ArtYard is pleased to announce two new exhibitions, Barrier and Unfinished Verses, which open with a reception from 6 to 8 PM on Saturday, Oct. 19. The evening also marks the opening of Artist Woman, a collaborative exhibition between ArtYard and Studio Route 29 featuring works by Oakland-based artist Nicole Storm.
Barrier
Barrier brings together work from 12 emerging artists based in Philadelphia, New Jersey, and New York that both critiques and reimagines barrier infrastructures designed to separate or enclose, such as gates, fences, windows, and walls. Through mixed media approaches, including sculpture, installation, video, painting, and works on paper, the featured selections engage themes of property and public space, geopolitical volatility, ecology and the built world, materiality, memory, and diaspora. The artworks on view posit barriers as porous portals, evoking Angela Davis’s transformative abolitionist vision that “walls turned sideways are bridges.”
Barrier is curated by Kaitlin Pomerantz and Lucia Thomé. It features work by Sandra SK Amoabeng, Matthew Colaizzo, Ghida Dalloul, FORTUNE, Rami George, David L. Johnson, Naomieh Jovin, Zach Ozma, Pallavi Sen, Ivanco Talevski, Kristen Neville Taylor, and Levester Williams.
A Curator and Artist Gallery Walk is at 12:15 PM on Sunday, Oct. 19. Programming, including artist talks, workshops, and screenings, will take place through Sunday, Jan. 26.
Unfinished Verses
Unfinished Verses explores the intricacies and ongoing nature of the creative process by presenting new sketchbooks by 10 contemporary artists. Visible through small apertures in specially made viewing devices, the sketchbook pages will be turned regularly to reveal new drawings, shown one at a time, over the exhibition’s three-month span. The exhibition is designed to create spaces where viewers engage with the artwork through curiosity and reflection, rather than a superficial glance. It invites a slower, more immersive experience, revealing the intricacies of artistic processes through pages that have been sewn, torn, stained, and weathered over time.
For Unfinished Verses, ArtYard constructed 10 ceiling-mounted boxes, resembling upside-down plinths, from which to view the sketchbooks. Each features two viewing holes to accommodate people of all heights and those who use wheelchairs. The experience of peering at the works through peepholes is akin to ArtYard’s VSGs (Very Small Galleries), miniature galleries visible through openings behind tiny doors. Visitors will only be able to view one page of each sketchbook during their visit unless they are in the gallery when ArtYard staff turn pages on Thursdays to Saturdays, offering visitors an opportunity to see a second page. Return visits will reveal each artist’s evolution over time.
Curated by Alexandre Arrechea, it features work by Bhakti Baxter, El Celso, Rakeem Cunningham, Rafael Domenech, Fernando Rodríguez Falcón, Nereida García Ferraz, Shizu Saldamando, Paula de Solminihac, Paola Vega, and Tomas Vu.
A Curator Talk with Alexandre Arrchea is at 11 AM on Sunday, Oct. 20.
Artist Woman
Artist Woman is a solo exhibition and installation by Oakland-based artist Nicole Storm featuring new work made while in residence with ArtYard and Studio Route 29.
Storm is known for her large-scale installations made on found paper and gathered ephemera. Movement figures prominently in Storm’s painting process — she dances or walks around, bringing her materials with her. Her two-dimensional work emerges through and alongside this engagement with the spaces of her life. In installation, this way of working is reflected by her painting’s incursion into/onto the gallery wall. The inclusion of atypical supports like cardboard boxes, folded paper, or packing tubes reflects her roving hand and attention.
Registration for the Oct. 19 public opening reception is free. Registration and tickets for events related to ArtYard’s fall exhibitions opens soon at artyard.org/calendar.
Public gallery hours are Wednesday through Sunday from 11 AM to 5 PM and until 7 PM on Thursday.
