June 13- July 5, 2020

The Front is pleased to announce the resumption of our regular schedule of rotating monthly exhibitions. Due to COVID-19 health and safety precautions, we will have gallery hours from 12-5 pm on Saturday + Sunday starting Saturday June 13th, with no opening reception.

In accordance with COVID-19 Phase 2 reopening of venues in New Orleans we ask all visitors to wear masks and observe social distancing. We will limit the number of visitors at one time in our small galleries per city protocol, and will continue to provide masks and hand sanitizer. Although there won't be an opening reception, we can't wait to see you during our regular hours of Saturdays and Sundays 12-5, and by appointment.

Room 1:

No justice, no peace
portraits of resistance

ABDUL AZIZ
PRO$PER JONE$
ASHLEY LORRAINE

with performance by Ifátùmínínú Bamgbàlà Arẹ̀sà

curated by Leslie-Claire Spillman

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Where You Stand a poem by Bernard Pearce, projected nightly from dusk to dawn from the windows of Room 1 at The Front.

ABDUL AZIZ

Abdul Aziz is a freelance photojournalist, filmmaker, and serial entrepreneur. For nearly two decades, he has worked to document conflict, war, social issues and culture spanning the globe from the Middle East and Africa to the far reaches of the Himalayas. His photos have been published by opinion leading news agencies worldwide. Most recently his work has focused on the rise of white nationalism in the United States and the removal of Confederate monuments in cities at the center of the debate, such as New Orleans and Charlottesville.

PRO$PER JONE$

Pro$per Jone$ is an emerging artist, rapper, and producer born and raised in Uptown New Orleans. ART ABOVE THE LAW.   

ASHLEY LORRAINE

A graduate of McDonough 35 and Xavier University in New Orleans, Ashley Lorraine is a graphic artist and photographer who is the owner of Creative Vibe Graphics and Ashley Lorraine Photography. Lorraine has worked for Cumulus Broadcasting and Signs Now where her visual art in signs, billboards and logos were seen all over New Orleans including the Louis Armstrong Airport.

Her "Black Men in America" series is a body of work that depicts the experiences of Black Men in America by utilizing a seemingly universal symbol, the American Flag. While other races can proudly pledge allegiance to the United States of America, the perennial struggle continues as black men seek to assume their rightful place in humanity. Black Men In America showcases “How Black Men Feel” –which is never much of a concern given the often tainted, oversaturated images of black males in the media. “Black Men in America” is a reminder of the black man’s contribution to an unforgiving and unapologetic society.

LESLIE-CLAIRE SPILLMAN

A graduate in art from Xavier University with a focus in painting and photography, Leslie-Claire Spillman has worked as a gallerist and professional photographer in New Orleans for over 16 years. The longtime Director of Soren Christensen Gallery, Spillman has curated hundreds of shows for the space, including 10 years of exhibition offerings in participation with the annual PhotoNOLA festival, for which she has also worked as a portfolio reviewer. Her photography has been featured in print and group exhibitions, and she has work in the permanent collection of the New Orleans Museum of Art. She works exclusively in portraiture, but is moved by a wide variety of work and seeks to continue connecting artists with exhibition opportunities through her independent curation.

Room 2:

Como la Flor

Linda Arredondo 
Luica Elena Aquino 
Megan Solis 

Como la Flor features three Latinx artists who draw from the synthesized aesthetics of Latino culture and the connecting thread of disparity in contemporary society.      

Linda Arredondo:
Whatever the medium, I approach art-making as an artist who draws. Drawing as an action is intimate, accessible, and possible in almost any circumstance. It is the gestural antecedent of writing and an attempt of making viewable the untellable. Drawing is an activity that gives focus to experience, both real and imagined. I consider embroidery a logical extension of that tradition. Like other drawing mediums it works with line, formalizes spatial relationships, and essentializes form. However, drawing with thread is slow and consuming. It is limited by its physical actions and practical formats. It is an artifact of singular devotion and happy media accidents are rare but I find it a perfect vehicle for my habit of aggressive ornamentation. I source much of my imagery from internet selfies, fashion photography, Korean, and Mesoamerican folk traditions. I use them as a basis to explore ideas of beauty, the feminine, and the chimerical aspects of identity.

Linda Arredondo (b. 1975 Taegu, South Korea) is a visual artist who works in embroidery and watercolor media. Arredondo uses mediums historically associated with women’s creativity to explore ideas of narrative, beauty, and feminine identity. She creates colorful, fantastical portraits of women, animals, and flowers. Her imagery is inspired by fashion photography and internet ulzzang selfies, a kind of self-portrait popularized in Korea, which translates to “best face”. Arredondo fractures and blends these sources with elements of American pop culture, Mesoamerican mythologies, and folk stories allowing for a faceted visual language that is broadly familiar and open-ended.

Linda Arredondo resides in San Antonio, Texas. She earned her BFA in Painting from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 2008 and an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University in 2010. 

@colorsick
https://colorsick.com/

Luica Elena Aquino:
A backdrop of violence and the softness that prevails 

Lucia is an artist based in New Orleans originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and received a BA in Psychology in 2013. The industrial city she grew up in along with the influences of her father’s country of El Salvador inform her visual vocabulary. As a teenager, Lucia learned to paint through graffiti and at UW-Madison explored sculpture through welding. Lucia’s work builds a language that resounds while maintaining intimacy and honoring nostalgia. 

@luciaelena01

Megan Solis:  
Through a deep investigation of fictional character performance, I have authored and birthed my heroine, Glory West. With her eternally by my side, we deconstruct landscapes of pseudo-happiness and the monstrous feminine to reclaim the repercussions of 'hysteria' and its impact on women's mental health. Composed with the classic ingredients of a love story, Glory's odyssey has deformed into a perverted psychological horror. A story that has been constructed by both Glory and I, as well as the audience, our voyeur.

As a recent M.F.A Sculpture graduate at the Rhode Island School of Design, Megan Solis also received her B.F.A from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Solis concentrates on performance art with a strong conceptual, multi-disciplinary practice. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at The McNay Art Museum, the University of Texas at San Antonio, Albright College, and the San Antonio Art League Museum. Her work can be seen in art collections such as the Mexic-Arte Museum. Internationally she has exhibited at the Czong Institute of Contemporary Art Museum in South Korea. Solis has also gained international exposure through a 2015 artist residency at Arteles Creative Center in Haukijärvi, Finland, and in 2016 completed an artist residency following a solo show at Hello Studio in San Antonio. Forthcoming in October 2020, she will be exhibiting at Sweet Pass Sculpture Park in Dallas, Texas.

www.megansolis.net
@glorytexaswest
https://glory.cargo.site

Room 3:

Nurhan Gokturk
Along those Lines

Along those Lines documents extraordinary places in historically redlined areas of New Orleans through drawings and paintings.

Nurhan Gokturk is a multidisciplinary artist and urban designer. Born in Istanbul, Turkey, Nurhan immigrated to New York City at the age of three. Raised in Queens and Brooklyn and educated in the public school system, he went on to receive a Master's Degree from Harvard Graduate School of Design and a Bachelor of Architecture from Pratt Institute. His projects have been featured at the Venice Biennale, Aqua Art Fair (Miami), Contemporary Art's Center New Orleans 40th Anniversary Show and Ephemera Obscura, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, Governor’s Island Art Center (NYC), the New Institute in Rotterdam, the Onsite Gallery in Toronto, the Inaugural and second Bywater Biennial. He has been featured in Metropolis Magazine, Gambit's Top 40 under 40, was Interviewed on NPR and awarded the Architizer A+ Award. He is the Collectors Club artist for the Contemporary Arts Center and a member of The Front artist collective. He is a participating artist in the Jazz and Heritage Festival. Nurhan coordinated the first major Habitat for Humanity Buckminster Fuller Design Science Exhibition in Istanbul.

https://www.nurhangokturk.com/

Room 4:

Thomas Friel
Not The Place

The tragic deaths at the hands of police that have occurred in the past few weeks are part of a long history of violence towards black and brown bodies. A nation founded from the theft of land and home of indigenous people was cultivated by the enslavement of Africans. Nearly all of the founding wealth of America, which has carried over to this day and has made the U.S. one of the wealthiest countries in the world, was stolen. Despite this obvious theft, no meaningful attempt at reparations -- to both black and indigenous people -- have been made. Instead, the U.S. has doubled down on the continued violence and oppression of all non-white citizens. The defense of the oppressors is always the same: respect of Law - which was designed by and for the benefit of white men and what is seen as their “property”. 

Not the Place attempts to acknowledge just a few moments of U.S. history where white rage violated their own (sacred) notion of property in order to destroy black lives. The title can be seen as a willful forgetting of history, but it specifically points towards a defense of complacency: the common argument against protest -- whether on a football field or public square -- is that the voice of the oppressed should be ignored by not following some (fictitious) rule, conveniently made by those who are in or benefit from power. These words used in such a quick dismissal are more violent than rioting, as they deny the real and lived oppression of those outside of the safety of power, and smugly suggest a re-education of those crying out, where “education” is itself a legitimization of oppression.

Thomas Friel received an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI, and a BFA from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA. He has exhibited his work in the US and abroad, including: ACRE Projects and DFBRL8R, both in Chicago, IL, Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI and Art Basel 2011, Basel, Switzerland as part of the project Agency of Unrealized Projects. He has written art and social criticism for print publications and artist books, online platforms such as badatsports.com, caretandsticks.com and wowhuh.com. He has been a member of The Front, a New Orleans artist collective, since 2018.

https://thomasfriel.com/