Exhibitions

RADICAL RAGE

Stove Works / 1250 E 13th St. August 7 - November 14th (Reception: August 7 6:00pm - 8:00pm)

Desmond Lewis, Chayse Sampy, estefanía vallejo santiago, James McKissic, Jordan Mattew, Ọmọlará Williams McCallister

Radical Rage seeks to reframe the emotion of rage. What if rage were a positive feeling, necessary for sustained change and imaginative possibilities? Placing rage at the center and claiming it as the catalyst of an artist’s practice, this exhibition examines the various ways artists are channeling their frustration and anger into physical manifestations. Rage has the power to consume. Its tendrils can grow and fester. Unexamined rage can be destructive and distracting, encouraging lash outs and crash outs. It can settle in the pit of your stomach, an unwelcome passenger. With no obvious outlet, it sits, waiting for release.

Rage is righteous. Empathy is seeing injustice in the world and being heartbroken and outraged. We must not turn away from that rage because it is unfamiliar. “Radical” is a term that recently has conjured the image of extreme, out of control individuals, rabid at the mouth. Interestingly, the term “radical” comes from the Latin word, radicalis and in its earliest understanding means “root”. This could mean literal or figurative roots. Its definition then shifted to mean something akin to “fundamental” or “essential”. It is in this way, the exhibition posits rage as the beginning or “root” of a creative practice. Engaging radically with one’s rage means opening possibilities for how we frame and interact with the world.

Naming and identifying one’s rage allows for a more honest and expressive foundation from which transformative work can begin. The artists in this exhibition are creating frameworks to not only externalize their experiences, but experiment and build new, personal modalities via sculpture, painting, installation, textile, and photography. Ultimately, rage is expansive, a tool waiting to be wielded.