Vivid Memories of a Blurred Past

Vivid Memories of a Blurred Past

August 25, 2018 – December 16, 2018

Vivid Memories of a Blurred Past presents a selection of works that explore performance and memory of who we are and who we once were. We are able to look both backwards into our memories and forward to the site of communal rites of passage. The exhibition’s departure is the fantastically normal bodega, the corner store, the deli, as a place of convenience, of sustenance, of devotion, of memorial and tragedy when a member of the community leaves us. Both inside the densely packed aisles of Jumbo Honey Buns, Gatorade, fresh produce, batteries, Cup of Noodles, and CDs by local heroes and with the guys posted up out front, gathering, posturing, kvetching about sports, growing each day. It’s a sacred community space. A place of shared economies, where necessities are given on credit; where neighbors care for neighbors. In a hectic world these small stores are a pause for human interaction. Ultimately, there is no space more reflective of the randomness of the city. Featuring work by David Onri Anderson, Brandon Donahue, John Edmonds, FRKO, Lucia Hierro, and Maya Stovall.

Bios

David Onri Anderson

Nashville-based artist David Onri Anderson received his BFA in 2016 from Watkins College of Art, Design & Film. Anderson’s artwork has been exhibited nationally, including shows at ZeiherSmith, Torrance Shipman and b.j. spokes gallery in New York, the Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center and Zeitgeist Gallery in Nashville. In addition to his work as an artist, Anderson is co-director/curator of Mild Climate in The Packing Plant, and runs and directs art-space Bijan Ferdowsi in the Wedgewood-Houston neighborhood. 

Brandon Donahue

Brandon Donahue was born and raised in Memphis, TN, but has been living in Nashville, TN for the past 13 years. He began airbrushing at the age of 12, doing t-shirts, murals, automotives, and body painting. Donahue’s artwork has been reviewed in newspapers including the Nashville Scene, The Tennessean, Flagpole, and The Examiner. Donahue has been an artist-in-residence at Arrowmont Arts and Craft center in Gatlinburg, TN. He has shown his work at galleries such as Double 6 Studios Brooklyn, NY, The White Box Gallery of New York, NY, Mein Blau Gallery of Berlin, Germany, The Frist Center of Nashville, TN, David Lusk Gallery of Nashville and Memphis, TN, Dr. Bob’s of New Orleans, LA, and The Corvette Museum of Bowling Green, KY. He also has painted murals in Memphis, New Orleans, Austin, TX, Berlin, Florence, Italy, Nashville, and NYC. He now is an Assistant Art Professor at Tennessee State University.

John Edmonds

John Edmonds (b. 1989) is an American artist and photographer who first came to public recognition with his intimate portraits of lovers, close friends and strangers. His work explores themes of identity, community and desire. Noted for his highly formalist photographs in which he focuses on the performative gestures and self-fashioning of young black men on the streets of America, his work is in numerous public and private collections, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, The Columbus Museum of Art, The Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum. His debut monograph, Higher, will be published in Fall of 2018 by Capricious Publishing. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

FRKO

FRKO, AKA Freako Rico, (born Richard Montgomery), is an Atlanta-based illustrator mixes comics and hip-hop to create hysterical, often belligerent art. FRKO has drawn multiple album covers for Action Bronson, including the graphic identity for the album Mr. Wonderful, and the artwork for Gucci Mane’s “All My Children.” Recent projects include a group exhibition at THE GALLERY, WISH ATL, titled TRPL-DBL; a collaboration with the creative collective LoveRenaissance to design the iconic Reebok Classics, and drawing a Red Bull can for the Music Culture Clash, Atlanta.

Lucia Hierro

Lucia Hierro is a Dominican American conceptual artist born and raised in New York City, Washington Heights/Inwood, currently working in the Bronx. She received a BFA from SUNY Purchase (2010) and an MFA from Yale School of Art (2013). She has exhibited in group shows at the N’Namdi Gallery in Detroit, Tiger Strikes Asteroid in Brooklyn, NY Bronx Museum of the Arts, Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art and Storytelling, Paris Photo and recently at Elizabeth Dee Gallery in Harlem. She has curated four exhibitions “Art Art Art Art Art: The Modern Woman” at RawSpace in Harlem, “Kenya Robinson: The Vocal Stylings of Cheeky LaShae”, “Max Lauter/Jon Peck: The Object is Present” at Shapeshifter Lab an experimental music and art space in Brooklyn and an online show “Artist on the Verge” for Aster(ix)Journal. She was recently an artist in residence at Fountainhead Residency and was part of the Bronx Museums Artist in the Market program as well as Yaddo Residency.

Maya Stovall

Maya Stovall, Ph.D. (b. 1982, Detroit, Michigan, lives and works in Detroit and Los Angeles) is assistant professor and artist at Cal Poly Pomona. Interested in what she considers monumental questions of human existence and politics of space and place, Maya is equally a contemporary artist and anthropologist, and works across video, photo, and conceptual practice. Maya’s work appears across international institutions in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, she is a Whitney Biennial participating artist for 2017 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and a Fictions participating artist in 2017-18 at the Studio Museum in Harlem. The artist’s academic articles on her works, research, and practices have appeared in The Journal of the Anthropology of North America, Transforming Anthropology, Anthropology News, Movement Research, and Detroit Research Journal, and the artist’s book, Liquor Store Theatre, is to be released by Duke Press in Fall 2019. Maya’s works are included the permanent collections of Cranbrook Art Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art. www.mayastovall.com

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