Bañales is an artist and professor in the Washington, D.C. area. He specializes in writing, music, and photography. In 2021, he obtained a Master of Fine Arts in Visual and Performing Arts with a concentration in photography from George Mason University.
As an avid photographer, Jorge’s work has been exhibited in galleries and in print. Past publications include DCist and The Washington City Paper. As a musician, he has played at major clubs along the East Coast of the United States and abroad. With over 20 years of professional experience, Jorge has worked as a journalist, translator, and graphic designer with companies such as United Press International, The Washington Post, the Spanish news agency EFE, Maya Advertising, and the Office of Minority Health Resource Center.
Jorge teaches as an adjunct professor of digital photography and film photography at George Mason University, Northern Virginia Community College, and the College of Southern Maryland.
Gloria (Jiaying) Dai, Curator
Gloria (Jiaying) Dai is a current graduate student in Arts Management and Art History at George Mason University (GMU). Her professional work at GMU focuses on building the community through arts and culture activities and organizing educational programs on campus. Gloria has extensive experience in publishing, marketing, and PR, working with local and international media outlets. She served as the Managing Editor of the NewStar Magazine (published and distributed in Shanghai) and co-organized events, including the Shanghai International Fashion Week Forum and Shanghai Designer Alliance Forum. She earned a BA in Journalism from Shanghai International Studies University in 2012.
Stephanie Grimm, Co-Curator & Fenwick Gallery Manager
Stephanie Grimm is the Art and Art History Librarian, manager of Fenwick Gallery, and a current graduate student in the art history MA program. She earned an MSI from the University of Michigan in 2011 with a specialization in preservation and art librarianship, and a BFA in illustration from the School of Visual Arts. Her research interests center on artists’ publications and printing, include artists’ books, small press comics, and early 20th century visual culture.