A CITY OF MAGIC CARPETS

ERICK ANTONIO BENITEZ

GALLERY RECEPTION AND ARTIST TALK

WITH CHRISTOPHER STACKHOUSE

Artist Reception: Thursday, October 25, 2018 from 6:00 PM - 8:30 PM

On view in till December 11, 2018

Gallery Hours: Monday-Friday 9am-5pm

City Hall is located at 100 Holliday Street Baltimore, MD 21202.

Emerging artist, Erick Antonio Benitez, the 2018 Janet and Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize winner will have a gallery reception and artist talk with New York based art critic, poet, and curator Christopher Stackhouse about his new works in the exhibition, A City of Magic Carpets, curated by Kirk Shannon-Butts, on view at The Gallery in Baltimore City Hall on Thursday, October 25, 2018 from 6:00 PM - 8:30 PM. The exhibition, A City of Magic Carpets invites the viewer onto a journey across imaginary and transforming analogies of the land, the body, and the in-between.

A City of Magic Carpets is an exhibition exploring an imaginative place between interior and exterior landscapes through the language of painting, textiles, and tactile materials. Motifs of nature, fashion, and objects found within interior spaces are references used to reinvent ways of seeing material and the weight it carries. A City of Magic Carpets explores the nuances of materiality through its relation with the human body and its figurative connection with surrounding landscapes.

Drawing inspiration from the audio poem, The Bristol Project by Vito Acconci, this work examines a parallel connection of imagery and non-fictional worlds intersecting one another into abstractions and visual metaphors. The line, “Now it's the land itself here who is a body, a body of land, it's the water itself that's a body of water,” expresses the notion of imagery we understand outside of its common context. Like Acconci’s word play, the textile paintings found in this work are constantly reinterpreted and reimagined outside of it’s ordinary function.

Through the use of camouflage textiles, floral embroidery imagery and thermal mylar blankets, A City of Magic Carpets opens a metaphysical dialogue to dissolve and reexamine our understanding of landscape. The way the material transcends past it’s psychological associations, gives new perspective on how one can interpret the concept of landscape outside of the common human experience.

*** Link to Poem by Vito Acconci

https://ubusound.memoryoftheworld.org/acconci_vito/Acconci-Vito_The-Bris...

ERICK ANTONIO BENITEZ

Erick Antonio Benitez (b.1988, Bronx, NY) is a Salvadorian-American multidisciplinary artist, musician, organizer and curator based in Baltimore, MD. He received his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and has exhibited work at Connor Smith Gallery (DC), The Baltimore Museum of Art (MD), Baltimore City Hall Gallery (MD), Greenpoint Gallery (NY), Gaddis Geeslin Gallery (TX), Strange Fire Collective (CO), Metafora Studio Arts (Barcelona, ES) and Simultan Festival (Timisoara, RO). His work has been reviewed by the Washington Post, Baltimore City Paper, The Baltimore Sun, Baltimore Magazine, BmoreArt, What Weekly and a few publications including the first issue of BmoreArt Journal + Ideas, Let’s Talk Live (WJLA), and Hyrsteria Zine Vol. 2. Benitez is also a recipient of the 2016 Ruby Artist Project grant, The Contemporary: Grit Fund 2, Y.L. Hoi Memorial Award and has work included in private collections around the Mid-Atlantic region and abroad. In 2018, Benitez was a Baker Artist Award Finalist, participated in the residency, Studios at MASS MoCA, and awarded the Janet and Walter Sondheim Award.

CHRISTOPHER STACKHOUSE

Christopher Stackhouse is a writer, artist, curator and teacher. He holds an MFA in Writing/Interdisciplinary Studies from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College. His books include Seismosis (1913 press), which features his drawings with text by writer/translator John Keene; and a volume of poems, Plural (Counterpath press.) His writing and interviews have been published in numerous journals and periodicals including Der Pfeil (Hamburg, DE), American Poet- The Journal of The Academy of American Poets, Modern Painters, Art in America, BOMB Magazine, and The Brooklyn Rail. His recent contributions to artist monographs include Kara Walker’s Dust Jackets for The Niggerati (Gregory R. Miller & Co.); and, Basquiat – The Unknown Notebooks (Skira Rizzoli) a book that accompanies the traveling exhibition of text based works by the late artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, which opened at The Brooklyn Museum spring 2015. He frequently lectures on art, literature, and American culture. He has taught and lectured at the New York Center for Art & Media Studies, Bethel University; at Naropa University; at Ohio State University; Azusa Pacific University; and at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Kirk Shannon-Butts

Kirk Shannon-Butts is a Curator, with an MFA in Communications (Film/TV Production) from Chapman University in Orange, California, and a BA in Marketing & Arts Management from The American College in Atlanta, Georgia. Shannon-Butts is a dedicated artist advocate and has been instrumental in the careers many emerging and unsung visual artists, including rising art world star, Stephen Towns. He has curated for Gallery CA, Galerie Myrtis, and Gallery M in Harlem. Shannon-Butts has worked for Rolling Stone magazine in Los Angeles and spent nine years at Conde Nast Publications (Vogue, GQ, Glamour) in New York City. In 2009 and 2013, he served as the Communications Director for the HBCU Inaugural Gala Ball, where he interfaced with the White House Communications Department, Cabinet members, State Senators, and leading Hollywood agencies, including ICM and William Morris Endeavor. Although based in Harlem, currently Shannon-Butts resides in Baltimore City, where he serves as the newly appointed Curator and Gallery Manager for the Gallery in Baltimore City Hall.

The Gallery at Baltimore City Hall

Hosted in City Hall, A City of Magic Carpets is the first inaugural exhibition showcasing contemporary works by a local artist and curated by the newly appointed curator and gallery manager Kirk Shannon-Butts, covering both the North Gallery and South Gallery.