Past Exhibitions
Fall 2016 - Spring 2017
Spring 2017 Graphic Design Senior Show
Go Seniors!
May 4, 6-8 pm
Join us for a one-night only exhibition of works by graduating University of Memphis
undergraduate Graphic Design students: Orline Bowers, Karly Burris, Joshua Carodine,
Mahala Davis, Kelly Henderson, Khrystopher James, Kristina Marlow, Helen Quisenberry,
Alli Reed, Wallace Robinson, Jhayla Young.
Spring 2017 BFA Thesis Exhibition
Synecdoche
April 14–28, 2017
"Synecdoche," the Spring 2017 BFA thesis exhibition, features works by eight graduating seniors of The University of Memphis Department of Art: Jarvis Boyland, DeAnna Brown, Stephanie Cain, McKenna Chalifoux, Gene Duncan, LaKendra Harris, Jessie James, and Le Marquee La Flora. The exhibition is a compilation of works in a variety of mediums including painting, photography, and sculpture. The presentation celebrates the completion of undergraduate studies and the culmination of each student's artistic exploration and experiences.
National Conference on Undergraduate Research Visual Arts Exhibition
NCUR
April 6–7, 2017
The University of Memphis welcomes over 4,400 undergraduate students from across the country as the 2017 host of the National Conference on Undergraduate Research. In conjunction with the conference, The Martha and Robert Fogelman Galleries of Contemporary Art is pleased to host an exhibition featuring the work of students in the visual arts and graphic design.
Students will also present their research in oral presentations held in ACB on Friday, April 7. Free and open to the public.
11TH Annual Art Ed Alumni Juried Exhibition
Tolerance
March 17–31, 2017
In its eleventh year, the Annual Art Education Alumni Juried Exhibition features the work of area K-12 art educators who are graduates of The University of Memphis Art Education Program, or who have completed coursework at the University during their teaching preparation or careers as well as the work of their students. This year's exhibition theme is "Tolerance." Every year, this exhibition is held during Youth Art Month and is in accordance with the mission and vision of The University of Memphis, the Department of Art, and the Tennessee Art Education Association. Award winners will be selected by this year's judge, Dolly Herciuk (BFA in Studio Art, 2014), a Children's Librarian Assistant at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library.
Desmond Lewis
Heavy-Laden
March 17–31, 2017
Featuring the work of Desmond Lewis, the MFA thesis exhibition Heavy-Laden explores the relationship between the often-overlooked industrial contributions of
African Americans in the construction of the United States over time and considers
the metaphorical characteristics of the materials used.
The contribution of African American labor to industrial America is often hidden beneath the layers of racist ideologies that have propelled the United States to its superpower status. The work in the exhibition carves away at this pristine façade to expose the roughness and intricacies that the hands of African American labor had and still have in constructing the nation's infrastructure.
Lewis's work is driven by the interpersonal relationship he has with steel and concrete—a physicality and commitment echoed in his everyday experience living in the United States as an African American man. Comprised of carved concrete and forged and fabricated steel sculptures, the exhibition occupies the gallery but also includes a large-scale outdoor piece as well as public work in the Orange Mound community.
This exhibition is supported through the generosity of West Memphis Steel, Orange Mound Gallery, Razorback Concrete, Williams Equipment and Supply, MCR Safety, and Tennessee Sling Center.
Umar Rashid
The Belhaven Republic (A Delta Blues)
January 20 – March 3, 2017
Featuring new work by the Los Angeles-based artist Umar Rashid (Frohawk Two Feathers) (b. 1976, Chicago), the exhibition advances Rashid's ongoing colonial history of the Frenglish Empire (1658-1880)—a fictionalized empire of his creation merging France and England. This chapter of Frenglish history, detailing the events leading to the attempted siege of Memphis, is the first to directly address chattel slavery within the empire and in the interior of North America. Influenced by the geography and cultures of the Mississippi Delta, the exhibition marks Rashid's first time exhibiting in the American South.
The exhibition is a visual manifestation of Rashid's colonial narrative, one that adroitly weaves fact and fiction, historical past and contemporary present. His portraits, drawings, flags, maps, battle scenes, and other artifacts continue the long history of Frengland—an ongoing project Rashid began in 2006. His empire has developed a complex, global history, much like the trajectory of actual colonial enterprises. Similarly, his work references a panoply of cultures that collapse geography and time. Stylistically, Rashid alludes to Egyptian art and architecture, Native American hide paintings and ledger art, Persian miniature painting, and illustrated Spanish colonial manuscripts to name but a few.
Rashid's compelling cast of characters are diverse and often of mixed race and ethnicity. His world is not guided by simplistic dichotomies of white and black, master and slave, captor and captive, but challenges viewers to consider the range of humanity involved in a global empire. Thus, his people of color are just as likely to be heroes as villains, revealing the duplicity and complicity of these individuals but also acknowledging their agency as historical actors.
Download the full narrative text of Rashid's The Belhaven Republic (A Delta Blues), 1793-1795 here.
Fall 2016 Graphic Design Senior Show
Emerge
December 8, 6-8 pm, 2016
Join us for a one-night only exhibition of works by graduating University of Memphis undergraduate Graphic Design students: Karrick Adams, Fatimah Alkabsh, Zuri Allen, Joshua Carodine, Michael Coker, Jasmine Ford, Kamaria Gunn, Nichole Hopper, Deshae Johnson, April Kirkwood, Caryn Nichols, Lauren Nix, Joshua Rounds, Geoffrey Ware, Austin Winstead, and Jasmine Woods.
Fall 2016 BFA Thesis Exhibition
Unsolicited
November 18 – December 2, 2016
UNSOLICITED, features works by four graduating seniors of The University of Memphis Department
of Art: Ashli Aaron, Claire Brumleve, Su WeiChu, and Michelle Ventrini. The exhibition
is a compilation of works in a variety of mediums including painting, photography,
sculpture, and installation art. The presentation celebrates the completion of undergraduate
studies and the culmination of each student's artistic exploration and experiences.
Sue Johnson
Home of Future Things
September 16 – November 11, 2016
Image: Sue Johnson, Shag Lawn, 2016. 48 in. diameter, vinyl floor decal. Courtesy of the artist.
Sue Johnson: Home of Future Things is an exhibition featuring works by the artist Sue Johnson that considers the cyclical nature of mass consumption. The exhibition features small-scale works on paper as well as floor-to-ceiling vinyl panels and decals that the artist has designed—transforming the gallery into the interior of an ideal, modern home. As the exhibition title suggests, Johnson envisions a world in which the home is nostalgic and familiar yet also reduced to an empty space existing simply to house various things.
Johnson's work makes various art historical allusions ranging from ancient Greek mosaics and 17th-century Dutch still-life paintings to Dada and Pop collages. Despite spanning a vast expanse of time and place, these references share a common fascination with commodities and excess that Johnson remixes through a 21st-century lens. Specifically, her work is rooted in the Dutch still-life tradition of vanitas—images that contemplate the transience of life through the display of objects with symbolic meaning. Her process intentionally blurs the boundaries between the real and imagined,historical and timeless, hand-painted and digital. What results is an immersive environment constantly tugging at our sense of reality.
View the gallery guide to Sue Johnson's Home of Future Things here.
Laura J. Lawson
Dépaysement
October 21 – November 4, 2016
Image: Laura J. Lawson, Memphis (detail), 2016. Acrylic ink on polypropylene and paper. 80 x 200 in. Courtesy of
the artist.
Dépaysement is the MFA thesis exhibition featuring the work of Laura J. Lawson. Dépaysement, a French word with no direct English translation, describes the feeling of being
out of one's home country. The exhibition addresses her three years in Memphis contrasted
with her recent artist residency in Marnay-sur-Seine, France.
Lawson's paintings are made with ink on translucent plastic. The result resembles cartographic endeavors, separating the viewer from each place with an aerial perspective. Her two largest works layer these paintings in front of cut paper maps in a grid formation, creating shadows of highways beneath the landscape-like surface. In other works, Lawson has drawn directly on the painting to mix the universal qualities of topography with the arbitrary shapes of borders and roads. The color palettes of all of these paintings are specifically derived from either Memphis or Marnay-sur-Seine, but the characteristics of these places become lost in the similar and strange elements of geography.
Rodrigo Valenzuela
Frontiers
August 26 – October 14, 2016
Image: Rodrigo Valenzuela, Sense of Place No. 3, 2016. Toner, acrylic, chalk on canvas, 53 x 70 in. Collection of Zach Huntting.
Rodrigo Valenzuela: Frontiers features the work of Chilean-born, Houston-based artist Rodrigo Valenzuela. The exhibition marks the artist's foray into painting, building off of earlier photographic work for which he is known, and also includes two video works that address issues of labor and migration. The notion of the frontier, long mythologized in the United States through the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, transcends into more nebulous, global territory in this exhibition. Venturing into uncharted lands in search of something greater is a thrilling yet alienating experience. Inherent to this journey is the role of labor and construction in the broadest sense—the way we fabricate dreams of a better future to the very real work required to get there.
The Spanish word for "frontier," la frontera, is most commonly used to refer to the border between the U.S. and Mexico. Featured in the exhibition are two video works that humanize and make visible the "invisible labor," as Valenzuela calls the manual labor often performed by immigrants and people of color. The exhibition will also showcase Valenzuela's new image-transfer paintings that present fragmented, barren landscapes spliced with geometric forms. They are amalgamations of the many places the artist has lived and visited, evoking a sense of being the first to inhabit a foreign, empty land.
Central to the ethos of the exhibition is a collaborative installation called MDF (2016) created by Valenzuela and a team of undergraduate students from The University of Memphis Department of Art. Tying into the Fogelman Galleries' identity as a teaching gallery, Valenzuela will introduce students to image transfer techniques and other aspects of his process during his week-long visit to Memphis. Together, their efforts will result a new landscape made by the hands of many.
Additionally, Valenzuela will give a public lecture on Thursday, August 25 at 7 pm in Room 310 in the Art and Communications Building, located at 3715 Central Avenue. An opening reception will be held the following day on Friday, August 26 from 5-7:30 pm in the Fogelman Galleries. The reception will also celebrate the opening of the exhibition Infoxication: Ruben Garnica.
Rodrigo Valenzuela (b. 1982, Santiago, Chile) completed an art history degree at the University of Chile (2004), then worked in construction while making art over his first decade in the United States, completing an MFA at University of Washington in 2012. Using staged scenes and digital interventions, Valenzuela's photography, video and installation work is rooted in the contradictory traditions of documentary and fiction, often involving narratives around immigration and the working class.
Valenzuela's residencies include a Core Fellowship at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Texas), Skowhegan (Maine), Bemis Center (Nebraska), and the Center for Photography at Woodstock (New York). Valenzuela is recipient of several awards, including an Artist Trust Arts Innovator Award (2014). Recent solo exhibitions include David Shelton Gallery, Houston (2016), the Frye Art Museum, Seattle (2015), Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Santiago (2015), envoy enterprises, NewYork (2015) and Upfor Gallery, Portland, OR (2015). His work is in the collections of the Frye Art Museum, Seattle; Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, New Paltz; the de Bont collection and Dimensional Fund Advisors. Valenzuela is selected for the 2016-17 Open Sessions at The Drawing Center, New York.
Ruben Garnica
Infoxication
August 22 - September 9, 2016
Image: Ruben Garnica, Mitote, 2016. PVC, LED lights, and speakers. Courtesy of the artist.
Ruben Garnica: Infoxication is the first solo exhibition of recent University of Memphis BFA graduate Ruben Garnica. The exhibition features sound, light, and video installations that grapple with today's information overload, or "infoxication," as some critics have called it. Garnica creates an immersive, multi-sensory environment in which layers of sound and image overwhelm the visitor, making information almost incomprehensible.
Faculty in the Department of Art at The University of Memphis selected Garnica from the 2016 graduating Bachelor of Fine Arts class for this prestigious solo exhibition. An annual tradition, this exhibition provides outstanding graduates with the opportunity to present a body of work as well as develop and execute an exhibition concept with Fogelman Galleries staff.
Ruben Garnica (b. 1983, Guadalajara, Mexico), originally from Degollado, Jalisco, Mexico, moved to Nashville, TN, at the age of 15. Garnica received his BFA from the University of Memphis with a concentration in Studio Arts in 2016. He has exhibited in various cities in the region of Murcia, Spain, as well in various exhibitions in Memphis, TN. He was awarded Best in Show in the 32rd Annual Juried Student Exhibition at the Art Museum of the University of Memphis (2015). His most recent group exhibitions include INFLUX at The Martha and Robert Fogelman Galleries of Contemporary Art (2016) and Mi sur/ My South at Crosstown Arts, Memphis (2015).