The Department of Art & Art History and Rowe Galleries host a reception and artists' talk for two exhibitions: Phantasmagoria, on view in Rowe Lower Gallery, and Southern Tales Retold, on view in the Rowe Upper Gallery.
What are dream images? Are they merely random and ephemeral? Or, are they subconscious glimpses into a reality we cannot comprehend? It’s a puzzle with no definite answer. A labyrinth with no planned course. Phantasmagoria includes photographs and experimental works by the New Orleans duo Louviere+Vanessa. Although well versed in traditional processes, these two choose to explore the fringes of film. Works in this exhibition are extracted from nine separate series: Heretic, Resonantia, Counterfeit, Folie a Deux, Oblivion Atlas, We’re Wolves, Instinct/Extinct, Chloroform, and Creature.
Jeff Louviere and Vanessa Brown combine the mediums and nuances of film, photography, painting, and printmaking. They utilize Holgas, scanners, 8mm film, destroyed negatives, wax, gold, and blood. They have a long fascination with themes of duality and paradox: beauty as horror, creation as destruction, the personal as a universal.
Jasmine Best is a true Southern artist, gathering narratives from her Carolinian family and childhood. In Southern Tales Retold, this Georgia-based artist manipulates personal memories to create dialogues about the Black female identity in the south, especially in predominantly white spaces. Her works often combine tangible and traditional media with digital design in order to depict maternal figures, who represent the diversity and qualities of several generations of Black southern women in her life. In 2016, Best earned her BFA from UNC Greensboro. In 2022, she began her MFA graduate studies at the University of Georgia.
(Image: Louviere+Vanessa's Valde, 2006, gampi paper, wax, and blood)