Subtle Shifts
May 21 - June 19, 2021
Buckham Gallery is pleased to present our next exhibition, Subtle Shifts. Curated by Jon P. Geiger and featuring works by Brian Caponi, Lindsey Dezman and Adam Milner, Subtle Shifts brings forth a series of works that explores the artifacts of the insignificant and the mundane into a larger dialogue about time, loss, memory, decay, and vulnerability.
May 21 - June 19, 2021
Buckham Gallery is pleased to present our next exhibition, Subtle Shifts. Curated by Jon P. Geiger and featuring works by Brian Caponi, Lindsey Dezman and Adam Milner, Subtle Shifts brings forth a series of works that explores the artifacts of the insignificant and the mundane into a larger dialogue about time, loss, memory, decay, and vulnerability.
Curatorial Statement
Subtle Shifts brings forth a series of works that explore artifacts of the insignificant and the mundane into a larger dialogue about time, loss, memory, decay, and vulnerability. Brian Caponi’s work pulls from elements of his family’s home to serve as a platform for fabricated forms, material experiments, and transformative found objects. His material processes puzzle together his personal associations of the human spirit. The repurposing of drywall from his childhood bedroom and the ceramic castings of voids left by old fence posts subtly brings the viewer into Caponi’s personal understanding of the keystone elements from his childhood home.
Ceramicist Lindsey Dezman's Dust Plate showcases weekly house sweepings that have been burned into each individual plate serving as a commemoration of the time that has passed. Some plates are heavy with combustion due to her dog shedding its winter’s coat while others are lighter and airer marking a time when foot traffic was low within the house. This is done alternatively with her series of pencil drawings in which she records her observations of the garden located outside the studio. Here, one sees how the surrounding area informs and influences Dezman’s love for recording and observation. The subtle pencil marks highlight beautiful moments often missed such as the change in grass due season, weather, or her dogs. Adam Milner’s work showcases a unique skill of transforming fragments of items such as eyelashes, toenails, belly button lint and blood into tactical compositions and arrangements. The soaking of Adam’s own blood into his drawings or the delicate pressing of eyelashes collected from the bathroom into paper reveal a personal vulnerability that can be often overlooked. Adam’s use of materials reveals a personal vulnerability while examining broader politics of relationships and human intimacy.
The exhibition at Buckham Gallery features focused moments of each of the three artists along with several tables that combine their work into collective arrangements to showcase their combined interests in the mundane and insufficient.
Jon P Geiger, May 2021
Subtle Shifts brings forth a series of works that explore artifacts of the insignificant and the mundane into a larger dialogue about time, loss, memory, decay, and vulnerability. Brian Caponi’s work pulls from elements of his family’s home to serve as a platform for fabricated forms, material experiments, and transformative found objects. His material processes puzzle together his personal associations of the human spirit. The repurposing of drywall from his childhood bedroom and the ceramic castings of voids left by old fence posts subtly brings the viewer into Caponi’s personal understanding of the keystone elements from his childhood home.
Ceramicist Lindsey Dezman's Dust Plate showcases weekly house sweepings that have been burned into each individual plate serving as a commemoration of the time that has passed. Some plates are heavy with combustion due to her dog shedding its winter’s coat while others are lighter and airer marking a time when foot traffic was low within the house. This is done alternatively with her series of pencil drawings in which she records her observations of the garden located outside the studio. Here, one sees how the surrounding area informs and influences Dezman’s love for recording and observation. The subtle pencil marks highlight beautiful moments often missed such as the change in grass due season, weather, or her dogs. Adam Milner’s work showcases a unique skill of transforming fragments of items such as eyelashes, toenails, belly button lint and blood into tactical compositions and arrangements. The soaking of Adam’s own blood into his drawings or the delicate pressing of eyelashes collected from the bathroom into paper reveal a personal vulnerability that can be often overlooked. Adam’s use of materials reveals a personal vulnerability while examining broader politics of relationships and human intimacy.
The exhibition at Buckham Gallery features focused moments of each of the three artists along with several tables that combine their work into collective arrangements to showcase their combined interests in the mundane and insufficient.
Jon P Geiger, May 2021
Artist Bios
Adam Milner (b. 1988, USA) draws upon personal exchanges with people, things, and institutions to examine systems of intimacy, value, and power. Involving materials and spaces that are often off limits, Adam’s work exposes boundaries through a complex process of negotiation and exchange. Adam recently exhibited at the David B. Smith Gallery (Denver, CO,) the Warhol and the Mattress Factory (Pittsburgh, PA). Milner currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Lindsey Dezman (b. 1988, USA) explores materials and objects as means to understand the subtle rhythms of time: the continued creak and slumping of a front step with every season, a thousand – year – old dinosaur bone, the dust that gathers in the house, the growth of something new. These are all pulses of life that influence her material explorations and making. She has showcased her work most recently at House Guest Gallery (Louisville, KY), Hatton Gallery at Colorado State University (Fort Collins, CO), and the Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago, IL). Lindsey’s practice is based out of Metro Detroit, MI.
Brian Caponi (b. 1984, USA) considers both the large and small implications and interactions of an architectural space, object, and image. Utilizing a diverse range of materials and processes, Caponi shifts and recalibrates his relationship to the histories and embedded memories of his (and a) human experience. His attempt is to pick up, dust off, and ingest the often overlooked or forgotten objects or spaces within life. Caponi has recently exhibited his work at VCU Artist Research Institute (Richmond, VA), Fosdick-Nelson Gallery (Alfred, NY), and Pewabic Pottery (Detroit, MI). He lives and works in San Jose, CA.
Curator:
Jon P Geiger (b. 1987, USA) is an artist, curator, and the Head Preparator and Exhibitions Coordinator for the Cranbrook Art Museum. His curatorial interests mirror his personal endeavors in ceramics and other materials – often drawn to work that pushes the potential of a material’s nature and breaks the norm of the artistic process. Recent curatorial projects have been the 2021 Cranbrook Academy of Art Graduate Degree Exhibition and Ian McDonald: In No Particular Order at the Cranbrook Art Museum. He lives and works in the Metro Detroit area.
