A new art space in CH is opening tomorrow night and we’d like to invite everyone. Lots of recent MFA grads are involved.

Thanks so much and looking forward to seeing some familiar faces soon!

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Dear Friends,

We are thrilled to invite you to the opening reception of BASEMENT’s inaugural exhibition, Breathing Without A Body, on Sat. Nov. 16 from 6-9 PM.

BASEMENT is located at 605 Caswell Rd, Chapel Hill NC 27514

Please park on the street and do not block driveways or mailboxes in the neighborhood. Follow the illuminated walkway down on the left side of the house and you will find the door to BASEMENT.

If you plan on coming, please reply to this email. Please feel free to send this to friends, family and other community members who you think would be interested in our programming.

See below for more details about our inaugural show!
We look forward to seeing you!

Breathing Without A Body: 

Stephen Hayes, Saba Taj, and Max Symuleski & Sinan Goknur
November 16, 2019  – January 5, 2020

Opening Reception: Saturday, Nov 16, 6-9  pm

BASEMENT Art Space
In the trash heap of history, how do we excavate what we need to survive? If we are to take the present as being devoured by advanced consumer capitalism – a condition that siphons off both the past and the future and forecloses access to the present – we must contend with the condition of incongruous temporalities and modernities. The artists in this exhibition ask us to grapple with these differently paced understandings and experiences of time and space.

BASEMENT’s inaugural exhibition features Durham-based artists Saba Taj, Stephen Hayes, and collaborative work by Max Symuleski and Sinan Goknur. Employing a variety of methods and media, including collage, drawing, sculpture, and video, the artists consider the past, present, and future through an exhumation of the body within distinct social and historical landscapes. Speculating on the contradictions and continued violence of racism and economic development in the name of capital, together these works assert a space of both resistance and resilience.

Stephen Hayes is a mixed media sculptor and creator whose work references socio-cultural race dynamics rooted in historical references. A Durham native, Hayes completed his BA at North Carolina Central University, and his MFA at the Savannah College of Art and Design. His work seeks to change societal perceptions of Black identity and otherness through the vulnerability of sharing experiences and the catharsis of collective realizations. Hayes was an Arts Lab fellow at Halcyon Arts Lab in 2017–2018. Hayes’ work has been exhibited throughout the south, including at the Mason Murer Fine Art Gallery in Atlanta, Ga., CAM Raleigh, and the Harvey B. Gantt Center in Charlotte, N.C. Hayes is currently the Brock Family Visiting Instructor in Studio Arts in the Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies at Duke University.

Sinan Goknur is an artist and PhD Candidate in the Computational Media, Arts & Cultures Program at Duke. Sinan’s academic work investigates a new return to the social in the arts through queer and feminist aesthetics after the 1980 military coup in Turkey.  Prior to coming to Duke, Sinan was a member of the MAW, an artist collective in Minneapolis, MN seeking to activate public engagement with art and politics through impromptu outdoor performances and large-scale mixed media projections.

Max Symuleski is an artist, writer, and PhD Candidate in the Computational Media, Arts & Cultures Program at Duke. They are currently writing a critical-aesthetic investigation of the role of maintenance labor in life and art under the governance of neoliberal capital. Max has a background in visual arts, queer nightlife and performance, amateur tinkering, and professional academic administration. They hold an MA (’12) in Historical Studies from the New School for Social Research and a BA (’05) with a concentration in Art Theory and Visual Arts from Sarah Lawrence College. Max lives in Durham.

Saba Taj is an interdisciplinary artist based in Durham NC. Taj’s work ruminates on Muslims, monsters, and nazar (the evil eye), often in the wake of apocalypse, and speculates on the boundaries between life forms and our evolutionary/spiritual potential for porousness and hybridity. Saba is currently the post-MFA fellow with the Documentary Diversity Project at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. She is the former Director of The Carrack Modern Art in Durham, featured speaker for TEDxDuke 2017, and a founding member of Durham Artists Movement. Taj received her BA in Art Education from North Carolina Central University, and an MFA in Studio Art from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

BASEMENT is a provisional artist-run project space that supports experimental and critical art practices. We choose to strengthen and build connections between artists and communities.

A new exhibition of digital art & poetry is currently accessible via a router in the SILS Library in Manning Hall. The show is part of the wrong new digital art biennale and is called disjunction notice: a poetry archives, curated by Colin Post.

The router is offline, but you can access it with any wi-fi enabled device by following these instructions when you’re within range in the SILS Library. (Printouts of the instructions should be available in the SILS Library, too.)  It will be up until March 1, 2020.

BEN ALPER
Website update + introducing: Sleeper – a new publishing project

From Conflation

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Hi everyone!

I’m emailing with two exciting updates. First, I’ve added two ongoing projects to my website. One-way Mirror is a 4-year response to the effects of deindustrialization in North Carolina and the physical expressions it has left on the landscape. Conflation is a series of digital composites made from multiple images of the same object or space.  You can see more from both projects at the links above.

from One-way Mirror

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I’m also thrilled to announce that I’m launching a new publishing project with Peter Hoffman and Ross Mantle.  It’s called Sleeper, and while our website hasn’t officially launched, you can sign up for our mailing list now to keep up with future projects.  We have forthcoming titles from Aaron Turner, Julie Renee Jones, Timothy Briner and a book of vernacular photographs from the collection of Robert E. Jackson.

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We’ll be at the Silver Eye Book Fair in Pittsburgh this coming weekend with books and prints from our previous publishing projects.  Swing by and say hi!

Silver Eye Book Fair
4808 Penn Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15224Friday, October 4, 5 – 10 pm
Saturday, October 5, 11 am – 6 pm

Fondly,
Ben Alper

Vestiges of Chaos: Reflections on War
Reuben Mabry

October 14-December 30, 2019
Third Friday Opening Reception: October 18, 6-9 pm
Artist Talk: October 26, 1:30 pm

Artist’s Statement:
In Vestiges of Chaos: Reflections on War, I created works on paper resulting from an amalgamation of research, recollection, and self-reflection rooted in my experiences as a US Army attack helicopter pilot while deployed to Afghanistan. By employing painting, drawing, and mark-making techniques from Asian and Western art historical and contemporary movements of abstraction and representation, these pieces bridge verbal and written gaps created by traumatic experiences of war. These pieces are also vestiges reconstructed from experiences in combat that reclaim the events of the past and bring onus into the present.

Grand Gallery, Golden Belt Campus
Mill #1 Building
800 Taylor St., Durham, NC 27701

www.reubenjarvismabry.com

Congratulations to alums MJ Sharp, Erin Canady, Chieko Murasugi, Jasper Lee, Sarah Elizabeth Cornejo, and Travis Donovan and current MFA student Chloe Rager, who make up 15% of the artists included in the group show Coined in the South at the Mint Museum in Charlotte. The show will be on view until February 16, 2020.

What Remains of the Day – Memories of World War II opens at GreenHill in Greensboro this Friday, September 20, with a reception from 6-8 pm.

On view from September 20-November 15 with many associated programs happening throughout the exhibition.

Also, if you go early, you can also catch MFA Alumna Chieko Murasugi’s solo exhibition No Thing Is Simple at UNCG’s Gatewood Gallery.

Oneoneone presents Another Potato Chip Weekend

Join us:
Friday September 13 from 6-8pm at:
109 Brewer Lane (upstairs), Carrboro, NC 27510
for a group exhibition, including großer Lauscher

Featuring the work of Bill Brown, Jerstin Crosby, Sabine Gruffat, George Jenne, Lindsay Metivier, Alyssa Miserendino, Travis Phillips, Rachele Riley, Derek Toomes, and Louis Watts.

großer Lauscher is made possible with sponsorship from Genelec, ARUP & The Kitchen. Additional support has been provided by an Ella Foundation Pratt Emerging Artists Grant, From the Durham Arts Council, with support from the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resource + a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.

ODE TO HEISENBERG + DE MARIA (HDM)

Here is a short excerpt of HDM that includes recorded heartbeats from my community. A big thanks to Quran Karriem & Rebecca Uliasz – both candidates in Duke Unitversity’s Computational Media, Arts & Cultures Ph.D program – who have successfully built an ECG that can locate a visitor’s heartbeat down to a couple centimeters, during the exhibition of this piece.

If you or another are interested in presenting this project, via the health or art community, please reach out.

MEDICINAL GARDEN COMMISSION

UNC-Chapel Hill has commissioned me to design and install a mural for the school medicinal garden’s concrete wall. I will be working with transfer students & the garden Club to help design and install the work. We are looking to have the plants create the design, via their electric activity within the garden.

SIXTH ANNUAL ART AUCTION

This annual auction supports the current graduate candidates in studio art at UNC-Chapel Hill. A piece from Resonance will be available for sale, on October 11, 2019.

GROSSKREISENTFERNUNG / Great Circle Distance Mail Art

46 artists from 12 countries collaborated on a Mail Art project that travelled over 66,000 km and was exhibited for the first time in Berlin from 8-20 July 2019 at project space tête.

VAE FISCAL SPONSOR

I am happy to announce my new fiscal sponsor is VAE in Raleigh, North Carolina. Please consider sustaining or making a one time donation towards the projects I create.

Come see work by Alumni Leigh Suggs, Vanessa Murray, Jerstin Crosby, George Jenne, Lindsay Metivier, Alyssa Miserendino, and Louis Watts and studio faculty member Sabine Gruffat at OneOneOne Gallery in Greenbridge in Chapel Hill!

Oneoneone promotes the work of emerging and established contemporary artists in a dynamic gallery space. www.oneoneone.gallery oneoneone@sitzerspuria.com
Free parking – garage entrance from Merritt Mill Rd

Hello! 

I would like to invite you to my exhibition Transmutations, opening Friday the 6th at Artspace in Raleigh. The show is located in the Upfront Gallery and runs through September 28th. Please invite your friends and family. All information is found below.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Vanessa
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Info:
Transmutations  
Artspace
Upfront Gallery
201 E Davie St., Raleigh

September 6th – 28th
First Friday Opening 6-10 pm

About:

All things physically change form over vast expanses of time and external forces create certain topographies around us. In this body of work, negative spaces appear as cavities. These pockets of space have developed from the artist’s fascination with caves, chasms and the way crevices or folds behave. Murray is influenced by any type of hole, split or fracture, whether seen in an image of an arctic ice sheet or an open wound. Openings are instinctively mysterious, having the potential to create various levels of unease or anxiety. It’s our long fascination with the abyss. These moments in the work become contemplations on mortality and the unknown. Ultimately though, both paintings and sculptures are absorbed in conveying a sense of slow movement, a state of transformation that is taking shape. Murray’s process is driven by the complex relationship between positive form and negative space. It’s a dynamic relationship that is never constant, but rather fluid and changeable. Movement and change occur continuously around us, but it’s the imperceptible shifts that are inspiration for the work in this show.
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Bio:

Vanessa Murray is a painter and mixed media artist based in Carrboro, NC. She received her MFA in Studio Art from UNC Chapel Hill in 2017 and her BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2005. She was recently a Regional Emerging Artist in Residence at Artspace in Raleigh and is currently a studio artist at Attic 506 in Chapel Hill. Murray has had solo exhibitions at The Durham Art Guild, UNC Chapel Hill’s Allcott Gallery, the Gutter Box Gallery in Raleigh and the Contemporary Art Workshop in Chicago.

Read all about it in the DTH: https://www.dailytarheel.com/article/2019/08/chambers-portrait-unveling-0828. Congratulations, Will!