(Atlanta, GA – March 2024) – UTA Artist Space is pleased to announce the upcoming opening of Stop & Stare, a group exhibition curated by interdisciplinary artist Genevieve Gaignard. With Stop & Stare, Gaignard seeks to bring together an eclectic group of talent working across a wide range of disciplines who speak to the revelations that surface beyond first glance, both visually and thematically.
The showcase will include the work of 17 artists – Derek Fordjour, Kenny Rivero, Yashua Klos, Anina Major, Dominique Duroseau, Luis Flores, Jacob Guzman, Liat Yossifor, Samuel Levi Jones, Preetika Rajgariah, Tommy Kha, Melissa Joseph, Abe Odedina, Nyugen E. Smith, Papay Solomon, Nelson Bourrec Carter and Evan Whale.
The thematic core of Stop & Stare is centered around an experience that explores differences in perceived realities and illusions, encouraging viewers to take a closer look as more profound ideas are revealed – leaving one both disoriented and comforted in the “un-knowing” of how much distance lies between truth and perception. Stop & Stare will create an environment where the audience are not only observers, but active participants.
Artistic styles and visions intersect to form this comprehensive showcase. Through the form of his own body rendered in crocheted yarn, Luis Flores’ Sorry Charlie is a visual manifestation of “coming to grips” with the absurdities around the learned tropes of masculinity. Yashua Klos, known for his elaborate collage work incorporating woodblock print technique, delves into the concept of Black identity through complex portraiture. His work repositions the Black figure as ever changing and transformative, navigating the nature of existence through a historical, mythical, and personal lens, as characterized in his latest piece Genevieve, in which the curator/artist becomes muse.
In Anina Major’s Gathering Moss Beneath Nightsky and Soft Hearted, she transforms the artistry of basket-weaving and straw-work from her Bahamian ancestors into clay vessels. Basket-weaving is traditionally performed for practical reasons, but Major carries out this craft with great attention, detail, and respect. Working across painting, drawing, collage, and sculpture, Kenny Rivero negotiates the complexities of his Dominican American identity by embracing the hybridity of cultures and reimagining them as layered narratives that are uniquely his own. In Kids Playing, Rivero depicts the tension between play and violence, as the New York City street is transformed into a playground for kids who, as a result, are at the mercy of the city’s elements. In Liat Yossifor’s highly-layered paintings, she achieves emotive gestures without the use of a brush, but rather, through the mark of her own body. The Tender Among Us and Myths depicts a bodily response to the emotions felt through current events, and the conditions of painting.
The exhibition’s roster was handpicked, through Gaignard’s personal connection with each artist. Having met each artist through her own personal artistic journey, she became inspired and influenced by their work, some of whom she met at the Lunder Institute Residency last summer. Stop & Stare marks Gaignard’s second curatorial project with UTA Artist Space since The Dark, Too, Blooms and Sings featuring work from the Photography MFA program at the Yale School of Art.
“Stop & Stare is a stage for both emerging and established talent,” says Gaignard about her exhibition. “It’s important to foster visibility around artists that would not normally be paired with each other. I’m thrilled to create a space at UTA where each artist’s unique practice is seamlessly intertwined into one cohesive experience.”
“There is an unexplained magic that takes place when you’re witnessing an exhibition come together through the lens of an artist like Geneveive. She has created such synergy among this impeccable group of artists for this show, which is exemplary of her continued commitment to uplifting poignant narratives,” says Director of UTA Artist Space Atlanta Bridgette Baldo.
Stop & Stare will be available for viewing from April 5th to May 4th at the UTA Artist Space Atlanta.
ABOUT GENEVIEVE GAIGNARD
As an interdisciplinary artist, Genevieve Gaignard investigates personal histories, popular culture, and racial currents through her lens as a biracial woman navigating unsettling American realities. Gaignard inserted herself into the work by mining her experiences and implementing soft color palettes, humor, and domesticity. Gaignard’s goal is to create environments and experiences that awaken critical thinking and offer a shift in perspective. Activating spaces with haunting nostalgia for America’s past-as-present, she beckons viewers to dig into the imperfect relationship between our inner worlds, public lives, and modern events. Each of the mediums Gaignard works with is a conduit for introspection. Her photographs are staged self-portraits presenting a spectrum of invented yet recognizable “selves,” which undermine social hierarchies and beauty standards. Vintage wallpaper is a motif throughout her collage, sculpture, and installation work. This material, a childhood sentiment, serves as an accent or backdrop to the found objects and images she uses to assemble her work. In collages, she
embraces xerography, a meditation of sifting through historical news media, magazines, and portraiture. Through sculpture and installation, Gaignard showcases antique furniture, decor and figurines reimagined into unexplored psychological spaces. The scope of her work is an ensemble of visual renderings that affirms Black livelihood and provokes reflection on the often hostile realities of the outside world.
In 2022, she presented two solo exhibitions: To Whom it May Concern with Rowan University Art Gallery and Strange Fruit with Vielmetter Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in numerous group exhibitions, including The Nerman Museum, Overland Park, KS; Rennie Museum, Vancouver, CA; The Broad, Los Angeles, CA; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; The National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.; Crystal Bridges Museum of Art,
Bentonville, AR; The Studio Museum, Harlem, NY. In July 2022, Gaignard partnered with Orange Barrel Media on Look At Them Look At Us, a permanent, site-specific public art installation in downtown Atlanta. Gaignard received her BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and her MFA from Yale University.