A thesis exhibition may not sound like a thrilling way to spend an afternoon. Such shows can feel scattered, with a sampling of disparate work by fledgling artists. But this year, UMBC’s Imaging and Digital Arts MFA Thesis exhibition is a cut above. The exhibition showcases the work of four MFA candidates: 2011 Baker Artist Award winner Gary Kachadourian (“Creative Differences,” Art, Sept. 14, 2011), accomplished choreographer and visual artist Meghan Flanigan (“The Corporeal World,” Dance, Aug. 26, 2009), photographer Ali Seley, and kinetic sculptor/mad scientist Timothy Noble. The exhibition is interactive, challenging, and—who’d have guessed?—fun.

Anyone who experienced Kachadourian’s recent installation at the Baker Artist Awards exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art will recognize his distinctive approach here. For this show, Kachadourian has created a simulacrum of reality. The exterior of an apartment complex looms overhead and a three-dimensional office complete with drop ceilings, wood paneling, and an air conditioning unit invites visitors in. The effect is achieved entirely through detailed pencil drawings, which Kachadourian blows up and copies on a Xerox machine. Pasted alongside one another, they create a gray, nearly perfect, and perfectly mundane world—note the carefully rendered oil spill in the parking lot—where the viewer is the one who seems colorful and cartoonish.

Kachadourian says it all began with a drawing of a commonplace object. “I did the cinder-block drawing and blew it up to life-size,” he says. When he hung it on his wall at home, he noticed that people walked past it, looking for artwork that more closely aligned with their expectations. Success! he decided. “The trigger is if you see a cinder block, ignore it,” he says. “It did exactly what a cinder block does.”

Kachadourian has since created a line of posters—available at garykachadourian.com—that painstakingly depict banal objects like bank machines, dumpsters, and, yes, cinder-block walls. His Book of Cut and Fold Objects includes what may be the world’s first miniature cut-and-fold jersey barrier, as well as a couch with removable cushions and a portable toilet, among other objects. The book and posters are on display on a real-life desk inside the paper-paneled office.

Flanigan has also created a parallel world of sorts for her piece “I Will Disappear to You.” Visitors remove their shoes and enter a small, windowless room with a mirrored floor. Should you attend a live performance, Flanigan will tailor it for you. You are given a small video camera to strap on your head—Flanigan wears one as well—and together the two of you enter the room. (The video each person captures is later projected for visitors to watch when Flanigan isn’t performing. But attending a performance is highly recommended.) Flanigan will then begin to dance and you are free to join her. She’ll talk with you, or sit quietly next to you, or otherwise respond to the situation you purposefully or inadvertently create. You can leave the room at will. “The point of this for me was finding a way of dancing that would be much more fluid,” Flanigan says.

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