Ryan
Mandell

Fantasy Reality Utopia

Fantasy, Reality, Utopia presents drawing, sculpture, and video that interrogate the relationship between communities and their built context. Elements from post-war Utopian housing, mass produced weaponry, and the largest artificial island in the world are recombined, re-contextualized, or otherwise augmented to create forms and images that track the evolving relationship between human aspiration and cultural production. The categories fantasy, reality, and utopia indicate three distinct states of being and act as a conceptual framework from which to consider both the triumphs and failures of contemporary western culture.

Sponsored in part by the Idaho Commission on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Ryan Mandell

Ryan Mandell received a BFA in Drawing and an MFA in Sculpture from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and Indiana University, respectively. He has taught Sculpture, contemporary art theory, and digital fabrication at the University of North Texas, Penn State University, Boise State University, and the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee.  He is currently director of digital fabrication labs for the Indiana University School of Art + Design.