What does it mean to exist in a state of “becoming alien” or “becoming strange”? These questions power The Otolith Group: Xenogenesis. The exhibition presents a cross-section of artworks from 2011 to 2018 by The Otolith Group, established in 2002 by Anjalika Sagar (b. 1968 London) and Kodwo Eshun (b. 1966, London).

The term Xenogenesis alludes to influential African-American science fiction novelist Octavia Estelle Butler (1947–2006)’s classic Xenogenesis Trilogy, published from 1987 to 89 and later retitled Lilith’s Brood. Butler’s powerful novels investigated questions of human extinction, racial distinction, planetary transformation, enforced mutation, generative alienation, and altered kinship. Along with Butler, two other key figures are key to the conception of Xenogenesis. The towering musical achievements of the African-American avant-garde composer Julius Eastman (1940–1990) forms the object and the attitude of The Third Part of the Third Measure (2017), while the enduring experiments in art as pedagogy and psychology by the Indian polymath Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) shape the subject and the method of O Horizon (2018).

Vittorio Colaizzi holds an MFA in painting and a PhD in art history from VCU. He has held one-person exhibitions at the Eric Schindler Gallery in Richmond and Stump Town Gallery in Alma, Wisconsin, and has participated in group exhibitions in Richmond, Norfolk, Courtland, Minneapolis, and Brooklyn. He received a Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Professional Fellowship in 2006. His monograph on Robert Ryman was published by Phaidon in 2017, and he has also published essays on Trudy Benson, Joan Thorne, and Thornton Willis. Colaizzi is an associate professor of art history at Old Dominion University.

Inspired by the archive of Richmond native Louis Draper, VMFA has organized an unprecedented exhibition that chronicles the first twenty years of the Kamoinge Workshop, a group of African American photographers he helped to found in 1963. More than 180 photographs by fifteen of the early members—Anthony Barboza, Adger Cowans, Danny Dawson, Roy DeCarava, Louis Draper, Al Fennar, Ray Francis, Herman Howard, Jimmie Mannas Jr., Herb Randall, Herb Robinson, Beuford Smith, Ming Smith, Shawn Walker, and Calvin Wilson—reveal the vision and commitment of this remarkable group of artists.

Despite years of medical and social progress, misconceptions about HIV/AIDS persist today. The disease is viewed by many as a scourge of the past that is now easily treatable and primarily impacting gay white men. However, the numbers reveal a more complicated story—one in which gay African-American men have a 1 in 2 chance of acquiring HIV/AIDS.

Richmond’s rate of HIV infection, currently ranked 19th nationally, is exacerbated by high concentrations of poverty, lack of sex education in public schools and the continuing opioid epidemic. Featuring oral histories collected by Laura Browder and Patricia Herrera with accompanying photographic portraits by Michael Simon, Voices from Richmond’s Hidden Epidemic offers a nuanced look at the HIV/AIDS crisis through the stories of survivors, caregivers, activists and health care workers on the front lines.

OPENING RECEPTION: January 17, 6 - 8 PM

William Wylie’s meditations on Pompeii in The Possibility of Ruins liken the photographic medium to this ancient, yet evolving location, “The site of Pompeii functions much like a photograph, by freezing an instant from the past and carrying a representation of it into the present.” Wylie’s photo series documents the index of “physical traces of past experiences” in a place that has endured centuries of development, excavations and restorations–not to mention the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. His photos acknowledge a spatial awareness of Historical means, as they recognize each stage of the multiple pasts and peoples that inhabited these areas.

OPENING RECEPTION: January 17, 6 - 8 PM

Page Bond Gallery presents View Find 9, a group exhibition comprised of works by fifteen women. Artists include Mary Ellen Bartley, Sally Mann, Elizabeth McGrady, Annielaurie Erickson, Kally Malcom, Cynthia Henebry, Emily Fisher, Zanele Muholi, Ricky Weaver, Angela Franks Wells, Elizabeth Mead, Willie Anne Wright, Maggie Flanagan, Amanda Means & Emily White.

Quirk’s Pink Gallery features the artwork of Charlotte-based artist and illustrator, Kristen Solecki.

Kristen Solecki has taken her love of story and imagery to a career as an artist and illustrator. She creates work that centers around narratives tinged with nostalgia and small, meaningful moments. She uses gouache, ink, and collage on paper to engage the viewer through the tactile, genuine quality of each piece. Solecki studied illustration at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts and creates work for a wide variety of projects including illustrations for books, magazines, products, and gallery shows.

OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, January 10, 6 - 8PM

Reynolds Gallery presents a series of prints by well-renowned artist Claes Oldenburg, opening Friday, January 10 from 6 – 8 pm. Through lithographs and etchings, the exhibition showcases Oldenburg’s iconic imagery inspired by architectural elements – often studies of his executed sculptures and installations – and everyday objects like an apple and perfume bottle. 

OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, January 10, 6 - 8PM

In Some Portraits, David Freed exhibits a collection of portraits featuring the faces of people he has met and studied throughout his lifetime, including his family, friends, students and mentors. The exhibition presents work spanning myriad mediums, including printmaking applications such as woodblock and etching, and painterly elements like watercolor and pastel. Freed often layers these techniques in his portraits and self-portraits, building a body of both editioned and unique works on paper.

OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, January 10, 6 - 8PM

Reynolds Gallery presents On Vacation, Katie Barrie’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. The recent VCUarts MFA graduate exhibits a series of highload acrylic paintings on canvas which incorporate vacation imagery and crisp, summery patterns grounded in architectural compositions reminiscent of travels abroad. In a statement detailing the exhibition, Barrie notes:

My work examines the aesthetics of leisure, the implications of good and bad taste, and what it means to live one’s best life. The idea of the beach or pool-side getaway is a relatively new concept, only practiced for a handful of generations. And yet, it is something most individuals fantasize about luxuriating in. We seek out experiences in particular locations because we are led to believe that we will be happier, more fulfilled people if we do so. My practice analyzes the visual cues and aspirational indulgences that Western society has routinely gravitated towards in pursuit of leisure.

Glave Kocen Gallery's 14th annual SIZE DOESN'T MATTER exhibition includes artists represented by the gallery as well as invited artists in this month long exhibition  featuring works on the smaller size. Over 100 pieces will be available. Also on view: a special retrospective of the late Ted Turner.

Since the mid-1990s, Patty Carroll has been examining female identity, both by way of and through domesticity. Anonymous Women is a series of portraits of shrouded women in exuberant drapery, manifested as homespun vignettes of mannequins, inundated with household objects. Carroll approaches the topic of domesticity through the lens of her own life and through other cultures. With a wry but lighthearted humor, the weight of the accouterments is couched comfortably between absolute suffocation and mere decoration.

Works from Carroll’s recent series, Flora and Fauxna will also be on view. Carroll creates ornate still-lifes, styled with ceramics birds camouflaged between colorful fabrics, artificial flowers, and household tchotchkes. The installations are gorgeous, filled with both vibrant color and subtle nuance. When peeled away, each layer recursively reveals excessive materiality, often all consuming.

Alanna Airitam: The Golden Age is a tribute to black culture and black histories. In an effort to reframe the narrative of western art history, Airitam reconstructs prominent imagery of power with black men and women. Dressed in vintage garments and adorned with lush fruit and flowers, Airitam’s majestic portraits confront and recontextualize the way African American’s have been perceived and recorded throughout art’s history.

The series is comprised of baroque-esque portraits of African Americans, influenced by iconography from 17th century Dutch Renaissance era, also known as the Golden Age of painting. In ‘The Queen’ a woman rests a key in her palm with a floral headdress illuminated by a Rembrant like light; and ‘Dapper Dan’ pays homage to iconic figures from the Harlem Renaissance who influenced Airitam, such as Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. Through lighting and subject, Airitam’s images emanate pride and true grace while transporting the viewer to another time, preserving a history.

TWO NIGHTS: InLight 2019 is November 15th and 16th, from 7 - 11PM

Organized by 1708 Gallery, InLight Richmond is a FREE, public exhibition of light-based art and performances. Each year, InLight features performances, sculpture, video, and interactive projects that illuminate pathways, walls, sidewalks, green spaces, and kicks off with the Community Lantern Parade. InLight was created in 2008 on the occasion of 1708 Gallery's 30th birthday. Thus was born this free, public art exhibition that offers Richmond the opportunity to engage with contemporary art outside the gallery walls and to experience the city in new and unexpected ways.

InLight 2019 will take place at Chimborazo Park in the Church Hill neighborhood of Richmond. Projects will focus on the social and geographic history of this park. Two key moments in the park's history include being the location of the largest Confederate military hospital during the Civil War and following Emancipation, hosting a Freedmen’s community for formerly enslaved African-Americans. 1708 seeks artists and projects that respond to, elaborate on, and propose new ways of understanding these complex histories.

InLight 2019 will include 20 projects, 4 community partners, 10 local food vendors, a local beer sponsor, and will kick off with the Community Lantern Parade.

OPENING RECEPTION AND ARTISTS TALK: Friday, November 15, 5:30-8pm

VisArts presents "walking with," an exhibition of work by Lily Cox-Richard and Michael Jevon Demps. The art in this exhibition was made in response to, and with materials from, the artists’ walks in Richmond. As part of an ongoing project, the artists and their collaborators confront and honor place through walking, listening and making. Central to walking with is an interactive rock tumbler – an instrument and a time machine – that uses river water, silt and local clay to smooth and polish gravel and riprap.The exhibition grapples with questions of value, pace, attention and care. With urgency and wonder, this show considers what we can carry together, who we walk with and how.

Islands/Bitterroot Suite: Mac Ball and A Photographic Survey of the American Yard: Joshua White.

Enjoy three artists premiering at GK just in time for the holidays.

Candela Books + Gallery is excited to announce BRING A DATE, a celebration of nightlife and music from the mid-1970s to the present day. Through the lens of six established and emerging artists, the exhibition features both still and moving imagery that celebrates America after dark, from the boroughs of New York to the late night denizens of Los Angeles, Chicago and Virginia. Included in this exhibition are works by Michael Abramson, Bill Bernstein, Thurston Howes, Jessica Lehrman, Reuben Radding and Safi Alia Shabaik.

ARTIST RECEPTION: Friday, November 1st from 5 - 9 pm

Through sculpture, video, sound, and drawing, Chun examines the English language and its power structures through the institutional mechanisms of EFL (English as a Foreign Language), formerly known as ESL (English as a Second Language). Working with various found sources such as EFL/ESL workbooks, youtube pronunciation tutorials, standardized tests, watermarks for diplomas and certificates, and index pages of books on the English language, Chun re-interprets the authority, function, and meaning of the world’s “common language” into a new system of relations.

OPENING RECEPTION: Thursday, November 7, 5 - 8PM

“Please recycle this bag.”
“Please reuse this bag.”
“Get an enviro-credit of 10 cents by refusing a new plastic bag.”
Feel good about yourself and these actions knowing that you are helping our planet. The devastating truth, however, is far darker and more pessimistic. Under 10% of what is put in recycling bins across this country is actually recycled. "Have A Nice Day" is an investigation of one artists curiosity to collaborate with and ultimately make friends with the insidious yet exceedingly useful material: plastic.

Susie Ganch is an artist and educator living in Richmond, Virginia where she is Interim Chair for the Department of VCUarts Craft/Material Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. She also serves as Director of Radical Jewelry Makeover, an international jewelry mining and recycling project that continues to travel across the country and abroad. Susie received her MFA from University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work has been featured in gallery and museum exhibitions and is included in the public collections of LACMA, Asheville Art Museum, MFA Boston, Fuller Craft Museum, Metal Museum, and Quirk Hotel, among others

Check in to Edward Hopper’s hotels, motels, tourist homes, and boarding houses in this first investigation of the celebrated artist’s images of hospitality settings. Culturally probing and formally beguiling, the selected paintings and works on paper explore America’s hotel consciousness and cultural landscape in the early to mid-20th century. At VMFA, the exhibition’s only East Coast venue, simulated spaces and other immersive design elements create a one-of-a-kind art experience. Rarely seen diaries and postcards provide personal travelogues, as told by the artist’s wife, Josephine.

Great Force is an exhibition that uses painting, sculpture, photography, video, and performance to examine the reality of race in the United States. It will feature new commissions and recent work by an intergenerational group of 21 established and emerging artists, including Pope.L, Sable Elyse Smith, Charlotte Lagarde, and Tomashi Jackson.

Borrowing its title from a quote by novelist and social critic James Baldwin, “The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do,” Great Force will explore how contemporary artists contend with persistent black-white racial bias and inequality in the U.S.

For the duration of Great Force, the ICA will convene community discussions about race, representations of the oppressed and the empowered, and how art can become a tool in pursuit of visibility.

Frankie Slaughter mounts another massive exhibit for patrons of the Glave Kocen Gallery in just a couple of weeks. Her first solo show “Unravel" at the gallery in 2013 was a runaway smash and a multi media juggernaut. Her massive creativity and output continues on in this next installment driving her to explore more materials and depth of meaning. “'In this upcoming exhibition, I set the scene, so to speak, for us all to look ‘backstage’, behind the curtain” begins Frankie. "I invite the viewer to look beyond the set, our personal stage and deeper into what is truly authentic, what is within, who we are at our very core.”

TIDEWATER includes a collection of fiber and mixed media pieces inspired by the effects of the Chesapeake Bay impact crater that shaped the landscape and history of Virginia. Arsenovic utilizes color palettes and textures inspired by childhood (Disney, The Muppets) to make some of these hidden histories more accessible. The radiating pattern of the meteor strike is superimposed onto contemporary road maps and atlas pages. Nautical knots are replicated from old textbooks or charts belonging to John Smith using brightly colored faux fur. Arsenovic's pieces offer something familiar, recognizable, maybe even comforting---but are they also masking a more complicated version of events?

Eric Schindler Gallery is so excited to kick off the gallery season with this extraordinary body of collage and mixed media by Bob Scott and Eric Eaton.

In his first solo exhibition with Reynolds Gallery, Matt Kleberg presents a new series of monumental abstract paintings created with oil stick on canvas. The works display architecturally inspired forms alongside looser, more organic shapes. Rendered primarily in earth tones situated among pops of intensely saturated colors, this series of paintings ranges in size from 20 x 16 to 84 x 60 inches.

Joan Elliott’s fourth solo show with Reynolds Gallery presents a series of individual works as well as diptychs on panel. Within her diptychs, Elliott pairs lush scenes of nature alongside panels covered from edge-to-edge with geometric patterns, inspired by architectural details the artist observed during recent travels in Europe. These seemingly disparate styles of painting merge within the single-panel works, where landscape imagery serves as underdrawings for the multiple layers of intricate patterns Elliott paints overtop.

Alison Hall’s exhibition features new paintings of oil and graphite on panel, ranging in size from 13 x 11 to 40 x 32.5 inches, alongside several works on paper. Marking Hall’s second solo exhibition with Reynolds Gallery, the show will be anchored by a large floor- based installation of wood tiles painted white, designed to mimic the floor of the iconic Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy.

Candela Gallery is delighted to present HALLUCINATIONS, the first feature solo exhibition at Candela for Richmond, Virginia based artist, Justin James Reed. For the last three years, Reed has been forging a new body of photographic and video work on the environs of a potentially active volcano in northern California. Comprised of images that utilize a highly representational visual language, HALLUCINATIONS provides the viewer the possibility of seeing something other than what is being shown. Through a haze of lush landscapes and sounds, Reed highlights the potential of lens-based imagery to become more focused on sharing, rather than showing.

Candela Gallery is excited to announce POWER, a solo exhibition by Arizona based photographer, David Emitt Adams. For the last ten years, Adams has been documenting the contemporary American landscape using the wet plate collodion process. By applying this early 19th century process onto discarded steel ephemera such as cans and scrap metals, Adams’ photographs are inherently transformed into one of a kind, three dimensional objects with a new gravitas and actualized tension between time and place.

In POWER, practicably realized on large scale 55-gallon steel drum lids, Adams’ conceptually orbits the moorings of the petroleum industry in the American Southwest. Fascinated by the multifaceted weight of power, Adams has spent the last three years traveling cross country, photographing oil refineries and the industrial landscape.