The Carnegie has announced the opening reception for Exhibition X: An Utterly Incomplete Examination of Collage in Contemporary Art will be held Saturday, October 21, from 5-8 p.m.
The exhibition will run from October 21 through February 3.
The Carnegie will also present a “Beers + Bloodies” event in the gallery where visitors are invited to tour the exhibition with curators, Matt Distel and Scott Speh and mingle with exhibiting artists. “Beers + Bloodies” will take place Sunday, October 22 from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Both events are free and open to the public.
Exhibition X is a loose examination of collage strategies and techniques across a range of media. Rather than organizing the exhibition from a particular thematic point of view, the curators opted for a messier, open-ended approach to bringing work together under one building.
Carnegie Executive Director and curator Matt Distel shares “Exhibition X is a collaboration between friends, between institutions and between cities. My co-curator Scott Speh is the Founder and Director of Western Exhibitions, a contemporary art gallery in Chicago. Inviting Scott to work on this not only continues The Carnegie’s interest in introducing Kentucky and Ohio artists to outside curators, but also offers a chance for artists in this region to exhibit alongside fellow artists across different generations and geographies.
“Scott and I have sympathetic but slightly different interests in artists that makes for a nice tension when selecting pieces — resulting in an impressive range of work on view at The Carnegie.”
Collage techniques have appeared in multiple media and art-making communities since the early parts of the 20th Century, with artists grabbing elements at hand to create unexpected images, resulting in a quick method to upend the more formal elements of Fine Art. Exhibition X investigates current trends in collage that both embrace digital processes and signal a return to handmade objects.
Exhibiting artists include singer, artist and activist Michael Stipe best known for his work with the band R.E.M. Other artists include Thomas Kong (b. 1950- d. 2023), a prolific Chicago artist whose iconic Rogers Park convenience store displayed his collage and assemblage that reused advertising, packaging and other surplus material from his store and CT King (b.1973- d. 2023), a Cincinnati-based artist who started his artistic career in the historic graffiti scenes of Boston and New York City during the 1990s. King was an extremely prolific artist who used collage as his primary medium to build worlds that bend reality into an equally grotesque and beautiful environment.
Artists local to Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky include Terence Hammonds, M’Shinda Imani Abdullah Broaddus and Michael Scheurer. Terence Hammonds’ work is in the permanent collection of theCincinnati Art Museum, the 21c Museum Hotel, and the Newark Museum of Art. The Over-the-Rhine native’s ceramic work also gained press in 2017 when actress Jamie Lee Curtis purchased a dozen of his pieces featured in the group show UnFunction at the Weston Art Gallery.
Exhibition X is curated by Carnegie Executive Director, Matt Distel, and Scott Speh, the Founder and Director of Western Exhibitions in Chicago. Western Exhibitions is a contemporary art gallery that shows thought-provoking, and visually innovative artists who work across most media, with an emphasis on personal narratives and cosmologies; LGBTQ and feminist artists and issues; pattern, decoration and surface concerns; works on paper; and artist books.
Featured artists include M’Shinda Imani Abdullah Broaddus, Marshall Brown, Thomas Dozol, Edie Fake, Krista Franklin, Dianna Frid, Greenwich Village Book Desecration League, Terence Hammonds, Julia Schmitt Healy, Joseph Heidecker, CT King, Thomas Kong, Dutes Miller, Ayanah Moor, Erin Jane Nelson, Paul Nudd, Sarah Palmer, Breyer P-Orridge, Hubert Posey, Kathryn Réfi, Michael Scheurer, Dean Smith, Hannah Smith, Deb Sokolow, Stan Squirewell, Michael Stipe, and Erykah Townsend.
Exhibition X is free and open to the public. For more information visit TheCarnegie.com.
The Carnegie
