Literally Behind
January 15 — January 30, 2020
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Rough Gems is Union Hall’s annual open call and collaborative curatorial program. Each year we select three teams to showcase a pop-up exhibition in our gallery. Literally Behind is the first exhibition in the 2020 Rough Gems series. With Rough Gems, Union Hall hopes to impact the lives of emerging artists and curators with a platform for exhibition that is inclusive, supportive, and committed to the artists we serve by paying them for exhibitions and performances.
Curated by George P. Perez, Literally Behind plays with interior space by utilizing absurd placements of artworks to establish a dynamic and exaggerated installation with domestic materials.
About the Artists + Curator
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Julio Alejandro
is a self taught artist living in Denver, Colorado. He was born in Juarez, Mexico in 1991, then moved to Denver in 1993 with his mother. Using canvas and paper as mediums, Julio melds text and drawings with abstract patches of paint and primitive scratch marks. Textual elements from book titles, quotes, song lyrics and playlists interact with popular cartoons, brands, historical icons and various artistic elements to both reinforce and reinterpret their original meanings. Julio has participated in countless group shows and a couple solo shows in the Denver area. In partnership with the MCA, he was commissioned to create limited works for the BORN hotel in 2016. Julio is currently represented by Black Book Gallery in Denver.
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Lindsay Smith Gustave
lives and works in Denver, Colorado. She seeks to express the remnants of daily existence through visual artifact and establish a link between a landscape’s reality and that of imagined by its observer. Visual reproduction of specific moments are infused with meaning by challenging the division between memory and immediate experience. Gustave highlights overlooked moments for their ability to subconsciously construct our realities. In both drawings and in beaded sculptural works, she presents gentle views of hand gestures combined with interpretations of 1600’s Dutch Still Life paintings. Gustave has shown work in NY and Washington, facilities workshops in the city of Denver partnering with organizations such as the MCA and the Clifford Museum. She holds a Master of Arts, Art History and Museum Studies, from the University of Denver and was a member in the Board of Directors for CultureHaus from 2014-2017.
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Andrew Huffman
is a painter who investigates applying semiotic studies to visual art objects, looking at how meaning/feeling is communicated and experienced. Through various signs, symbols, patterns, color, material, and art forms that pay homage to his masonic and agriculturalist Bohemian ancestors, Huffman creates geometric and mathematical organizational tendencies displayed in varying paintings, photographs, drawings, installations, or sculptures. Huffman has exhibited nationally and internationally, including twice in Berlin, Germany, at the Neurotitan Gallery (2014) and Sluice Exchange Berlin 2018 at the Kuhlhaus. Huffman is alum artist from the residence program at Redline in Denver, Colorado, and completed the FBAIR (Facebook Artist in Residence) in November of 2018.
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John Barnabas Lake
is an artist that gravitates towards the esoteric and spiritual, but always in dialog with the fundamentals of photographic practice. He tends to stretch the imaginative use of photography to new and creative ends through structural narratives, experimental methodologies, and relatable content. Lake uses film, appropriated, and digital photography as well as many DIY materials and techniques to produce photographic installations, books, and sculptures. He generally draws from spiritual belief systems, questions of truth and knowledge, and the everyday human experience.
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Jennifer Lord
is an artist and teacher. She received her Bachelor of Arts from Naropa University in Visual Arts and T’ai Chi Ch’uan. She studies and teaches T’ai Chi Ch’uan with Rocky Mountain T’ai Chi Ch’uan. She is a student of Sogetsu Ikebana with Kalapa Ikebana. Lord’s most recent events include, a solo exhibition at JuiceBox Gallery, a solo exhibition at Alto Gallery, a group show at MegaFauna, digital video collaboration with Noah Travis Phillips published online by RealityBeach.org and exhibited at Sluice in London. She has a forthcoming collaboration with the MÚSED fashion house. Lord exhibited ikebana in the 2018 annual Sogetsu Ikebana Spring Show in Denver, Colorado. Lord’s collaboration TEAM-UP! with Noah Travis Phillips will be published by +4 Press. She lives, works, and teaches in Boulder, Colorado. Her work is held in several private collections.
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Marsha Mack
is a San Francisco Bay Area native and a visual artist currently living and working in Denver, CO. Fixated on social dynamics nuanced by subjective experience, her saccharine infused, texturally rich, process-intensive sculptures and performances have been featured in exhibitions domestically and internationally. Mack's constantly changing studio practice allows for improvised problem solving and innovation, resulting in works that question and critique notions of affect, beauty, sexuality, and the body. Marsha holds an MFA and a Certificate of Advanced Study in Women's and Gender Studies from Syracuse University, and a BFA from San Francisco State University. She was recently the 2015-16 Ginsburg-Klaus Post-MFA Engagement fellow in Los Angeles, California, and is a current Artist in Residence at Redline Contemporary Art Center.
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George P. Perez
CURATOR
received a BFA (Cum Laude) in 2014 from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Perez is an artist whose work explores mundane situations and scenarios that he interacts with on a day-to-day basis, creating works that steam from a photo foundation. He is a Redline artist alum (2014-2016), was an Artist-in Residence at The Denver Children's Museum in 2018, and a recent recipient of the Octopus Initiative MCA Denver Grant. He currently is a Photo-Facilitator with Working Assumptions based out of Berkeley, CA and an artist in M12, an award winning artist collective that specializes in rural aesthetics and landscape. Perez has shown up and down the Front Range and nationally. In the last two years he has participated as a CCI presenter on topics of "Increasing Exclusivity in the Arts Community and "The Importance of Youth Voice in the Arts" with PlatteForum, an innovative arts, youth development, and artist-in-residence program in Denver.