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DAMIAN STAMER Horry County 20, 2021 oil on panel 24 x 36 inches |
DAMIAN STAMER zeigt seine Ausstellung
and then it wasn’t
NOVEMBER 10 – DECEMBER 22, 2021
Opening Reception with the Artist
Wednesday, November 10, 6 – 8 PM
SOCO Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of and then it wasn’t, a solo exhibition by artist Damian Stamer featuring new oil paintings created over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. The gallery will host a public opening reception with the artist on November 10, 2021 from 6 - 8PM. This will be Stamer’s third solo exhibition with the gallery.
In the exhibition, the artist attempts to capture the impermanence of both the past and present. He returns to his childhood landscape, fields littered with crumbling barns and abandoned buildings, and depicts sites marked by the passage of time. The new works slip between abstraction and naturalism, stillness and vibration, solidity and dust. Stamer paints with a playful seriousness as lonely pines, moldy boxes, and vibrant marks explode across his panels.
The pandemic, the isolation, and afforded time and space, allowed the artist to alter his perspective on the notion of change. Stamer fully embraced the different direction his painting began to take him – into a world of further abstraction and manipulation of form.
“I admire his technical prowess, and the ability of his paintings to stir subtle emotions. What is most compelling to me is when I see a painting that reminds me why painting is still important – why the medium remains prominent in the face of so many other ways of art-making and communicating… Stamer has said that he’s like a scientist, always tinkering and experimenting with unique ways to push the medium. When he finds a new way to use paint that he’s never seen before, he feels like he’s adding to a conversation that began thousands of years ago. He is a quintessentially American painter. His work is steeped in an undeniably American iconography and draws its strength from both his technical skill and honest connection to his roots.” – Dexter Wimberly, independent curator.
The title of the exhibition, a nod to a line of “The Southern Cross”, a poem by Charles Wright, “And then it’s not. And I’m not and they’re not.” touches on Stamer’s preoccupation with the idea of time and space. In his painting practice, the dynamics of highly dense areas are challenged and offset by spaces that allow for reflection and moments of clarity.
In conjunction with Stamer’s solo exhibition, SOCO Gallery will be releasing signed copies of Damian Stamer: Unseen - a new monograph of the artist’s work over the past decade. This is SOCO Gallery’s first publication.
Damian Stamer (Durham, NC, B. 1982)
Damian Stamer received his Master of Fine Arts from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a Jacob K. Javits fellow in 2013 and his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Herberger Institute of Art and Design and Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University as a National Merit Scholar in 2007. He also studied at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts as a Fulbright grantee, and the State Academy of Art and Design in Stuttgart, Germany as a Rotary Ambassadorial scholar. Recent solo exhibitions include Returning, Koki Arts in Tokyo, Japan (2019): Unseen, Craven Allen Gallery, Durham, NC (2019); Interiors, SOCO Gallery, Charlotte, NC (2018); A Stone’s Throw, Gallerie Michael Schultz, Berlin, Germany (2016). Stamer’s work was included in State of Art 2020, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, The Momentary, Bentonville, AR (2020) and Drawn: Concept & Craft, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA), Winston-Salem, NC (2020).
Stamer’s paintings explore themes of memory and impermanence through formal and conceptual approaches. Detailed architectural forms reminiscent of his childhood memories of the South are combined with gestural brushstrokes that push and pull the images into existence. The artist lives and works in Durham, North Carolina.
SOCO GALLERY 421 PROVIDENCE ROAD, CHARLOTTE, NC 28207 INFO@SOCO-GALLERY.COM (980) 498-2881
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