SUBSTRATE/STRUCTURE
Group Exhibition
January 12 - April 28, 2024
OPENING EVENT: February 2, 2024 | 5 - 9 PM
Darlene Charneco, The Resonant Field, 2022, Multimedia: nails, resin, enamel, acrylic on wood, 60 x 108 inches
Image courtesy of Darlene Charneco and Praxis Gallery, New York, NY
Elise Thompson, Grin, 2021, Acrylic and glass beads on paper and clear vinyl,
31 x 23.25 inches
Image courtesy of Elise Thompson
“Recrafting” is a chance for us to look closer at the literal and metaphorical structures that direct how we distinguish “art” from “craft”. Art History, a subject predominantly dictated by a western, white, patriarchal society, has established a cultural and educational structure derived from their cultural preferences - and marginalized those that did not.
Objects classified as “craft” are often made for functional purposes and constructed of inexpensive materials, rather than the academically-vetted expensive fine art materials to make objects for observation, decoration, and scholarship. This modality of defining and distinguishing art from craft is well-established yet outdated and irrelevant. It prohibits essential, diverse practices and conversation that are reflective of our society today. This exhibition aims to reconfigure our societal, systematic, and academic thought structures by bringing awareness to the visual and literal overlapping of art and craft.
The substrate of an artwork is the foundation on which an artist bases their work. That foundation can be a physical surface such as canvas, wood, or fiber. Or it can be figurative, like the ideas, concepts, and history that inspire artists. The four artists presented in Substrate/Structure question established definitions of art through the material substrate and structure of their work. They blur traditional and contemporary methods by utilizing techniques associated with craft, such as ceramics, textiles, and wood, to re-think the artwork’s meaning and message.
Each artist “recrafts” the traditional foundation of an artwork, building a unique image, narrative, and/or process. Darlene Charneco hammers nails into plywood sheets, painting and bending them to catch light in dizzying spirals. Kimberly English weaves ideas and fibers together, draping abstract fabrics and woven tapestries mid-air. Adebunmi Gbadebo uses hair, meshed together and dyed with indigo to tell an intimate story of physical and emotional history. Elise Thompson stretches and plies clear vinyl and layers grading pigments that somehow fade into the distance.
DuPont I and II Gallery
Inspired by vivid dreams and studies of symbiosis in nature, Darlene Charneco’s works explore and navigate the layered spaces we live in, often presenting them as part of a growing organism. Developing her own tactile language, the artist creates three-dimensional, mixed-media ‘touchmaps’ to orient, sense, and express within a world that is continually shifting and changing through our expanded networks of communication. Charneco weaves nails together into wooden panels to create tactile topographical fields that gradually grow into new microscopy-like images within an evolving complex organism.
Kimberly English's textile work explores the connection between cloth and self. By utilizing both additive (weaving, quilting, sewing) and subtractive (unraveling, cutting, removing) textile processes, collected and woven fabric transforms into multi-layered works that evoke a narrative presence often inspired by the American south. By mindfully synthesizing stories of myth, survival, and relationships, English's work seeks to explore the nuance of interdependence - real and imagined - between land, technology, people, and the objects they create.
Adebunmi Gbadebo (Ah-dae-bu-mee Bha-dae-bo) is a multimedia artist who uses culturally and historically imbued materials to investigate the complexities between land, matter, and memory on various sites of slavery. Centering on deeply resonant materials like indigo dye, soil hand dug from plantations, and human Black hair collected throughout the diaspora, Gbadebo has formed a visual vocabulary entirely her own. The resulting works tend to carry the stories of ancestors, families, and individuals either long overlooked or too closely surveilled. Born in New Jersey and based between Newark and Philadelphia, Gbadebo earned her BFA at the School of Visual Arts, NY, and a certification in Creative Place Keeping at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
Elise Thompson received a BFA from Northern Kentucky University in 2010 and an MFA at Florida State University in 2016. She attended the Boom Gallery Fellowship + Residency in Cincinnati, OH, in 2015 via an FSU Exceptional Opportunities award and received the Mary Ola Reynolds Miller Scholarship in Visual Arts in 2016. Additional residencies include Vermont Studio Center, The Wassaic Artist Residency, The Maple Terrace Artist Residency Program, DNA Artist Residency, Stay Home Gallery + Residency, and ChaNorth Artist Residency.
VIRTUAL GALLERY TOUR
Photo Credit: Daniel Jackson Photography
