2021 Exhibitions
United by One Installation View
January commenced with the final two weeks of United By One, renowned Detroit artist Charles McGee’s last exhibition before his passing. Mid-January through mid-February exhibitions featured solo presentations by local Flint artists and Buckham Collaborators whose 2020 exhibitions were postponed due to COVID-19: Karen Milito, Nancy Pennell, Paul Rozycki, and Linda Lou Woodruff. Nancy Pennell participated in an In Conversation recording sharing her unique monotype process.
Installation view of works by Buckham Collaborators
Buckham’s “Late Winter Exhibitions” presented three concurrent exhibitions running four weeks mid February through March 20: Chad Erpelding’s Gains and Losses utilizes data visualization and systems-based strategies to investigate global institutions. Deepanjan Mukhopadhyay’s Appropriated Figure-Grounds was a series of images probing the relationships between photographic representation and global figures of power often by investigating the Photographic apparatus itself. Jordan Vinyard’s Summary of A Few Volts looked at how we hypothesize, test, squeeze, and tether ourselves to our technologies, while counting on the flexibility and resilience of our steadfast meat machines to endure. Director Leclaire recorded three individual conversations with the artists to contextualize their work for deeper understanding and expanding our audience's access to challenging visual art.
In April, Buckham Gallery hosted Disrupted Realism, a national juried exhibition established to explore contemporary painting that challenges the traditional concepts of realism. “It is a subjective approach to painting that favors perception over seeing and embraces subjectivity,” John Seed, author of Disrupted Realism: Paintings for a Distracted World. Seed selected 34 artworks from 697 submissions for display in Buckham Gallery. In addition to the selected paintings, this exhibition featured five paintings by prominent Chicago artist, Anne Harris, who was also featured in Seed’s book. Buckham Gallery produced its first exhibition catalogue for Disrupted Realism, which has shipped across the continental U.S. Two videos were recorded, one announcing the prize winners and a panel discussion including juror John Seed, invitational artist Anne Harris, and the three prize winners.
Installation view of Disrupted Realism
May - June 2021 Subtle Shifts, curated by Jon P Geiger and featuring artists Brian Caponi, Lindsey Dezman, and Adam Milner, brings forth a series of works that explore artifacts of the insignificant and the mundane into a larger dialogue about time, lost, memory, decay, and vulnerability. One video was recorded, featuring Geiger, Caponi, Dezman and Milner. In Conversation panel discussion
Installation view of Subtle Shifts
Early Summer brought two consecutive exhibitions to Buckham Gallery: SELVAGE by Jim Arendt and At Home by Candace Compton Pappas. Jim Arendt’s Selvage explores the shifting paradigms of labor and place through materials that resonate with work and the people engaged in it. Influenced by the radical reshaping of the rural and industrial landscapes in which he was raised, he investigates how individual lives are affected by transitions in economic structures. Jim Arendt In Conversation. Michigan artist, Candace Compton Pappas, explores place, presence, and identity using a myriad of mediums and forms. At Home is an investigative journey seeking what it means to belong, feel safe, noticed, and what is this thing called home. In Conversation
In late summer, Buckham presented three concurrent exhibitions featuring Kelly Boehmer, Bill Davis, and Devan Horton. Kelly Boehmer approaches her soft sculptures with a tragic sense of humor. Beastly Luster explores the absurd beauty in anxiety. Using the teeth from upcycled taxidermy and gory visceral imagery, Boehmer symbolizes emotional vulnerability. Glittery sheer fabrics and saturated faux fur “soften the blow,” making those anxieties easier to confront. In Conversation: Kelly Boehmer. Bill Davis’ photography reflects humanity’s vision for itself. No Dark in Sight conveys how artificial light occupies the night. This exhibit demonstrates the artifice of light pollution, why and how that matters by inviting populations to adopt foresight intelligence, employ reason, and manage their communities in less artificial ways. When night looks like night, we can embrace its lifeforce. In Conversation: Bill Davis. Devan Horton explores our culture's obsession with consumption and waste by analyzing our relationship with garbage. Penchant brings to light our relationship with waste in hopes of convincing others that even through the endless social and economic issues compounding around us, our planet is always of the utmost importance, and we as a species must work together to preserve its beauty for generations to come. In Conversation: Devan Horton.
In his exhibition, Hyper-Tension, Matthew Wead uses adversity as a center point, to explore subject matter involving identity, personal narratives, critical history, memory, language and tradition. With a background in printmaking, Wead’s practice draws on the history of the art form and its techniques to create works that investigate the idea of resilience in form, subject matter, materiality. In addition to the exhibition, BFAP facilitated a workshop with Wead at University of Michigan-Flint demonstrating his bleach printmaking process. In Conversation: Matthew Owen Wead. A lover of comics, Kenish Magwood juxtaposes cartooning with deep-rooted and controversial topics in her exhibition, Nigrescence Comics. This body of work is a homage to psychologist Dr. William E. Cross Jr. and his study on the 5 stages of Black Identity Theory. Magwood’s large-scale paintings unabashedly illustrate challenging subject matter. In Conversation: Kenish Magwood.
Buckham Gallery presented a small group exhibition, Entropy, in October. Featuring works by Jennifer Bock-Nelson, Kelly A. Mueller and Amy Sacksteder, Entropy responds to the intricacies of space, place and the passing of time. Bock-Nelson, Mueller and Sacksteder have investigated the impact of human interaction and interventions on the environment, and are all compelled by entropy. They share their findings through painting, works on paper and installations. In Conversation: Entropy.
Installation View of Entropy
The 2021 Buckham Artist Collaborators Annual Exhibition took place in November. This year’s exhibition theme was Black & White and it featured work by local artists and Buckham Collaborators. Black & White exhibiting artists: Guy Adamec, Aisha Changezi, Nic Custer, Donovan Entrekin, Craig Hinshaw, Robert Huebel, Michele Leclaire, Janice McCoy, Michael Melet, Karen Milito, Ken Milito, Matthew Osmon, Nancy Pennell, Paul Rozycki, Sifus J. Thompson, and Chris Waters.
Installation view of Black & White
The 2021 calendar closed with three concurrent solo exhibitions featuring Emily Legleitner, Diane Zeeuw, and Rebecca Zeiss. A primary function of art is that of a lens through which interiors are made discernible to viewers. The emotional intricacies of the human experience can be laid bare through visual representation, often finding a higher state of relatability and sympathetic resonance between artist and audience. The three artists of this exhibit, Emily Legleitner, Diane Zeeuw, and Rebecca Zeiss, all offer expansive views of concepts and reflections of a far less direct nature, each plunging deep into their respective focuses. In Conversations: Legleitner, Zeeuw, and Zeiss.
