Artist, filmmaker, and designer Vincent Angel and writer Sommer Browning have collaborated on the upcoming exhibition Parker Venus Daylight, which opens April 11 at Pacific Sky Exhibitions, 180 West 12th Avenue, in Eugene.
Parker Venus Daylight will feature a new series of visual artworks from Angel supplemented with a written response from Browning, which will be printed as a take-away tabloid for visitors.
This is the fourth exhibition at Pacific Sky Exhibitions directed by University of Oregon art Associate Professor Jack Ryan. The opening event is from 5-8 p.m. on Saturday, April 11, and will be exhibited until May 16.
Above: Artist Vincent Angel and writer Sommer Browning have collaborated on the upcoming exhibition Parker Venus Daylight. “I’m interested in seeing how the public is going to respond to Angel’s work, which is very funny, playful, but also provocative and challenging,” says Jack Ryan, director of Pacific Sky Exhibitions.
Ryan’s first exhibition at Pacific Sky, in October 2014, was the start of a yearlong program featuring artists from the Pacific Northwest and throughout the country at the downtown Eugene venue.
“I’m interested in seeing how the public is going to respond to Angel’s work, which is very funny, playful, but also provocative and challenging,” Ryan says. “His imagery is derived from cartoon-esque illustrations, but it’s assembled like an improvisational painter.”
Angel, a classically trained painter from age eight, has created critically acclaimed product designs, interactive books, album covers, and films. He orchestrated a full-size replication of Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (an earthwork sculpture created in 1970) in New York City’s Central Park, a project that relied on fifty-three volunteers urinating on snow-covered ground.
This event was “memorable, but undocumented,” according to a press release.
Above: “His imagery is derived from cartoon-esque illustrations,” Ryan says of Angel’s work, “but it’s assembled like an improvisational painter.”
Angel’s work has been featured in two sold-out solo shows at the Kravets/Wehby Gallery in New York. After this, Angel began handing out his artwork Vinnie’s Tampon Cases for free on the New York streets and subways. The objects were personalized canvas tampon cases, intended to share “an everyday object that would encourage a positive and non-sexual dialog between guys and girls about a woman’s body,” a press release reads. He has distributed more than 250,000 of them.
“Vincent’s vocabulary borrows from the heyday of cartooning, so his work initially seems like a humorous caricature, but satire’s main purpose is criticality,” Ryan says. “His imagery editorializes with profanity and playfulness from both coasts to build images that I feel obtusely ridicule our cultural vices.”
The upcoming show at Pacific Sky Exhibition is Angel’s first solo show since leaving New York. He now divides his time between Brooklyn and Eugene.
Browning, a poet, writer, and comic illustrator, is the author of two poetry collections: Backup Singers (2014) and Either Way I’m Celebrating (2011). Her latest work is The Circle Book (Cuneiform Press), a book of artistry and poetry that investigates the numerous interpretations of a simple shape. Browning is a member of the poets’ theater GASP and curates The Leon Affair, a reading series in Denver, Colorado, where she works as a librarian.
Browning’s poetry and humor “observes the world from a sweetly off-balance perspective,” reads the Pacific Sky website.
Upcoming exhibitions at Pacific Sky will feature artists Ray Komer, Patrick Beaulieu, Victoria Stanton, Diedrick Brackens, Derrick Austin, and Daniel Canty.
Pacific Sky Exhibitions is a partnership with a suite of diverse professional practices interested in bringing artists and writers together for collaborative exhibitions as they filter through and around Eugene.
The gallery is open on weekends by appointment. For more information, contact the gallery at jryan@uoregon.edu or (615) 294-5776, or visit the Pacific Sky website.