Exhibitions are often approached as the culmination of a body of work. This diminishes the durational act of artistic process: the steps along the way, the experimentation, the conversations that shift direction. To be a placeholder evokes the idea of being a fill-in for someone or something else; playing a waiting game. But it also means to hold a place, especially in a new role or position: contending with place, and making a place for oneself. Placeholding can be a start, an opening, an arrival. In this first-year exhibition, the work of nine MFA students demonstrate experiments with new ideas, new techniques, and new dialogues with one another. UB Art Galleries strives to work with artists who incorporate research into their artmaking in a broad sense, and nowhere is this more true than in this first step at UB, this ability to hold a place.
