8 June — 21 July

Opening Reception: 8 June 2 – 5PM
Artist Talk & Closing: 21 July 2 – 4PM

Viewing Hours: Monday & Friday 12 – 5PM, Saturday 12 – 3PM & by appointment

cam.contemporarie presents, Reminiscing, the first solo exhibition in Chicago by St. Louis based artist, Vaughn Davis Jr.. Reminiscing surveys works on canvas that explore familial imagery. For this exhibition, Vaughn sources historical images from his family, copies, and then prints them upon his paintings. Through his bespoke way of distressing, he creates a metaphor for memory, loss and age. Using abstract picture planes, and mining familial legacies, he continues to investigate his mark in abstraction through tearing, cutting, and ripping the material to create a picture plane that synthesizes the act.

St. Louis based artist Vaughn Davis Jr. creates paintings that are manipulated through the use of deconstructive methods. These paintings take note from the philosophies of Wabi-Sabi, Afro-Pessimism and question American Craft traditions. This process becomes a metaphor for violence, care and mistreatment. In his work, Davis Jr. is exploring beauty and chaos and struggle and success.

Through the use of unfurled, sheets of unprimed canvas he creates paintings in the expanded form through abstractions which are then deconstructed into forms. Methods of tearing and cutting compose the picture plane. These works are layered with an arsenal of media including dye, dry pigment, acrylic and oil paint. In many regards, he expresses the outliers of the painting process through these elements. They are predicated upon the dismantlement of the picture plane and the deconstruction of the painting process.

Davis Jr. received his BFA with Departmental Honors in Sculpture from Webster University in St. Louis. Recent museum exhibitions include a solo presentation at the Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis, MO. He has been awarded the Delta Voices: Artists of the Mid-South by the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts. His work has been exhibited at Dragon Crab Turtle, Monaco Gallery, The Luminary in St. Louis MO, Gazebo Gallery, Kent, OH; among others. He has had solo exhibitions at Romer Young Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Philip Slein Gallery and the Center of Creative Arts both located in St. Louis. and was included in the group exhibition, “A Magical Day at Ditch!” at Tripoli Gallery, Wainscott, NY, curated by St. Louis-based painter, Katherine Bernhardt.

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Tags: cam.contemporarie, Chicago, Lower West Side, Reminiscing, Vaughn Davis, Vaughn Davis: Reminiscing