Saturday, January 31, 2015

IPHF: Friday, 6 February 2015

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Opening Reception Grand Center First Friday: Friday, February 6th, 11am to 9pm
Exhibition runs from February 6th through April 26th,
Gallery hours are Wed through Sunday from 11am to 5pm.

Upcoming Speakers:

Michael Allen: Invisible Buildings: Photography, Memory and Architectural Destruction
Saturday, February 28th from 6pm to 7:30pm

 Chris Naffziger: Exploring the Forgotten Corners of St. Louis
Saturday, March 7th from 6pm to 7:30pm

Blanche Touhill: A Photographic History of the University of Missouri–St. Louis
Saturday, April 4th from 6pm to 7:30pm

Duane Reed Gallery: Friday, 10 April 2015

AKIO TAKAMORI
April 10th through May 16th
Opening Reception Friday, April 10th from 5-8 p.m

Duane Reed Gallery is pleased to present new figurative sculptures by Akio Takamori. The exhibition opens Friday, April 10th with a reception that evening 5 – 8pm, and will be on view through May 16th. Gallery hours: Tuesday through Saturday 10-5pm.

A seminal figure in the ceramic arts for more than thirty years, Takamori explores themes of cultural and corporeal duality by engaging the history of Eastern and Western aesthetics. Bold form and color defines his body of work, which is highly suggestive of arcane human emotions and sensuality. Takamori’s “stage-set approach” offers a platform for his ponderous characters, which carry more narrative weight as a group in a collective memory than as individual pieces.


DUANE REED GALLERY
4729 McPHERSON AVE.
ST. LOUIS, MO 63108
314.361.4100

Friday, January 30, 2015

CAM: Friday, 6 February 2015

Opening: Marco Brambilla: Materialization/
De-Materialization

Friday, February 6, 7:00 pm

New York-based filmmaker Marco Brambilla's Materialization/De-Materialization repurposes the imagery of popular culture within a complex and spectacularly energetic video collage. Digital ripples gradually reveal a pattern of human silhouettes as hundreds of characters from the Star Trek television series materialize and dissipate. The video, on view every night from dusk to midnight, is projected on the Museum's front facade.
 Marco Brambilla repurposes and recontextualizes the imagery of popular culture within complex and spectacularly energetic video collages. Emerging as an internationally exhibited video and installation artist after transitioning from commercial filmmaking, Brambilla is known for his technically ambitious approach to video production and editing. He has created pioneering 3-D works that push the bounds of new technologies, conflating past, present, and future in a fluid stream of consciousness. Brambilla’s films explore ideas of physical displacement and the psychological dislocation of the digital world; familiar characters are completely transformed within new contexts, becoming both beautiful and epic. 
On view every night February 6 through April 11,  from dusk to midnight, on the Museum’s front facade, Materialization/De-Materialization exemplifies Brambilla’s exquisite formalist approach; digital ripples gradually evolve out of a black field to reveal a pattern of human silhouettes in various poses. Images seamlessly expand into the space through a series of elaborate, moving rings. The result is an incandescent video wallpaper, where groupings of hundreds of characters from the Star Trek television series materialize and dissipate within a perennial loop. Never fully revealed and always on the verge of departure or arrival, these figures become trapped in a perpetual state of transition in deep space.

Bruno David Projects: Thursday, 5 March 2015

HEATHER BENNETT: Four Stories
March 5 – April 11, 2015
Opening Reception: Thursday, March 5, 2015 6 to 9 pm

Four Stories is composed of what seems to be a few vignettes, each told through a series of photographs. The image structure suggests familiar narrative tropes where there are actually only symbols. Symbols which form an assumed arrangement, a situation that is easily read and fitted into our reality of images, past and present. Upon closer inspection, however, the story is full of holes. What at first seems obvious, is only hinted and does not carry through. The settings have an artificiality, the time period is hazy and inconsistent and the emotional import is unclear. Something is amiss, slightly outside of the lines. The artist employs storytelling as a tool, claiming the use of pathos, parody, dark humor, desire, all as indicators of a story that doesn’t really exist but to outline the subject, a subject traditionally positioned as an object. The revelation of the embodied female subject is achieved through a kind of denial.
Putting herself in these sexualized stereotypes, Heather Bennett questions the credulity of our simple clichés which are segregated from connection and consideration. The artist’s own image is a structural quotation of past feminist artworks while functioning as another tactic to slyly highlight the subject. She acts not as a self but as a representation of the artist which marks the critical component of the work. Her presence doesn’t quite belong, an interloper in a scene we thought we understood. The women in her photographs inhabit ordinary roles, remnants of a time, yet they faintly resist. There is an individuality warped by boundary, seeping through our myopic categorization. That familiar language fails to sum them up. In defiance of their limited place, they subtly direct the scene; wriggling under mythical constraints, veiling truth, but still asking us to believe them.

Hours: Wednesday & Saturday Noon to 5:00 pm. Also open by private appointment.

BRUNO DAVID PROJECTS
1245 South Vandeventer Avenue
Saint Louis, MO 63110 USA

REESEgallery: Friday, 6 February 2015


Opening Reception Friday, February 6

Reese Gallery presents

Artists Kahlil Irving & Erica Popp

Erica Popp has been working on a series of rural midwest landscapes. Inspired by the beautiful, bleak expanses that she saw on a long drive from St. Louis to Lafayette, Indiana last winter, this winter she has been immersing herself in that landscape.

Kahlil Irving makes 3D work, very different from what is usually seen. Check out a preview and read the curator's statement at the REESEgallery website.

A reception with the artists will be held on
Friday, February 6, from 6pm to 9pm. 


REESEgallery artists Erica Popp and Kahlil Irving will speak about their work in the exhibit YET UNFULFILLED. Please join us in this opportunity to meet the artists as they introduce their work and discuss their practice. Conversation, questions and light refreshments will be served. Doors open at 1 and artist talks begin at 1:30. 
REESEgallery

3410 Wisconsin St.

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Sheldon Art Galleries: Friday, 6 February 2015



Sheldon Art Galleries Opening Reception Flier

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Bruno David Gallery: Friday, 27 February 2015


KEN WORLEY: Denizens

Project Room
DAMON FREED: Obstacle and Void

Media Arts Room
WILLIAM MORRIS: Dog’s Dream recut

February 27 – March 21, 2015
Opening Reception:
Friday, February 27, 2015 from 6 to 9 pm

Bruno David Gallery is delighted to present a special exhibition of recent paintings by Ken Worley, a series of new works on paper by Damon Freed and, a new video-work by William Morris

In the Project Room, we are pleased to present Damon Freed’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery entitled Obstacle and Void. Freed writes on this new series of work “There’s something raw that I like about working on paper. The surface is readily absorbent; it holds the mark in a different way than canvas. It allows for both a delicate hand and a forceful touch, for both staining techniques and marks that are thicker and squeezed directly from the tube. In this series, you will notice that I have divided the paper formats into three sections. I have held onto the central motif of the square that I am accustomed to, yet extended the pieces above and below to create vertical formats. In most of the paintings the above and below spaces act as voids, a place to rest. Most of the painterly activity happens in the middle of the verticals, inside of the square. With this in mind, three of the key pieces in the show exhibit what I refer to as Obstacle and Void space.

Like nonobjective or nonrepresentational paintings from times past we must also be unsatisfied with what came before and envision anew. We cannot rest on the old terms used to communicate, however unlikely, with words what pictures provide today. To create a new language of forms is also to create a new language of terms used to discuss the forms. And indeed we are creating new forms. So to the evolution of positive and negative, foreground and background, figure and field, push and pull, I would like to propose the idea of Obstacle and Void. The need for a new wording has arisen out of my work.

When viewing the obstacle one must visually go around it. In definitive works it is there. It is the positive or protruding shape within the composition that one must work to understand and to spatially navigate. Upon going around the shapes one may rest in the void space of the picture. I often associate the void with relaxation of the eyes and mind. It is the part of the picture that relates strongly to the metaphysical or ethereal quality of being and seeing. It is usually the more atmospheric part of the painting. The major difference between Hans Hofmann’s idea of push and pull and my outlining of Obstacle and Void space is that the obstacle and void do not interchange. The obstacle, like a boulder in your way on a path, is static. The void is akin to the sky behind the boulder.”

In the Media Arts Room, the gallery presents a single-channel video work titled “Dog’s Dream recut” by William Morris.
The title of this work comes from an edited Super 8 film by Tony Patti, circa 1973. It repurposes Patti’s filmic experimentation, utilizing some “accidents” from the original. This footage combined with actual video from my own cardiac catheterization procedure in 2009 yields this interpretation in which aspects of memory, physiology and nostalgia coincide, simulating a lucid dream state. The narrative is a clinical description of the procedure and diagnosis accompanied by improvised solo viola, played back at half-speed.

Hours: Wednesday through Saturday 10:00 am – 5:00 pm

BRUNO DAVID GALLERY
3721 WASHINGTON BOULEVARD
SAINT LOUIS MO 63108
314.531.3030

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Framations: Friday, 30 January 2015

Beyond the Lens IX: A Photography Exhibition

An all subject juried exhibit of photographic work
in all explorations of the medium


Jan 30 - March  12, 201
Awards & Opening Reception    Friday, Jan 30, 2015: 6-8 pm    Awards at ~7:00 pm
Juror   Bill Barrett 
Framations Custom Framing & Art Gallery
218 North Main Street
St Charles, Missouri 63301
(636)724-831

Monday, January 26, 2015

Duet: Friday, 6 March 2015

Robert Goetz and Thomas Harris
March 6 - May 2, 2015

Opening Reception: Friday, March 6, 2015  6pm-8pm

(We also plan to have a very loud Norwegian Death Metal concert opening night.)

Every society in every time has had its masks that suited the mood of the society, from the elegance of a Venetian Masked Ball to the occidental theatrics of the Jihadi in a balaklava to the airbrushed war paint of female makeup. People want to act out a feeling inside themselves—anger, sadness, happiness, lust via the mask. It may be a sad commentary on present-day America that horror masks are the best sellers. If you know the construction of a painting, you have a wood frame and you stretch canvas over it. So that structure is kind of important, and you can’t really go beyond that, eventually the image is a mask the structure wears and the face grows to fit it. 


Harris’s objects are boxes and Goetz’s are prints. Both sets act as masks. If you see the conventional painting frame, it’s kind of thin. But in Harris’s case, wood stretcher bars become a box to then stretch material over it and produce sound. His work here is loosely based on Halloween III’s plot to replace children with Androids which was a low rent thriller from the first frame, including a skull, a lime-green witch and an orange jack-o'-lantern. Goetz’s prints of Apes reveal the debased primate behind the human mask.  His apes exhibit the ability to imitate intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human…just not a very admirable or desirable set of humans though.

HOURS: TUESDAY, THURSDAY AND SATURDAY, NOON - 5PM OR BY APPOINTMENT


Duet
3526 Washington Avenue
Suite 300
St Louis, MO 63103

Saturday, January 24, 2015

Gallery 210: Saturday, 21 February 2015

Joe Chesla
Moments of Illumination: Drawn from the Liminal 
January 31- to March 28, 2015
Reception on February 21. 5-7 pm.
Panel discussion with Joe Chesla and Meghan Grubb  at 4:00PM. 

  


Gallery 210 opens the new year with Joe Chesla: Moments of Illumination: Drawn from the Liminal on January 31, 2015.

Chesla's installations aim at engaging the viewer's conscious and the unconscious at the same time. This is a state Chesla refers to as "non-focus", a conceptual space between past and future, where one is completely present. Being present is being accessible to one-self. Our participation in the hyper-connected contemporary culture's countless media sources mean we seem to be in a perpetual state of distraction. Chesla states," We are accessible to the whole world, facebooking, texting, blogging, telephoning, but not accessible to ourselves. We're out there but not back in here." One goal in his work is to create flow " . . . a place to calm down for a second and to have real time with yourself, that is thoughtful and meaningful."

The tenets of 1960s and 1970s Minimalism and Process Art largely inform Chesla's process as far as material orientation, practice and aesthetics are concerned. His installations are site-specific. He employs standardized units, and repetition in the design of his pieces and allows the fundamental character of his materials to remain. He refers to Richard Long and Agnes Martin as examples of artists who live their art and just do what they have to do. Their work, Chesla states, "is very clear, true and honest, and a big influence for me."

Chesla's aesthetic may be minimalist but his work is not the hermetic, self-referring, literalist works that were the signature style of the 1960s and 1970s. His installations are characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy, generous and poetic. Chesla states "There is always a simplicity within my work that allows an entrance in to it. I believe, in simplifying something down so far that it just leaves you with yourself.

Of his work Chesla writes: "Using aspects of order, repetition, stillness and evolution, I create objects or spaces of unfocused awareness. Working with the organic-ness of materials and spaces, with the understanding of human perspective. Within these pieces, we experience manifestations of internal and external, cool and comforted, filtered and clarity of vision. We can see the world differently from within the installation as well as after our departure from it. We can find comfort in glacial speeds and spaces of great stillness. This work takes the viewer to that place of personal confrontation with beauty, stillness, isolation, and vast mindfulness.".



Gallery 210 is on the University of Missouri-St. Louis at 44 East Drive, TCC between the North UM-St. Louis Metro Station and the Touhill Performing Arts Center. The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday from 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM. The gallery phone is (314) 516-5976; the fax is (314) 516-4997; and email is suhret@umsl.edu. For parking locations, campus maps and directions to Gallery 210 please visit our website at umsl.edu/~gallery/.

Public parking for Gallery 210 is available at the South Millennium Parking Garage on the east side of East Drive on the UM-St. Louis Campus. Handicapped parking is available behind Gallery 210.

Friday, January 23, 2015

Kemper useum: Friday, 23 January 2015



Join us as we celebrate the openings of our spring 2015 exhibitions.

7 to 9p Public reception

Ebsworth Gallery



Permanent Collection Reinstalled to Complement New Exhibitions

 




When you come to see our new exhibitions, be sure to visit the reinstalled Bernoudy Permanent Collection Gallery on the second level. While the thematic sections--Abstract/Real, Body/Self, Nature/Culture--remain, some of our most important works are now featured in the spring exhibition From Picasso to Fontana--Collecting Modern and Postwar Art in the Eisendrath Years, 1960-1968. This has provided an opportunity for our curators to reimagine the permanent collection gallery. 

Included in the works on view is a selection of Western depictions of Native Americans and their culture by George Caleb Bingham, Edward Curtis, and Charles Wimar. These were chosen to facilitate continued exploration of themes central to the spring exhibition
Sam Durant: Proposal for White and Indian Dead Monument Transpositions, Washington D.C., also opening tonight. Durant's thought-provoking sculptural installation interrogates issues such as America's foundational narrative and the significance of the unequal power relations between whites and Native Americans to this narrative.

We hope these new connections spark many meaningful conversations about some of today's most important issues.

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

May Gallery: Friday, 23 January 2015

Gallery logo

Annual Photography Faculty Exhibition

© Tom Barkman

23 January - 20 February 2015
Opening Reception Friday, 23 January, 5-7 pm

Francesco Arese ViscontiRobin Assner,Tom Barkman, Bill Barrett, Claudia Burris, Tony Carosella, Dan Dreyfus, Christine Giancola, Philip GreyThomas GrovesClark Kincaid, Holger Lang, Greg Landrum, Robert LaRouche, Dominique Macaire, David Moore,Caroline Philippone, Jennifer Silverberg, Kristian Skeie, Susan Hacker Stang, T. Ann Tolin, Marc Vallée,Verdi Yahooda

(Mr. Arese Visconti and Mr. Skeie teach at Webster University Geneva; Mr. Groves teaches at Webster University Cha'Am; Mr. Grey, Mr. Vallée, and Ms. Yahooda teach at Regents University, London; Mr. Lang teaches at Webster University Vienna.)


and in the Small Wall Gallery, "In Transit." photographs by Marissa Diekhoff
curated by Laura Schilli



The May Gallery is located on the second floor, west wing, of the Sverdrup Building at 8300 Big Bend Boulevard, Webster Groves MO 63119. Hours are Monday-Friday, 9:00 am-9:00 pm; Saturday-Sunday, noon-5:00 pm.

U City Gallery: Saturday, 24 January 2015

University City Gallery Series 
Saturday, January 24
Opening Reception: 2015 University City Gallery Series 
2p, University City Public Library, 6701 Delmar Blvd.

Join us for the opening reception of the 2015 University City Gallery Series, featuring work by nine Sam Fox School students: Sam Boven, Andrew Catanese, Jimena Gracia, Isaac Howell, Anya Kavanaugh, Rebecca LothanCalvin Miceli-Nelson, Charlotte Spitzfaden, and Jake Yoo. The theme for this year's exhibition, "Citizen," is intended to prompt a dialogue about using artwork as a means to explore and express ideas about citizenship, at the local level and beyond. Curated by Buzz Spector, the exhibition will be on view January 20 through February 1.

Monday, January 19, 2015

Webster Groves Christian Church Art Gallery: Monday, 18 January 2015



whoismyneighbor
shadow
Missouri Highway Patrol Capt. Ron Johnson hugs a protester in Ferguson in this photo by J.B. Forbes. (click for larger version)
"Who Is My Neighbor?," an exhibition of the photography of St. Louis Post-Dispatch chief photojournalist J.B. Forbes, will be presented at the opening celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday, Jan. 19, 6:30 to 9 p.m., at the Art Gallery within the Webster Groves Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), 1320 W. Lockwood Ave. in Webster Groves.

The exhibit explores the world as neighborhood – a place of beauty, joy, pain, sorrow, conflict, heroism and hope.

The exhibit invites people to view, experience and discuss Forbes' photos from St. Louis, Ferguson, Joplin, Haiti, India and many other places. The photos speak about people's place in the world, their connections to one another and the call for everyone to be neighbors.

"Who Is My Neighbor" runs through March 15. Art gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. (closed 12 to 1 p.m. for lunch). For more information, call 961-3232 or visit www.wgcc.org
.

Read more: http://www.websterkirkwoodtimes.com/Articles-Webster-Groves-i-2015-01-16-194310.114137-Who-Is-My-Neighbor.html#ixzz3PIgxF1OR
Follow us: @WKTimes on Twitter | WebsterKirkwoodTimes on Facebook

MOCRA: Saturday, 24 January 2015

The images in this exhibition, the first St. Louis showing of photography by Regina DeLuise,
were made in Bhutan during 2010 and center on the ordinary surroundings of a remarkable culture
whose history is intricately woven with Tibetan Buddhism.
Regina DeLuise: Vast Bhutan exhibition logo

    
January 24 - May 10, 2015
     free public opening reception with the artist
     Saturday, January 24     2 - 4 p.m.
            Click here 
for directions and parking information for the opening reception. 

General Exhibition Information
Hours:  Tues - Sun, 11 am - 4 pm
Admission:  free, with suggested donation of $5/adults, $1/students and children

The images in this exhibition, taken in Thimpu, Bhutan in 2010, center on the ordinary surroundings of a culture both remarkable and mysterious (Bhutan only opened its borders in the 1950s and still strongly restricts tourism). Bhutan’s history is intricately woven with Tibetan Buddhism. There is little separation: Monks and lamas are a vibrant and integral part of the community, elders spend their days in prayer, young and old make their pilgrimage to monasteries that seem to hang from the sides of mountains. The idea of devotion in every aspect of one's life is not exotic or unrealistic.
Regina DeLuise, Pasang, 2010. Courtesy of the artist.

Regina DeLuise
Pasang, 2010

archival pigment print

33 x 29 in

image courtesy of the artist

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

CAM: Friday, 16 January 2015









Opening Night
Friday, January 16


Member Preview: 6:00–7:00 pm
Public Reception: 7:00–9:00 pm
Cash bar. Complimentary bar and valet for members.  

Please join us for the opening of CAM's spring exhibitions, featuring Joe Goode, a selected survey of one of America’s most innovative painters, and Jesse Howard: Thy Kingdom Come, the first comprehensive museum survey of self-taught Missouri artist Jesse Howard.

Also on view are New York-based artist Barnaby Furnas’s The Last Flood, a site-specific, fifty-foot-long painting; Paris-based German artist Ulla von Brandenburg’s quilt series, Wagon WheelUntold Stories, new mixed-media drawings by Nigerian-born, New York-based artist Toyin Odutola; Marcos Rios’s At Loulou’s Door projected on the Museum’s front facade; and I Have a Right To... posters by Saint Louis Public School students. 


CONTEMPORARYARTMUSEUMSTLOUIS
3750 Washington Blvd / St. Louis, MO 63108
camstl.org / 314-536-4660
New Hours
10–5 Wed / 10–8 Thu & Fri
10–5 Sat & Sun
Free admission compliments
of Gateway Foundation


REESEgallery: Friday, 6 February 2015

"YET UNFULFILLED" with artists 
KAHLIL IRVING and ERICA POPP

Artists' Opening Reception: Friday February 6th from 6pm to 9pm

Two artists touch upon dreams unrealized and the weight of a fast approaching future.  Artist, KAHLIL IRVING, creates sculpture under pressure.  By layering gold lusters and luscious patterns over slip cast re-creations of debris, he questions our relationship with the "throw away" object in the context of commercialism and urban decay.  In contrast to Irving, photographer ERICA POPP, turns her camera outward to rural landscapes.  Here, she confronts a melancholy only found in the flat wide open spaces of the midwestern countryside - perhaps hinting at the vulnerability of the family farm, once a vision of the American Dream. While her landscapes are quiet and bleak, they still offer a sense of promise, like the potential of fields in winter.

In 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech entitled "The American Dream."  Speaking to an audience at Drew University, he suggested that America was "a dream yet unfulfilled" due to poverty, violence, poor education and racial discrimination.  Both Kahlil Irving and Erica Popp create visually intriguing compositions expressing apprehension a the state of the American Dream "yet unfulfilled."

This event is free and open to the public.

REESEgallery
3410 Wisconsin Avenue
Saint Louis | MO | 63118
www.thereesegallery.com | 314.954.7638
Hours: Wed & Sat 1-4pm after the opening reception

Exhibition Dates: 2/6/15 to 3/14/15

Bruno David Gallery: Friday, 16 January 2015

Bruno David Gallery

Bruno David and Keri Robertson are pleased to announce the opening reception
of the new exhibition at our Grand Center location.

On Friday evening, January 16, 2015 from 6-9 pm, Bruno David Gallery will open
solo exhibition of Lisa K Blatt: New Work
Lisa K. Blatt works in extreme landscapes, including deserts like Antarctica.
Lisa K. Blatt’s new work continues her exploration of perception and the intersection between nature and culture. Blatt states “Landscapes attract me with their light, beauty, simplicity. I stay for their darkness, complexity, and secrets. My work examines how landscape may be defined by what is not visible, what is memory or what is trace.” This show marks Blatt’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. In conjunction with the exhibition, Bruno David Gallery Publications will publish a catalog on the artist’s work with an exhibition history and bibliography. Lisa K. Blatt works in extreme landscapes, including deserts like Antarctica.
Lisa K Blatt

 Bruno David Gallery
3721 Washington Boulevard
Saint Louis  | Missouri
314-531-3030

Public hours: Wednesday thru Saturday: 10 to 5 pm and by appointment

Morton J. May Foundation Gallery: Thursday, 15 January 2015

A Hidden Wholeness: the Zen Photography of Thomas Merton


suzuki1Opening Reception and guest speaker:
January 15, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m
A Hidden Wholeness will be on view Jan. 12 to Feb. 21, in the Morton J. May Foundation Gallery, located in the Maryville University Library. Admission is free of charge and the public is welcome to view exhibits during regular library hours.
Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk at the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky. He is best known today for his spiritual writings on contemplation and his own personal spiritual journey that led him to study Eastern religions, especially Zen Buddhism. Merton was also a visual artist of considerable talent exploring drawing and calligraphy and, as reflected in this exhibition, photography. His photographs were a way to summon viewers to be present to what Merton called the “living and self-creating mystery of which I am myself a part, to which I am myself my own unique door.”

Sunday, January 11, 2015

Isolation Room/Gallery Kit: Friday 23 January 2015

ISOLATIONROOM/GALLERYKIT

Please join us at 5723 Dewey Avenue on Friday, January 23 for another opening at IsolationRoom/Gallery Kit.

Caitlin Funston
Opening Reception: Friday, January 23, 2015, 6pm-8pm

In Caitlin Funston’s maps of synapses, neurons and what look alternately like galaxies or solar systems you get a sense that the cosmic and the atomic are fused in some dislocated reality. These intensely detailed images could be considered a redress of acid colored William Morris inspired paisley utopia driven 60’s 70’s rock band posters. It is Hendrix on steroids but only more baroque. Tendrils and ganglions glazed and printed, painted and etched overflow from the canvas. If it were designed to accompany a band’s gig I wonder, where does this band perform? What sort of music does it play? What bizarre instruments would be fashioned? We get to peek into the fleshy tissue of psychedelic dreams a vivid and terrible vision of an organism eating itself.

ISOLATIONROOM/GALLERYKIT
5723 Dewey Ave
1st floor
St. Louis, MO 63116

Friday, January 09, 2015

The Dark Room: Friday, 16 January 2015

James Palmour: Reclaimed, The Dark Room’s next photography exhibition is on display from January 9th through March 4th, and will celebrate its opening on January 16th, 2014 with a reception held by James, the International Photography Hall of Fame & Museum, and curator Jason Gray.

By means of broken windows, hidden entrances, and moments of sheer luck, James Palmour explores and photographs the oft discarded remains of American industry and urban regress. James' current collection focuses on fringes of the Midwestern "Rust Belt" ranging from Detroit MI, Gary IN, and St. Louis itself. Influenced by the likes of historic preservationist and architectural photographer Richard Nickel, James seeks to reclaim the stories of locations discovered, relaying the emotion and consequence in digital form.
 
“There is a relationship to the built environment that we all share as human beings; something that goes beyond our mere habitation of constructed spaces, although in alignment with that experience.  Buildings reflect our aspirations as a society, as well as, project our disappointment when those expectations fall short.

When cities disavow their architectural commitments, the implications for citizens far exceeds the immediate result of having abandoned buildings dot the landscape.  As these structures are left behind for a period of years, they rust and decay, and eventually become dangerous for future habitation.  They may harbor illicit activities that present increased crime for neighboring communities.  Ultimately, many buildings are demolished (the rate of rehabilitation or reconstruction is exponentially less).  Psychologically, this process is a sort of violence committed against those persons who continue to live nearby.  Imagine the feeling of isolation for a person growing up in a house, on a city block, where all of the other homes have been demolished.  Similarly, imagine leaving your residence every day, to pass by the pile of rubble and twisted metal that was once the factory where generations of your family had careers- where you may have once had a job, and hoped for a career, as well.

"It is this confluence of the past and present, as well as its psychological impact, that interests St. Louis based photographer, James Palmour.  For several years, Palmour has been conducting work inside of abandoned structures in cities throughout the Midwest, all along looking for the linkages that connect what the buildings have become to what they once were.  His work shares similarities with other architectural and preservationist photographers, like Richard Nickel (the Chicago-based artist who perished when a portion of the Chicago Stock Exchange collapsed on him).  However, the desire to document the fleeting moments of our collective history in picture form is long and varied, and likely a facet of the motivation behind photography's initial invention.”

-- Jason Gray, Curator 

Monday: closed; Tuesday-Thursday: 4pm-11pm; Friday-Saturday: 4pm-12am;
Sunday: Open on some Sundays during high theater season. Check social media & website for updates.

615 N. Grand Blvd.
St. Louis, MO 63013