September 12- October 4, 2020

Opening hours Saturday September 12th, 12-5pm
Regular gallery hours 12-5pm Saturdays & Sundays

Room 1:

Jeremy Jones
Please, Come In

I invite you into a room of familiarity. A poster, a chair, a framed photograph ­– things you might find in an ordinary living room. A living room that is seemingly comfortable and normal.

Comfort and normalcy are illusions we seek out regularly, though they’re seldom what we need. They do little to combat the world of problems people experience. Meanwhile, we escape to our living rooms, attempting to safely distance ourselves from the myriad of hurt beyond those walls. We shut our blinds in an attempt to block ourselves in, tuning into the internet to read of today’s mishappenings. What a privilege, to read the news rather than experience it.

Please, Come In concerns itself with illusions void of any tangent with our needs but hinges instead on our reduced social experiences and personal histories. It quickly becomes apparent the objects in the room are images, claustrophobic in their composition. Despite any attempts at trickery and illusion, the end results are still only flat surfaces of paint. Calm and quiet images that imitate objects we know while simultaneously refusing to give us the real thing. We miss out on the velvety relief of an afternoon nap on a couch and the ability to breathe the oxygen produced by a cactus. We miss out on comfort and normalcy.  

Come in. Leave your shoes at the door if you want. Leave yesteryear’s normalcy there too.

Jeremy Jones is a practicing artist, arts educator, and community organizer currently living in New Orleans, LA. He holds an MFA from Tulane University (2016) and a BFA from Indiana University (2014). Jones’ artwork has been shown in galleries across the South and Midwest, and he has given public lectures at Newcomb Art Museum, New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, and Tulane University. He is a member of The Front, an artist-run gallery space in New Orleans. 

www.JeremyJonesPaint.com
Instagram: @JeremyJonesPaint

Room 2:

Sean G. Clark
No Name in The Street

“But everything that charmed me merely reminded me of how many were excluded, how many were suffering and groaning and dying, not far from a paradise which was itself but another circle of hell.”  - James Baldwin, No Name in The Street 

Rage.

20/20. 

2020. 

I hate to admit it, but the rage has brought me clarity. Though mentally and physically impossible to carry indefinitely, it has sustained me through this year. So far. The thing about this rage is that while I maintain my sangfroid resting face, I know its arms are infinite and bound to my mind and heart. To my history. Where does it end? Where do I direct it before it implodes? I found myself in the middle of James Baldwin’s, No Name In The Street, observing the parallels between the late 60s and today. I see in both timelines new bodies of resistance emerge to face the unknown. Or rather face the known without the promise of survival.  Then and now, the young, the differently abled, and the disenfranchised members of the melanin rainbow have stood up to the oppressive forces of racism, capitalism and the police state.

No Name in the Street is dedicated to all the people you’ve never heard of who wage war against a reality we’ve seen before.

Sean Gerard Clark is a native of Chattanooga, Tennessee who has lived and worked in New Orleans for the past eight years. Before coming to New Orleans, Sean graduated from Morehouse College with a Bachelor’s of Science in Biology with a concentration in Public Health and African-American Studies. Sean has always found art as a tool for navigating life throughout his work and academic career. He began his artistic practice as a landscape painter and over the years has transitioned into a variety of subjects that investigate the human condition.  Sean is a self-taught artist who favors the use of palette knives, oil and acrylic paints, and collage materials. Sean’s mixed media piece, “Unresolved Grief” was featured in Harvard’s Advanced Leadership Initiative as a part of the organization's efforts to increase emotional awareness of mental health issues. In 2019 Sean was accepted into the Louisiana Contemporary at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. Sean recently completed a five month residency at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans. Coupled with his time as a health educator, he has led art classes that focus on helping students find their own creative voice through journal and mask making. Throughout his artistic career he has been influenced by artists such as Sammie Nicely, Jean Michel Basquiat, Benny Andrews and Bill Sienkiwicz along with writers such as James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison. From this point of inspiration, Sean has created works to reflect identity and history, while sparking ideas in the minds of viewers. 

www.sgclarkart.com
Instagram: @sgclarkart

Room 3:

Patch Somerville
View from the Window

New works by member Patch Somerville.

http://www.patchsomerville.com/

Room 4:

Brittan Rosendahl

Projects of late respond to the prevailing conditions of dated reference materials. Medias of interest are overwhelmingly disabled, they linger with little purpose but nostalgia, or decoration. I rearrange printed paper to generate a language of inquiry that is ideologically ambiguous. The resulting objects encourage a playful reexamination of objective information, where aesthetic exploration and obscurity are favored over indexical assurance. My actions open up concrete definitions for secondary unfixed interpretation, offering a rare opportunity to interpret printed matter as a malleable independent language. Additionally these efforts typically enliven stale data, data long depleted of historical priority. Contextual displacement, disparate grouping, and literal restructuring are methods I employ to achieve such activation.

Brittan Rosendahl is a mixed-media artist whose work typically develops as a response to untraditional materials and conditions of expiration. He considers himself a conceptual artist stirred to action by imagery and circumstance. His movements energize materials which have lost vitality. Rosendahl has been included in multiple solo and group exhibitions both nationally and locally. His products have been shown at Staple Goods (New Orleans, LA) and at Carroll Gallery, Newcomb Art Department, Tulane University (New Orleans, LA). Two digital prints by Rosendahl were included in DAM Projects 2014 showcase: Sunday School #1. Letter from New Orleans at A_SPACE in London, England. He was included in VICE media's print publication, the Truth and Lies issue, under the heading Distorted Realities (2019). He is currently included in the Ogden Museum of Southern Art’s annual open call, the Louisiana Contemporary (09/05/20-02/07/21).

Rosendahl holds a BFA from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and an MFA from Tulane University, in New Orleans, LA.

Instagram: @bbritrrose