Remix | May 8-June 20, 2020

by | May 7, 2020 | Around the Gallery, Exhibitions | 0 comments

Ry McCullough, No. 4 BLT with Avocado (detail), 2018, screenprint, woodcut, and collage on paper, 30 x 21 in., courtesy of the artist

The Contemporary Dayton presents Remix. Exhibiting artists are Jason Lee from Morgantown, West Virginia, Ry McCullough from Tampa, Florida, Whitney Sage from Blissfield, Michigan. These three emerging artists will show idiosyncratic abstractions of everyday life through a selection of drawings, prints and sculptures.

Jason Lee

Ry McCullough

Whitney Sage

Artist's Video Intro

Artist’s Video Intro

About the Artist

Jason Lee is currently an Associate Professor of Sculpture and Foundations Coordinator in the School of Art and Design at West Virginia University in Morgantown.  A multi-media sculptor and installation artist, Lee incorporates a wide variety of materials and techniques into his oddly humorous constructions and presentations. In some of Lee’s most recent work he utilizes custom fabricated architectural steel elements as well as slip cast porcelain and embossed paper to create his vision of the idealized suburban landscape. Lee received the 2008 SECAC Individual Artists Fellowship and recently had work featured at the J&J Smith Gallery in Syracuse, NY and in the 2016 Tallahassee International at the Florida State University Museum of Art in Tallahassee, FL. Lee was born in Goldsboro, NC, received his BFA from Kent State University and his MFA from University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Visit Jason’s website

Artist Statement
“My current body of work reflects on the suburban landscape of my childhood. The constructed environment mimics elements and color schemes of the skateboard pseudo-culture that was sold to the rabid and disenfranchised youth of the 80’s by pop media. This pristine wonderland of suburbia did not reflect my experience or the real underground suburban punk rock that was growing right under its nose. Coming of age in the 1980’s and being lucky enough to be a part of the underground music scene that grew from these saccharine suburban environments truly changed my life. What I learned from the DIY culture of the Punk community has forever altered the way I see and approach the world. “If you used to be punk, then you never were.”

— Jason Lee

Checklist
1. Cul-De-Sac, 2016, painted slip cast porcelain, steel, powder coat, aluminum, cast plastic, poplar, 54 x 36 x 60 in., $9,000

2. Respectable Street: #1, 2018, painted slip cast porcelain, steel, birch plywood, 24 x 20 x 10 in., $950

3. Respectable Street: #2, 2018, painted slip cast porcelain, steel, birch plywood, 24 x 20 x 10 in., $950

4. Respectable Street: #3, 2018, painted slip cast porcelain, steel, birch plywood, 24 x 20 x 10 in., $950

5. Respectable Street: #4, 2018, painted slip cast porcelain, steel, birch plywood, 24 x 20 x 10 in., $950

6. Suburban Home, 2015, steel, embossed paper, screenprint, aluminum, cast plastic, 96 x 36 x 36 in., $6,000

7. Room Without a Window, 2018, cast rubber, steel, aluminum, cast plastic, wood, paint, 72 x 48 x 48 in. $6,500

8. Blatant Localism, 2018, steel, Bondo, luan, 24 x 20 x 10 in. $1200

9. I Hope You Learned Something, 2018, packing blankets, ratchet straps, steel, cast plastic, aluminum, 48 x 72 x 36 in., $7,000

10. Mad Garden, press board, steel cast rubber, enamel paint, 96 x 120 x 192 in.

11. Valley of the Yakes, 2019, blown glass, cast rubber, acrylic paint, 24 x 96 x 48 in.

Artist's Video Intro

Artist’s Video Intro

About the Artist
Ry McCullough is an artist and educator working in Tampa, FL He earned his BFA from Wright State University, Dayton, where he concentrated in the areas of printmaking and sculpture. Upon completion of his undergraduate work he served as the Director of Sculptural Studies, as well as teaching printmaking at Stivers School for the Arts, Dayton. McCullough received his MFA in Printmaking and Book Arts from the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia. He is currently Assistant Professor of Art, Department of Art + Design, University of Tampa. McCullough has exhibited nationally and internationally and is the founder of the Standard Action Press Collaborative Zine Project. In addition to his independent practice, McCullough collaborates on a long-distance conceptual print/performance/publishing project with Tennessee-based artist, Nick Satinover titled Small Bars.

Visit Ry’s website

Artist Statement
“My current work is engaged with diverse approaches in creative practice. Fields of printmaking, creative writing, drawing, sound, and sculpture open a map for crafted discovery and surprise encounters. Traditional and experimental processes allow me to investigate how art can express states of being and the ethics that encircle abstraction. The ambiguity and mystery of abstract languages generate a tension between the known and unknown, as well as fabricated and found. How cultures value information and knowledge is in a state of constant transformation, as spoken and unspoken boundaries are formed and collapse through time. I am interested in that timeless space; of how knowledge and truth is sought after and how fixed positions are ultimately unattainable within the scope of lived experiences. In a practical sense, I am making art objects, and must reconcile the deficiency and surplus of meaning that is laid bare in every choice I make within the studio. Each grouping of tools and materials that I use form unique systems that speak to limitation, restriction, and form the border of how we imbue images and objects with meaning. Themes are approached obliquely with ambivalence as a method of inquiry, allowing process to guide exploration. Print-based forms, sculptural objects, sound works and installation maintain an historical baggage that is a primary condition wherein, I find comfort, compliment, contradiction and contrast. Each condition defines a schematic structure of inherent qualities and each presents opportunity for improvisation and rupture. These systems of making are aligned with a set of conventions that I can work with or against to produce experiences for a viewer that are suggestive, poetic, and humbly philosophical. My work speaks to a formal interest in color and shape, refinement and collapse, form and space; as interchangeable units in an arena of collage and bricolage.”

—Ry McCullough

Checklist
11. Complex Regalia, 2020, collage with diverse papers, 14.5 x 11 in., $800

12. Table of Unnamable Things 1, 2020, collage with diverse papers, 14.5 x 11 in., $800

13. Encyclopedic Tarp, 2020, collage with diverse papers, 14.5 x 11 in., $800

14. Escape Hatch, 2020, collage with diverse papers, 14.5 x 11 in., $800

15. Expanded Room, 2020, collage with diverse papers, 14.5 x 11, $800

16. Orange on a Window Sill, 2020, collage with diverse papers, 14.5 x 11 in., $800

17. Plume in the Room (O), 2020, collage with diverse papers, 14.5 x 11 in., $800

18. Soundtrack for the Assembled Plane (I), 2020, collage with diverse papers, 14.5 x 11 in., $800

19. Soundtrack for the Assembled Plane (II), 2020, collage with diverse papers, 14.5 x 11 in., $800

20. Table of Unnamable Things (II), 2020, collage with diverse papers, 14.5 x 11 in., $800

21. Soundtrack for the Assembled Plane (III,) 2020, collage with diverse papers, 14.5 x 11 in. $800.

22. No. 4 BLT with Avocado, 2018, screenprint, woodcut, and collage on paper, 30 x 21 in. $900

23. No. 12(Pastrami on Rye), 2018, screenprint, woodcut, and collage on paper, 30 x 21 in. $900

24. No. 1 (Dagwood), 2018, screenprint, woodcut, and collage on paper, 30 x 21 in. $900

25. Throne Room Over Easy, 2018, collaged printed material mounted on paper, 11 x 11 in. $450

26. Scarecrow, 2018, collaged printed material mounted on paper, 11 x 11 in. $450

27. Bubble and Squeak, 2018, collaged printed material mounted on paper, 11 x 11 in. $450

About the Artist
Whitney Lea Sage is a native of suburban Detroit, Michigan. She graduated cum laude with Bachelor’s degrees in Art Education and Painting from Miami University, Oxford, OH; and received her MFA in Studio Art from the Sam Fox School of Visual Art at Washington University, St. Louis, MO. In addition to her professional art practice, Sage serves as a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Drawing and Painting at North Central College, Napierville, IL.

Visit Whitney’s website

Artist Statement
“As a native of the suburban Detroit area, the city’s rich cultural heritage and its relevance the “American way of life” are things that I’ve always found intriguing and influential to both my artwork as well as my own identity. Detroit’s a place of increasing cultural relevance with parallels to larger American struggles, big industry and suburban flight failing Detroit whilst leaving behind heavily photographed, ghostly architectural skeletons and scarred empty plots of land. Throughout my career I have continually depicted Detroit as subject matter, not only as a personal crusade for a place I love, but also to create an open dialog about tough histories while taking a critical look at the lenses through which we view each other. In my work I seek to honor the pride that Detroiters share, despite the city’s decline into something of a media darling and the poster child of post-industrial decline. While my practice is rooted in a deeply personal and specific history, the work seeks to appeal to many through universal notions of home, loss, hope and the protective impulse that we share for the people and places we love.

Focusing my lens on a more personal perspective of urban evolution and it’s toll on families and neighborhoods, Homesickness Series is an ongoing series that addresses empathetic issues of loss as related to our relationship with home and the individual and collective stories lost in the life cycles of urban degradation. Homesickness Series consists of a series of ink paintings modeled after historic tin-type portrait photographs that documents homes and lots in a state of flux; what’s present, what’s absent and what’s no longer knowable. The ink paintings are displayed juxtaposed with Domestic Fragments, a series of plaster found object assemblage sculptures. Through means of display, the sculptures are meant to function in conversation with the painted series and serve as domestic “artifacts” representing the loss of the home, the loss of people and the related loss of memory. Combining disparate fragments of domesticity, parts of toys, dishes, photos, tools, bricks, linens, etc., these artifacts are familiar, yet appear foreign. Within each assemblage object the domestic fragments morph and disappear into abstracted plaster geological forms; the objects are visually present, yet seem physically absent/inaccessible. While these displayed objects relate the collection of mementos as attempts to hold on to memories and connections with place, the idea of the artifact also relates to common depictions of post-industrial cities as abandoned “blank slates” open for reinvention while failing to recognize or take into consideration the histories and communities that still remain.”

—Whitney Sage

Checklist
  1. Neighbors, Homesickness Series, 2018, ink on paper, 18 x 21 in. 

14 x 20 in. signed, editioned digital reproduction prints on watercolor paper available for $250 (10 available, edition of 10)

 

  1. Family Room, Homesickness Series, 2017, ink on paper, 8 x 11 in.

8 x 10 in. signed, editioned digital reproduction prints on watercolor paper available for $150 (8 available, edition of 10)

 

  1. White Picket Fence, Homesickness Series, 2017, ink on paper, 18 x 22 in.

14 x 20 in. signed, editioned digital reproduction prints on watercolor paper available for $250 (9 available, edition of 10)

 

  1. Threshold, Homesickness Series, 2018, Ink on paper, 10 x 10 in. 

10 x 10 in. signed, editioned digital reproduction prints on watercolor paper available for $150 (10 available, edition of 10)

 

  1. Cottage, Homesickness Series, 2017, ink on paper, 18 x 22 in. 

14 x 19 in. signed, editioned digital reproduction prints on watercolor paper available for $250 (9 available, edition of 10)

 

  1. Foundation, Homesickness Series, 2017, ink on paper, 18 x 22 in. 

14 x 19in. signed, editioned digital reproduction prints on watercolor paper available for $250 (10 available, edition of 10)

 

  1. Single Family Home, Homesickness Series, 2017, ink on paper, 17 x 20 in.

14 x 18 in. signed, editioned digital reproduction prints on watercolor paper available for $250 (10 available, edition of 10)

 

  1. Lone Victorian, Homesickness Series, 2016, ink on paper, 17 x 20 in.

14 x 19 in. signed, editioned digital reproduction prints on watercolor paper available for $250 (10 available, edition of 10)

 

  1. Domestic Fragments Series (Installation view), 2017, plaster and found objects, NFS

 

  1. Domestic Fragments Series (Installation view), 2017, plaster and found objects, NFS

 

  1. Child’s Artifact, Domestic Fragments Series, 2017, Plaster and stuffed animal, 4 x 6 x 2 in., NFS
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Press Release

Living Dayton Segment

Exhibition & Program Sponsors: Dr. Robert L. Brandt, Jr., Amelia Hounshell & Brian Albrecht, Richard Lapedes & Maureen Lynch

Annual Support: Culture Works, the Dayton Foundation, the Dayton Power & Light Foundation, Montgomery County Arts & Cultural District, Ohio Arts Council, the Virginia W. Kettering Foundation, and Members.