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RVA Mag First Friday Picks November 2017

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With fall quietly approaching and school back in session for many Richmond students, now is the perfect time to gather friends and family for a fun night out. So let’s get out there and wander amongst the many artistic offerings available tomorrow night for First Fridays!

First Fridays is Richmond’s monthly art walk event, which showcases artwork from local artists, food from local vendors, and the various talents from people throughout the community. Here are RVA Mag’s top picks for RVA First Fridays for November:

1708 Gallery: InLight Richmond

1708 Gallery has done it again! The wondrous light-based art and performance festival will celebrate its 10th anniversary this year in the city’s Arts and Cultural District. The InLight festival has grown in magnificence and spectacle over this time, and is assuredly the not-to-miss, interactive art event of the fall season. This year’s festival draws its theme from the 1901 Electric Carnival that took place on Broad Street, notably featuring an enlivened replica of the Eiffel Tower. We cannot wait to see just how InLight 2017 participants will play with this theme, and transform the cityscape into a mercurial, illuminated wonderland.

Initiated on the premise of offering a public art exhibition to the community, InLight has more than succeeded in providing Richmond the chance to experience contemporary art and artists outside of the gallery setting. Major highlights of the event incorporate various light-studded performances, sculpture and video installations, participatory projects for attendees and of course the marvelous Community Lantern Parade, which encourages one and all to make lanterns and join in an artful procession. The event will feature the contributions of over 40 artists and performers in this stellar night of brilliance and festivities.   

 

The Community Lantern Parade is scheduled to gather at 7:00pm at Henry and W. Broad Street, and begins at 7:30pm, running the stretch of West Broad between Belvidere and Foushee Streets. For those who wish to participate, 1708 Gallery will also have a lantern making station starting at 6:00pm at their new Night Lights Interactive Zone (Henry and West Broad Street). An InLight 2017 Food Court with eats and beverages, along with many local restaurants offering InLight specials, will be available to fuel your experience.

[IMAGES: installation from InLight 2014: Woodrow Collective: Joan Biddle, Kristi Tortoritis, Hannah Kirkpatrick, Treehouse, photo by Terry Brown; from Inlight 2016, Andy Diaz Hope and Jon Bernson, photo by Terry Brown]

 

Candela: Kahn & Selsnick, 100 Views of the Drowning World

Candela Gallery offered a sneak peak of Kahn & Selsnick’s 100 Views of the Drowning World at the Current Art Fair this past month, exhibiting one of the large-scale archival pigment prints, as well as showing off the comprehensive publication that accompanies the project. From these teasers alone, one can tell this exhibition is a definite class act, carried by dark, yet whimsical conceptual grounds.

These arch-topped prints follow the narrative of an itinerant acting troupe, the Truppe Fledermaus, as they stage various performances in far-ranging locations from England to Japan. The absurdist style and manner of these performances “are as apt to commemorate the passing of an unusual cloud as they are to be found documenting their own attempts to flee the rising waters of a warming planet, or using black humor to comment upon the extinction of bats or other animals.” The accompanying book is beautifully presented as an unbound publication, inviting readers to consider the text in any order of their choosing—thus, opening minds to the possibilities of non-linear experience and story-building in both fiction and reality.

Artists Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick have worked collaboratively since the 1980’s, and have participated in over 100 solo and group exhibitions worldwide. Their collaborative projects are expansive, comprehensive, and founded with strong conceptual bases, and often include multiple platforms of expression. In its totality, the Truppe Fledermaus narrative includes 100 Views of the Drowning World, a number of posters and banners, installations, and two additional photo series. This exhibit will be on view until Dec. 23rd, 2017.

 

Ada: Jared Lindsay Clark, Builder Bildet

Watch for Ada artist Derek Larson as a participating artist with InLight 2017! A repeat exhibitor at Ada since 2014, the gallery represented Larson at last year’s Untitled Art Fair in Miami Beach, FL. This multi-media artist will show some of his new animations inside the gallery as well.

The main gallery features Jared Lindsay Clark’s solo show, Bilder Bildet. This exhibition includes a number of his ‘kitschbild’ assemblages as well as a debut of his new oil paintings and gouaches. His glossy, conglomerate assemblages blur bounds of painting and sculpture as they teem with various collectibles, found objects and detritus bound in glossy resin coatings. Many of these appear as fantastic split geodes of bright, kitsch culture that has dripped into our pop-social world. Some include found paintings or publications that the sculptures’ fused structures seem to abscond or envelop.

Builder Bidet will be Clark’s first return to painting since receiving his masters from VCU fifteen years ago. These works echo some of the volumetric explorations found in his kitschbild assemblages, looking again into the formal play of mid-twentieth century modernist aesthetics.

Opening is from 7-9pm, this exhibit runs through November 25th.

For more information visit:

www.adagallery.com

 

VALET Gallery: Katya Villano, Blue Litmus Works

Baltimore based artist Katya Villano will be showing new paintings in Blue Litmus Works at VALET Gallery. In many of these recent paintings, Villano masks figures into their environments using the obscuring mid-tones of their surroundings. The representational situations and encounters in each work seem to wash or flow across the canvas, and are yet held by the boldness of Villano’s painterly mark making.

As a trans lesbian artist, Villano’s works explore the fluidity of femininity in the trans body. Each painting offers a “venue of fluidity” where “color, sensation, womanhood and power need no declarations or definitive engagements.” The work focuses on relationships between shame, desire and contradictory truths. Villano’s color palette alone evidences how these compositions “reject myths of purity,” as the show’s title also connotes thoughts of discerning the unknown properties of mixed solutions.

For more information visit:

http://katyavillano.com/

 

SEDIMENT: Chino Amobi, Weak Images

Along with their regular gallery programming, SEDIMENT has also begun to curate storefront feature exhibitions as a new experimental exhibition format. As part of these, Chino Amobi’s Weak Images debuts this Friday. Weak Images is a multimedia installation based off of the Italian philosopher, Giorgio Agamben’s concept of Weak Images, concerning questions of defining an image’s essence and the visibility of concrete images.

Chino Amobi is from born in Tuscaloosa, AL, and currently resides in Richmond. He is a co-founder of the global collective Non Worldwide and is currently pursuing an MFA in Graphic Design at Virginia Commonwealth University. A noted musician as well as visual artist, Chino will also be performing at the Advocates for Youth Benefit Show at Strange Matter this Friday. Weak Images will remain installed at SEDIMENT through Nov. 19th.

For more information visit:

http://www.sedimentarts.org/

https://chinoamobi.bandcamp.com/

 

Studio/Gallery 6: Todd Hale

Studio/Gallery 6 will hold an open studio of works by gallery owner, Todd Hale. A multidisciplinary artist to say the least, Hale will feature a number of colorful new acrylic/paper collages on panel board in resin coating. These compositions are especially bright—some entangle the entire panel, while others seem to float in black space. Their cut-paper, fauvist aesthetic makes for exciting, in your face conglomerate forms and spaces that slip in and out of themselves.

Studio/Gallery 6 will open doors at 6pm

For more information visit:

toddhale.com

Art Sponsored by Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art 

1708 Gallery’s InLight festival comes to West Broad st. this November, opens call for proposals and submissions

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1708 Gallery will return with their amazing night time, public art exhibit this fall, InLight Richmond. After spending last year in Scotts Addition, and taking over Monroe Park Campus the year before that, this year sees the festival of lights, complete with light parade and massive installations, come to West Broad St..

This year’s theme is the Electric Carnival, which harkens back to the famed street festival that enlivened Broad Street in 1901. The Electrical Carnival featured a replica of the Eiffel Tower that was illuminated remotely by President Roosevelt via a telegraph key from the White House.

Check out our video from last year’s festival below:

1708 is also looking for submissions and proposals for pieces for this year’s event. Check out details below and click here to apply and find out more!

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1708 Gallery invites national and international artists working in all media and disciplines, including performance, to submit proposals for our 10th annual InLight Richmond.

InLight 2017 will take place on Friday, November 3, 2017, from 7pm to midnight, in Richmond’s Arts and Culture District. InLight is a public exhibition of light-based artworks—videos and projections, multi-media and interactive projects, sculptures, installations, performances and a Community Lantern Parade.

Proposals for InLight 2017 should involve, be inspired by, investigate, or interpret themes of light, from light as medium to light as concept. While existing work will be considered, 1708 Gallery encourages artists to propose projects that consider themes central to the Electric Carnival— technology, globalism, carnivals.

DEADLINE TO APPLY: Midnight (EST), Monday, July 31, 2017

Potential sites for installations and performances include pathways, façades and other walls, sidewalks, green spaces, trees, and more. In addition, a limited number of interior sites may be available. Artists may propose a specific site for both pre-existing and site-responsive works. Please indicate if your work is site-specific on your entry form. 1708 Gallery reserves the right to make final assignments.

The juror for 2017 is Nat Trotman, Curator of Performance and Media at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

Top photo: Medeology Collective: Alessandro Imperato, Jim Gladman, and Kelly McClung, Bridge of Signs, InLight 2013, photo by Terry Brown

1708 Gallery’s ‘3×3’ exhibit highlights social issues to engage the community

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Continuing a tradition of summertime community engagement, 1708 Gallery opened its newest exhibit, 3×3, last Friday as part of its summer sessions series meant to inspire local involvement through socially-engaging art.

The exhibit, featuring three artists who focus both on pressing environmental and social issues within the Richmond community, provides a work space for the artists to continue community projects both inside and outside of the gallery.

Now in its third year, the summer sessions at 1708 Gallery have evolved to feature fewer projects over a longer period of time to ensure the greatest volume of engagement, largest breadth of resources and concrete results.

“We’ve treated the gallery space as a project space or a lab, or a kind of a community engagement space,” 1708 Executive Director Emily Smith said. “Following the last two summers, we wanted to continue that mission, but try something a little bit different, and invited artists that engaged a community or communities outside of the gallery that had a social practice mission.”

By taking traditional art styles and applying contemporary social movements to exhibits, the artists and gallery alike become community leaders in addition to visual artists.

“The artist is functioning like a community organizer, or activist or archivist, with the idea that the artists would spend the summer doing the work of their project with it being kind of completed by August,” Smith said.

Many of the submissions 1708 Gallery received focused on issues that have become more pertinent this year.

“Half of the proposals addressed issues that have a bigger spotlight on them because of the current political climate,” Smith said. “That was inherent in a lot of the work. It’s impossible to avoid that, and we wouldn’t want to avoid it.”

Dig It Up – Rivers without Coal Ash (pictured above) presented by the Virginia River Healers for example, features drawings and plans depicting local rivers as if they were free of all coal ash. As part of their public awareness campaign, the Virginia River Healers will also host public meetings in Richmond, Chesterfield and Chesapeake to further awareness of coal ash river pollution.

Hillary Waters Fayle is the second featured artist, whose project focuses on sustainable living and incorporating green urban areas in the Jackson Ward neighborhood by creating an ethno-botanical map of the neighborhood through collecting and documenting the plant life and specimens.

“Your experience within an urban environment can change so drastically without any sort of permission or warning,” Fayle said. “It got me thinking about this shared space [in Jackson Ward]. All the natural botany here we share. It’s not really ours, it belongs to somebody, but it’s the experience of the whole community.”  

Fayle’s book on the project will be available at the exhibit’s completion.

Sayaka Suzuki’s work, Drifting Dreamers, is the third featured work and stresses the importance of diversity in a world of immigrants as she asks participants to share their stories on traditional Japanese Indigo cloth that will be constructed into the shape of a life-size boat.

1708 Gallery is also conducting a cultural mapping exercise during the exhibit, asking patrons to pinpoint on a map both traditional and nontraditional art they see around Richmond–whether it be a tattoo parlor or a coffee shop–to create a visual representation of all forms of local art in the city.

“It’s important to recognize that these kinds of projects are a significant way that artists are creating art in 2017,” Smith said. “It’s a way for them to connect with communities in a much more immediate way than hanging a painting in a gallery.”

You can visit the exhibit until August 5 at 319 West Broad Street. For more information about artists or ways to become involved with the projects, visit the 1708 Gallery website.

NY artist Rudy Shepherd reexamines current events with ‘We Are All Trayvon Martin’ exhibit at 1708 Gallery

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Ever contemplated the overlap of art and reality? With television shows like Law & Order: SVU tapping into national headlines as influence in its plot, paintings and drawings can also explore the people and personalities that make the news.

That’s what Rudy Shepherd’s “We Are All Trayvon Martin” collection explores and it is featured at 1708 Gallery until March 25.

Shepherd’s work considers the role of artists as witness to contemporary society. His paintings and drawings examine current events, pop culture icons, politicians, as well as both criminals and victims of crime.

“From the beginning my work has been political,” Shepherd said. “I have been since the beginning interested in trying to create dialogue with my artwork, trying to break down barriers and start conversations about things people don’t normally want to talk about.”

As a self-confessed news junkie, a lot of the New York City artist’s work has been inspired by the people he sees in the media.

“I am interested in people reexamining the stories of these people they heard about in the news and with a bit more empathy than maybe they did the first time it was presented to them,” Shepherd said. “To have a viewer walking away with a feeling of compassion for these people and to have that compassion be extended to the people they come in contact to in the real world would also be amazing.”

“We Are All Trayvon Martin” is the result of a decade of real world events seeping into Shepherd’s art. According to Shepherd, it was an old New York Post cover image of Ronnell Wilson that originally inspired him.

Wilson had killed two police officers and even stuck his tongue out at the wife of a victim during his trial. The New York Post cover featured the headline “Fry Baby” with his image.

Despite Wilson’s actions, Shepherd saw this as a form of the press vilifying someone. After deciding to paint a portrait of Wilson, Shepherd realized his growing interest in growing a collection of portraits of people; be it a criminal, victim, or celebrity; who finds themselves in the public eye.

“I am interested in reexamining these stories and finding the humanity that exists in these people and representing that back to the public,” Shepherd said.

In addition to the watercolor portraits, Shepherd said he has a series of paintings, “Healers,” composed of images of people who have died and left an artistic legacy.

“He’s depicted Treyvon Martin and George Zimmerman as well as the victims of the Charleston shooting and Dylan Roof,” said Emily Smith, Executive Director at 1708.

Smith was familiar with Shepherd’s work, so when space opened in her gallery, she reached out to him about displaying some of his pieces at 1708.

At the time, other works, such as his portraits of the victims of the Charleston shooting were on display at the Studio Museum in Harlem until March 5.

Also present at the exhibition are small ceramic objects called “Healing Devices.” Their purpose, according to Shepherd, are to be a counterpoint to things that might seem like unsolvable problems in the social and political challenges in society.

“They pose a solution, while at the same time questioning the viewer’s belief in the power of art, and the power of belief,” Shepherd said.

Rudy Shepherd’s “We Are All Trayvon Martin” will be on display at 1708 Gallery until March 25.

NY artist Rudy Shepherd reexamines current events with ‘We Are All Trayvon Martin’ exhibit at 1708 Gallery

|

Topics: , , ,

Ever contemplated the overlap of art and reality? With television shows like Law & Order: SVU tapping into national headlines as influence in its plot, paintings and drawings can also explore the people and personalities that make the news.

That’s what Rudy Shepherd’s “We Are All Trayvon Martin” collection explores and it is featured at 1708 Gallery until March 25.

Shepherd’s work considers the role of artists as witness to contemporary society. His paintings and drawings examine current events, pop culture icons, politicians, as well as both criminals and victims of crime.

“From the beginning my work has been political,” Shepherd said. “I have been since the beginning interested in trying to create dialogue with my artwork, trying to break down barriers and start conversations about things people don’t normally want to talk about.”

As a self-confessed news junkie, a lot of the New York City artist’s work has been inspired by the people he sees in the media.

“I am interested in people reexamining the stories of these people they heard about in the news and with a bit more empathy than maybe they did the first time it was presented to them,” Shepherd said. “To have a viewer walking away with a feeling of compassion for these people and to have that compassion be extended to the people they come in contact to in the real world would also be amazing.”

“We Are All Trayvon Martin” is the result of a decade of real world events seeping into Shepherd’s art. According to Shepherd, it was an old New York Post cover image of Ronnell Wilson that originally inspired him.

Wilson had killed two police officers and even stuck his tongue out at the wife of a victim during his trial. The New York Post cover featured the headline “Fry Baby” with his image.

Despite Wilson’s actions, Shepherd saw this as a form of the press vilifying someone. After deciding to paint a portrait of Wilson, Shepherd realized his growing interest in growing a collection of portraits of people; be it a criminal, victim, or celebrity; who finds themselves in the public eye.

“I am interested in reexamining these stories and finding the humanity that exists in these people and representing that back to the public,” Shepherd said.

In addition to the watercolor portraits, Shepherd said he has a series of paintings, “Healers,” composed of images of people who have died and left an artistic legacy.

“He’s depicted Treyvon Martin and George Zimmerman as well as the victims of the Charleston shooting and Dylan Roof,” said Emily Smith, Executive Director at 1708.

Smith was familiar with Shepherd’s work, so when space opened in her gallery, she reached out to him about displaying some of his pieces at 1708.

At the time, other works, such as his portraits of the victims of the Charleston shooting were on display at the Studio Museum in Harlem until March 5.

Also present at the exhibition are small ceramic objects called “Healing Devices.” Their purpose, according to Shepherd, are to be a counterpoint to things that might seem like unsolvable problems in the social and political challenges in society.

“They pose a solution, while at the same time questioning the viewer’s belief in the power of art, and the power of belief,” Shepherd said.

Rudy Shepherd’s “We Are All Trayvon Martin” will be on display at 1708 Gallery until March 25.

Words by Charlotte Woods