Tag: performance art

Joel Parsons: You Are the Hole, An Exhibition in Four Acts

Opening Reception: Friday, October 9, 6 – 9 pm
Performance: Sunday, October 25, 2 pm

You Are the Hole is the theatre of desire, abstracted. By presenting the self as something constructed and performed, Joel Parsons gently prods the human dichotomy of yearning to divulge and yearning to conceal.

Using the structural components of a theatre, he establishes an installation space that is simultaneously formal and intimate. Occupying the transformed stage are sculptures in voluptuous pinks and nudes, a flesh-like latex curtain and dozens of small drawings. Parsons has made a zine to accompany the exhibition, which will be available in the gallery.

The culmination is Parsons’ performance of his originally-choreographed piece, “Beholding and Being Held.”

Joel Parsons is an artist, writer, and curator based in Memphis, TN. He is an Assistant Professor of Art and Director of Clough-Hanson Gallery at Rhodes College, co-director of Beige, an otherwise space for art and performance, and a founding member of the ArtsMemphis Artist Advisory Council. A graduate of Rhodes College and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, he has exhibited his work in Memphis at the Powerhouse, Material, and Southfork Gallery, as well as at Western Exhibtions in Chicago, and venues in Peru, India, and South Africa.

 

Lawrence Matthews III: In a Violent Way

Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10 am – 6 pm

  • Performance at Rock For Love: Friday, September, 4, 8:30 pm
  • Artist Talk: Thursday, September 10, 7:30 pm

“A riot is the language of the unheard.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

In a Violent Way is a multimedia installation by Lawrence Matthews III that incorporates a wide array of visual and audio elements, from oil painting and collage to tube televisions and archival video footage. To accompany the installation, Matthews will perform his own original songs at the close of the show’s reception. The exhibition’s title is a nod to the seminal, genre-bending 1969 Miles Davis recording, In a Silent Way, which inspired and guided Matthews while he created this body of work.

The imagery of In a Violent Way is sourced from or informed by mass media portrayals of events past and present in four primary cities: Baltimore, Los Angeles, St. Louis and Memphis, each with its own history of entrenched racial discrimination and economic disparity disproportionately affecting people of color. Mixed media works depicting the demonstrations and unrest of the 1960’s tellingly reside alongside banks of television sets showing video footage of more recent discord, like the 1992 L.A. Riots. These scenes — differing in timeline, though not in tenor — convey generations of frustration caused by institutionalized oppression, angry citizens crying out against abuses at the hands of authority, and the ambivalent eye of the media that only captures part of the story.

“My work does not judge the morality of the individuals partaking in the riots, only the institutions that create the circumstances where riots are the only voice.” – Lawrence Matthews III

Lawrence Matthews III was born in Memphis, TN, into a family who encouraged him to be an artist from a young age. He received his BFA from the University of Memphis and was awarded “Best of Show” in the University’s 31st Annual Juried Student Exhibition. Young, but already prolific, Matthews is an emerging artist who has shown work in several solo and group shows across Memphis, including Doomed to Repeat at Circuitous Succession Gallery (2015), Cigar Box Show at Glitch Gallery (2014), and Price Is Right at David Lusk Gallery (2014).

Matthews works in a wide variety of media, including oil paint, collage, photography, sculpture, music and film, and combines post-modern, Pop Art and contemporary influences to narrate his perspective as an African descendant living in America.

Johnathan Payne: Meet Me Where I’m At

Exhibition Schedule
Friday, May 8: Reception, 6 – 8 pm | Live performance at 6:21 pm
Saturday, May 9: Artist talk at 2 pm

Artist Statement
Intense preoccupations with self-concept, desire, and tribalism are the points of departure for my recent installation and performance work. I tackle these complex personal landscapes in the studio similar to my approach outside of that space: through endurance, perspective, minor successes, immediate pleasures, Pho Binh lunch buffets, constant longing, and inevitable failure. This is all a journey. Utilizing pre-existing cultural objects, movement, body fluid, space, and meditative processes, I continue to simultaneously grapple with and reprieve my poly-consciousness. Ultimately, this show serves as a temporal sanctuary where these performative self-journeys and self-reconciliations shall unfold.

Artist Bio
Johnathan Payne is an emerging artist whose creative practice encompasses drawing, painting, collage, performance, and installation art. He has exhibited in various solo and group exhibitions, including Voice of the Turtle at Tops Gallery most recently, New Drawings at Beige in 2014, and Pyramid Scheme! at Gallery 363 in 2013. He earned his BA in Art from Rhodes College in 2012, and received the Sally Becker Grinspan Award for Artistic Achievement. Last November, Johnathan was awarded an ArtsAccelerator grant from ArtsMemphis. He currently lives and maintains a studio practice in Memphis, TN.

State of the Art

Black liberation rapper Skipp Coon (Jackson, Mississippi) performs songs from his latest album Miles Garvey, and illustrator/painter/muralist Trevor FRE$H Coates (Detroit, Michigan) will be exhibiting his current collection Adventure to the Green.

Music by DJ Siphne Aaye. Presented by Dope Since 1980.