Rowe Galleries are closed for the summer and will reopen in August.
Next Exhibitions
In Spite of Enclosures
August 23-October 20
Rowe Upper Gallery
D Rosen is an interdisciplinary artist who currently lives and works on the unceded lands of the Odawa, Ojibwe, Myaamia, Peoria, Kickapoo, Kaskaskia, and Potawatomi nations, commonly known as Chicago, IL. Rosen exhibits and publishes nationally and internationally. They attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2018, received an MFA from the University of Chicago in 2013, and a BFA from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design in 2011.
My work has been primarily driven by the production of queer ecologies and a deep engagement with non-human animal studies. I operate from the position that questions of animality are not binary but rather a tangle of ecologies and richly complicated identities, framed by culture. Recently I have been working in collaboration with domesticated non-human animals living in farming contexts and on farm sanctuaries to enact rituals that foster mutual care. Each daily ritual results in a sculptural work in salt, bronze, incense, clay, or felt, serving as performative documents of our interspecies exchange(s).
Over the past four years, my experiences working at farm sanctuaries and small farms have informed my understanding of the legacies of colonization and gender-based violence across taxonomic lines. The ownership of non-human animals and land continues to give rise to unspeakable abuses. With my work, I intend to open discourse about how trauma ripples across species within extractive economies, making all human animals (including myself) complicit in violence that leaves impressions on bodies across spectrums of identification and species. By documenting traces of animal touch, both human and non-human, I strive imperfectly to create space for reparative forms of mutual care and polyvalent gestures of beauty. I want to provide elemental touchstones—carved by Goats’ tongues and hollowed by the teeth of Mice—that might serve as catalysts for small sparks of interspecies kinship.
Pictured right: Skank is another word for animalic stench, 2021
Metamorphosis
August 23-October 1
Rowe Lower Gallery
Works by Lacey McKinney and Jon Verney. Much of the past year has been a time of change. Positive transformation, perhaps. Although originally conceived as an exhibition focused on the intersections between painting, printmaking, and photography, Metamorphosis evolved because of conversations during the global pandemic. Its new focus is broader, using the exhibited artworks as visual metaphors for human existence and transformation. The idea of metamorphosis is present in works by each artist, both visually and conceptually.
Lacey McKinney lives and works in Central New York. Her work has been exhibited in various solo exhibitions including at the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse NY, and Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, NJ. Her work has been shown at Pen & Brush, New York, NY; NARS Foundation, Brooklyn, NY; Novado Gallery, Jersey City, NJ; Urban Zen, New York, NY; and in Virginia, Washington, throughout New York State. Her work can be found in numerous private collections and featured in publications including Huffington Post, ARTnews, Art Zealous, and Cultured Magazine, among others. Awarded artist residencies include McColl Center for Art + Innovation in Charlotte, Post Contemporary in Troy, New York, and Fremantle Arts Centre in Fremantle, Western Australia. She was awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts Keep NYS Creating grant in 2020.
Jon Verney is a visual artist whose practice interweaves the materiality of painting, photography, and film to describe notions of dissolution and flux in the physical world. Found imagery, chance-driven chemical reactions, and natural phenomena inform an approach to photography that explores the potential of its transformational, fluid qualities. Verney has exhibited his work internationally, and has been an artist-inresidence at Vermont Studio Center, the Studios at MASS MoCA, Penland School of Craft, the Independent Imaging Retreat in Ontario, Canada, and spent two years in Florence, Italy working at Studio Art College International. He holds his MFA from the University of Michigan and a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Painting. His studio practice is based in North Adams, Massachusetts.
The mission of the CoA+A gallery system is to create lively forums in which the curious encounter the work of global, regional, and local artists through diverse media and dynamic exchanges that are nourished by the intellectual and creative life of the university. Our programming will echo crossovers of the visual arts, architecture, music, theatre, and dance inherent to the College of Arts + Architecture at UNC Charlotte. We seek to provide a haven for experimentation, to invigorate the environments we occupy, and to amplify the means to engage art and design in our community.
Adam Justice, Director of Galleries: adam.justice@uncc.edu
