aphotic sums a solo exhibition by Jovencio de la Paz
March 18th - April 22nd, 2017
Open Saturdays 12-7pm
writer in residence: Thea Quiray Tagle
Using traditional colonial American textile processes including overshot weaving and hand rug-punching, the soft works in this exhibition exist between a variety of external pressures. As commodity, as Americana, as witness to a dark, Colonial past embedded and encoded in fabric both physical and social, these lengths of cloth are formal explorations and reverse stratigraphy, patterns and processes displaced in time and history. The structures at the core of these textiles, the binary 'over and under' of woven fabric, evoke other assumed binaries: blackness and whiteness, high and low culture, the public and the domestic, the political and the poetic. In the absence of chroma, these works deal in stark contrasts, and situate themselves in the turbulent place where the soft world of cloth confronts the hard edge of the political.
-Jovencio de la Paz, 2017
Jovencio de la Paz is an artist, writer, and educator. His work explores the intersection of textile processes such as weaving, dye, and surface design as they relate to broader concerns of ancient technology, language, codification, community, and identity. Interested in the ways transient or ephemeral experiences are embodied in material, de la Paz looks to how knowledge, stories, and memories are transmitted through society in space and time, whether semiotically by language or haptically by made things. He is currently Assistant Professor and Curricular Head of Fibers at the University of Oregon.
Jovencio de la Paz received a Masters of Fine Art from the Cranbrook Academy of Art (2012) and a Bachelors of Fine Art in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2008). He has exhibited his work both nationally and internationally, most recently at ThreeWalls, Chicago, IL; The Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland, OR; Carl & Sloan Contemporary Art, Portland, OR; 4th Ward Projects, Chicago, IL; SPACE Gallery, Portland, ME; The Sculpture Center, Cleveland, OH; SPACE Gallery, Portland, ME; SOIL Gallery, Seattle, WA; Roots & Culture Contemporary Art Center, Chicago; The Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; MessHall, Chicago; Uri Gallery, Seoul, South Korea. among others. He regularly teaches at schools of art, craft, and design throughout the country, including the Ox Bow School of Art in Saugatuck, Michigan, the Haystack Mountain School of Craft in Deer Isle, Maine, and the Arrowmont School of Craft in Tennessee. He is also a co-founder of the collaborative group Craft Mystery Cult, established in 2010.
Curated by Julia Freeman
Jovencio de la Paz received a Masters of Fine Art from the Cranbrook Academy of Art (2012) and a Bachelors of Fine Art in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2008). He has exhibited his work both nationally and internationally, most recently at ThreeWalls, Chicago, IL; The Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland, OR; Carl & Sloan Contemporary Art, Portland, OR; 4th Ward Projects, Chicago, IL; SPACE Gallery, Portland, ME; The Sculpture Center, Cleveland, OH; SPACE Gallery, Portland, ME; SOIL Gallery, Seattle, WA; Roots & Culture Contemporary Art Center, Chicago; The Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; MessHall, Chicago; Uri Gallery, Seoul, South Korea. among others. He regularly teaches at schools of art, craft, and design throughout the country, including the Ox Bow School of Art in Saugatuck, Michigan, the Haystack Mountain School of Craft in Deer Isle, Maine, and the Arrowmont School of Craft in Tennessee. He is also a co-founder of the collaborative group Craft Mystery Cult, established in 2010.
Curated by Julia Freeman