MFA Lecture Series: Corey Escoto

Corey Escoto (MFA07) will give an interactive talk about his artwork and life, presented by the MFA in Visual Art program. He will share images, anecdotes, and professional experiences through a Jeopardy-like format. Among the categories that you can select are Dead Ends & Curiosities, How Much Does it Cost, and As a Student I….

Escoto’s recent work—a body of experimental, large format analog photographic works created with a “Polaroid” format—seamlessly fuses multi-exposure image-fragments into visually flummoxing illusions of space and text. With the Hollywood film industry and common cinematic tropes as their subject, Escoto’s photographs both embody and examine the idea of illusion building, and by extension reinforce the mutually causal relationship between the events that comprise the contemporary social and political everyday, and the mass media machine (in all of its forms) that attempts to describe it. Additionally, a new series of bronze tissue box sculptures exploring the emotional response to sustained climate of fear and uncertainty are in the works.

Escoto has shown nationally and internationally, with solo exhibitions at Regina Rex (New York City), Halsey Mckay (East Hampton, NY), Corbett vs Dempsey (Chicago), Taymour Grahne (New York City), the Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh), and the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. His work has been included in exhibitions at Smack Mellon (Brooklyn, NY), SpringBreak (New York City), The ArtHouse at Jones Center (Austin), and international venues including ACC Galerie (Weimar, Germany), Seven Days Brunch (Basel), and FRAC Nord-Pas De Calais (Dunkerque, France). He is a recipient of the Gateway Foundation Grant, the Kala Art Institute Residency Program and Fellowship Award, and an Aperture Portfolio Prize finalist.

Escoto earned a BFA from Texas Tech University (2004) and an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis (2007), and was a participant in the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2016). He was born in Amarillo, Texas, and currently lives in Ridgewood, New York.