Solvent Space is pleased to present Peculiar Institutions by Sanford Biggers. His multi-disciplinary works are known for their meditative rigor and improvisatory nature. Drawing from his experiences living in Japan, his work is influenced by Buddhist aesthetics. In addition, hip-hop and urban culture infuse his work with a vibrant edge. For Peculiar Institutions Biggers reflects on the history of Richmond’s slave market, mediating the experience through historical and contemporary iterations of race relations and history. Peculiar Institutions is an engaging and thought provoking installation that emphasizes Biggers’ ability to blend meditative, historical and contemporary issues.
Biggers’ is a faculty member in the Department of Sculpture + Extended Media at VCU. His work has been shown at P.S.1 MoMA; Prospect One, New Orleans; The Studio Museum in Harlem; the Tate Modern, London; The Kitchen, New York; Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland; as well as many others.
For further information on Sanford Biggers please visit his website at www.sanfordbiggers.com.
Artist Reception is January 16th from 7-9 pm. Exhibition runs January 16th through February 28th.
For further information and inquiries please contact Belinda Haikes at:
telephone 267-262-1619
haikesb@vcu.edu
Mailing Address: Richard Roth / Solvent Space / Department of Painting and Printmaking / Virginia Commonwealth University / 1000 West Broad Street / PO Box 842016 / Richmond, Virginia 23284-2016.
Solvent Space is pleased to present Peculiar Institutions by Sanford Biggers. His multi-disciplinary works are known for their meditative rigor and improvisatory nature. Drawing from his experiences living in Japan, his work is influenced by Buddhist aesthetics. In addition, hip-hop and urban culture infuse his work with a vibrant edge. For Peculiar Institutions Biggers reflects on the history of Richmond’s slave market, mediating the experience through historical and contemporary iterations of race relations and history. Peculiar Institutions is an engaging and thought provoking installation that emphasizes Biggers’ ability to blend meditative, historical and contemporary issues.
Biggers’ is a faculty member in the Department of Sculpture + Extended Media at VCU. His work has been shown at P.S.1 MoMA; Prospect One, New Orleans; The Studio Museum in Harlem; the Tate Modern, London; The Kitchen, New York; Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland; as well as many others.
For further information on Sanford Biggers please visit his website at www.sanfordbiggers.com.
Artist Reception is January 16th from 7-9 pm. Exhibition runs January 16th through February 28th.
For further information and inquiries please contact Belinda Haikes at:
telephone 267-262-1619
haikesb@vcu.edu
Mailing Address: Richard Roth / Solvent Space / Department of Painting and Printmaking / Virginia Commonwealth University / 1000 West Broad Street / PO Box 842016 / Richmond, Virginia 23284-2016.
Solvent Space is pleased to present the east coast premiere of Palms and Klumpen by John Bock. John Bock is a German performance artist and sculptor whose videos alter and transform reality through distortion and amplification. His video lectures combine pseudo-scientific, social, and political commentary to create “theatrical collages”. For Palms Bock applies his “theatrical collage” aesthetic to the desert town of 29 Palms with captivating results. Additionally, Bock’s video installation Klumpen explores the artists’ studio practice through rhythmic synergies.
Klumpen has been generously provided by the collection of Dr. Paul Monroe and Palms has been made available by the Anton Kern Gallery.
Bock’s work has been shown at P.S.1 Moma, Mori Art Museum, Japan, ICA Institute of Contemporary Arts London, Netherlands Media Art Institute Montevideo, Fondazione Giorgio Marconi, Italy, Schirn Kunsthalle, Germany, Regen Projects, LA and numerous other venues. John currently
View of Ludlow Street, New York, May 4, 2006
Digital Photographs, Variable Dimensions
Image interval: 5 seconds, Duration: 24 hours
Image resolution: 3264 x 2448
March 21 – May 17, 2008
http://www.wolfgangstaehle.info/
HOPE GINSBURG
Sound design by Stephen Vitiello
Wall design by Leah Beeferman
January 25th-February 23rd
OPENING: Friday January 25th, 6-8PM
Solvent Space
Plant Zero Arts Complex
Hull & 4th Streets, Richmond VA
Hope Ginsburg, a recent addition to VCU’s Art Foundation Program, has tranformed Solvent Space into spongespace. spongespace is an immersive environment designed to host three Sponge workshops. Each Sponge workshop includes hands-on projects, visiting experts, projected films, participant presentations, and the assembly of a Sponge Reader.
WORKSHOPS:
Visit: http://www.spongespace.net for workshop details & advance registration.
Feltmaking Sponge
February 2nd, 10am-5pm
February 3rd, 10am-5pm
Sponge Water & Sound
Feburary 9th, 10am-5pm
February 10th, 10-am-5pm
Meta-Sponge
February 15th, 10-am-5pm
February 16th, 10am-5pm
Grand Opening
October 12 – December 1, 2007
IMAGES
Stephen Westfall is an artist, writer, and curator. He is represented by Lennon Weinberg Gallery, New York; Galerie Lock, St. Gallen (Switzerland); Galerie Paal, Munich; Galerie Zürcher, Paris. Westfall’s writing has been published in Art in America, Arts Magazine, Flash Art, and other magazines. His work is held in the collections of Louisiana Museum, Humlebæk (Denmark); Albertina Museum, Vienna; Baltimore Museum of Art; Munson-Williams-Proctor Art Institute, Utica; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City. Westfall was the recipient of the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (2007), Nancy Graves Grant for Visual Artists (2006); two awards from American Academy of Arts and Letters; three fellowships from National Endowment for the Arts; and two fellowships from New York State Council on the Arts. Fellow, Humanities Council, Princeton University (2005).He is currently serving as co-chair of Painting at the Milton avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.
March 23 to June 30, 2007
Polly Apfelbaum creates what she calls “fallen painting,” hybrid works of rare beauty that exist in a contentious, ambivalent space between painting, sculpture, and installation. Apfelbaum’s overall forms are comprised of intricate, nearly psychedelic layers of dyed fabric, as if myriad smaller paintings have grown from a central cluster of shapes and colors to create a larger, unified installation. LoveKraft finds Apfelbaum utilizing nor only her painterly forms, but also the existing space to create her site-specific installation.
Polly Apfelbaum is a graduate of the Tyler School of Art and has had numerous solo exhibitions including those at Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; D’Amelio Terras, New York; and Bowdin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine. She currently lives and works in New York.
January 26 to indeterminate, 2007
For Wow and Flutter, Hayes takes advantage of the wind and lack of color in the industrial landscape. She is hopeful that when the wind blows it will imply that colors are mixing together. The color is waving and beckoning. Bauhaus Laundry Color Theory. Hayes is drawn to fabric as a medium of infinite mutability. Whether her work speaks more as abstract painting or as minimalist-inspired sculpture is, at any given moment, up to Hayes. But Hayes, in turn, prefers to leave much to the individual experience of the viewer.
Rachel Hayes earned her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute, and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2006. Exhibitions include Sculpture Center, Long Island City, New York; Grand Arts and Dolphin Gallery, Kansas City, Missouri; ADA Gallery, Richmond, Virginia; Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell, New Mexico. Reviews of these and other exhibitions have appeared in Art Papers, The Kansas City Star and Review Magazine. Awards include a one-year residency at the Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program, The Charlotte Street Fund, and a Virginia Commission for the Arts Fellowship in Sculpture.
January 26 to March 10, 2007
The works are stepping stones around the space inside the head; hummocks on which you can sit to catch your breath. They are road signs, sieves, wands, pennants, they are chiming sounds and the colours are life givers. They are drawings of various elements and the ballooning refers to breathing and gliding spheres. In order to activate this, it is necessary to keep tuning, turning, adjusting and selecting. Forcing is not an option and therefore one has to wait patiently for the elements to retreat of their own accord, shrink or show their individual characteristics. The works are not mementoes of a particular story, but pointers towards non-verbal space – and they flutter around the concept of being alive.
Margrét H Blöndal has exhibited widely, including solo shows at The Living Art Museum, Reykjavik, Iceland and Villa Minimo, Hannover, Germany. Group exhibitions include The Nordic Biennial, Goteborg, Sweden, the Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas, and Galerie 5020, Salzburg, Austria. She has also won numerous awards including the Richard Serra Prize in 2002. Margrét H Blöndal lives and works in Reykjavik, Iceland.
Sweet Sixteen is a multi-channel video installation of the first 64 measures of the Sweet Child of Mine music video by Guns and Roses. The two video channels, playing simultaneously, move in and out of phase creating a new version of the song that moves pop culture into the realm of the meditative. Cory Arcangel also performed three pieces from his Born to Run: Glockenspiel Addendum.
Cory Arcangel is a digital artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. His work is concerned with the relationship between technology and culture. Arcangel is perhaps most widely known for his Nintendo game cartridge hacks and his subversive reworking of obsolete computer systems from the 1970’s and 80’s. Arcangel has exhibited in galleries around the world. His work was featured in the 2004 Whitney Biennial and has also been exhibited in the Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art.
