Team Lump
February 28, 2021
ART WILL SAVE US AGAIN PAINTINGS BY RENZO ORTEGA January 15th through February 21st Renzo Ortega dazzles us with an immersive installation that showcases a series of 8 large oil paintings along with found objects and video. Renzo literally painted the space in broad strokes, creating a celebratory, fantasy space that lures us with lush narrative images, then hooks us with a gamut of emotions that surface the moment we understand the stranger-than-fiction reality that each canvas pinpoints. Those realties are grave. The works were made exclusively during the pandemic. But Renzo is an energetic man, brimming with hope, and he vigorously invites us to indulge in a fantasy that could easily become a reality; that art will save us again.
February 28, 2021
PLEASURE VOID Selected works from the UNC-Chapel Hill Master of Fine Arts class of 2020 March 5th – April 4th, 2021 PLEASURE VOID presents work from the UNC-Chapel Hill Master of Fine Arts class of 2020. Using a broad range of mediums, Chloe Rager, Natalie Strait, Emily Hobgood Thomas and Sally Ann McKinsey focus collectively on a bittersweet convergence of emptiness and ecstacy. Individually, each artist bets on the transcendent quality of everyday materials and experiences, imbuing the gallery with a Cheeveresque tone where deep pity and overwhelming joy can be derived from the same image, all at once. participating artists: Emily Hobgood Thomas, Chloé Rager, Sally Ann McKinsey, Natalie Strait
February 28, 2021
January 15th through February 21st This show is all about the human head. From abstract to baroque, comical to menacing, these representations, created by a wide variety of artists, offer fresh insight into the symbolic power of the ole’ noggin. The title of this show refers to the wariness that we expect children to harbor for unfamiliar faces, a notion that says more about our vulnerabilities as adults than it says about the perils of childhood. And in an era when we, as a people, are struggling to recognize who we are, paired with an unprecedented time of imperative physical distance that can easily determine life or death, Stranger Danger shows us just how vulnerable we’ve become. participating artists: Christy Singleton – George Jenne – Jerstin Crosby – Jessica Langley – Leah Bailis – Patricia Shaw – Willam Paul Thomas
February 28, 2021
Drawing Room @drawingroomnc presents new work by Logan Britt @slowwjam and Tedd Anderson @dirtyconsumer at Lump outpost. Works on view until end of March 2021. Drawing Room, curated by Bill Thelen presents a series of unruly drawings by two Durham artists, Logan Britt and Ted Anderson. Their work enmeshes seamlessly into what feels like the brilliant Trapper Keeper drawings of a listless, hormonal teenager. Together, they suggest an era that was defined in part by the restless screen presence of Matt Dillon, feathered hair and Black Sabbath – the Ronnie James Dio years.
November 16, 2020
OPULENCE, DECADENCE CURATED BY WILLIAM PAUL THOMAS November 20th through January 3rd Opening reception, Friday December 4th 6-9pm For Lump’s latest group exhibition, artist/curator William Paul Thomas asked artists, “If you attained a surplus of something that you greatly desired, would you flaunt it, share it, hoard it, hide it, or spoil it?” This was the launch point for OPULENCE DECADENCE, which, starting Friday, welcomes an entirely new batch of artists to Lump, each of whom made new work specifically for the show. It’s a disconcerting look at the severe imbalance of wealth and equity across the globe, that offers moments of rare beauty, buoyant humor, and unwavering critique. Join us on the first Friday of December for a chilly but festive outdoor reception behind Lump. We will allow a few people in the gallery at a time to view the work. participating artists: Johannes Barfield – Leticia Clementina […]
November 16, 2020
Voice to Skull is Lump’s latest online series of performances captured in digital format and presented exclusively on the Lump website. Every week you’ll be able to stream a new video performance by one of six sound artists. The title refers to a non lethal weapon that mimics the effects of mental illness in a human target by focusing microwaves on a person’s skull. The resulting effects are perceived as voices in that person’s head along with a spate of emotions and varying states of arousal, a phenomenon referred to as subliminal atmospheric acoustics. Voice to Skull’s curator, Mike Geary, describes the project as a sonic protest. A retaliation. Against what? The list is long, so let’s start with banality. These artists make music that pushes nearly every convention of music making. Their instruments are instrument panels, made up of […]
October 20, 2020
Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Amy White. I am reporting to you from what is at this point a decades-spanning inquiry, what I think of as a ‘matrix of thought’ surrounding questions of earth-based and/or mineral existence and the origins of life [the scope of which extends toward the cosmic and/or interplanetary]. Here, ‘earth’ serves as a metonym for literal physical dirt, rock, soil, and/or crystalline forms, employed within this continuum of exploration that percolates [i.e., toward a diffusion of ideas through the above-noted paradigmatic matrix of thought that serves as a kind of sieve through which a sluice of particulate content passes toward a state of ever-greater complexity and refinement] within a context that I conceive of as the ‘Realm of the Static and the Vital’ – of which we are materially and/or otherwise a part. […]
October 20, 2020
The Unseen, 1980 directed by Peter Foleg (Danny Steinmann) The Unseen is a slow burn. It ambles toward a single, unnerving scene, covering all of the basic themes along the way – fear, violence, nudity, flamboyance. But most of that stuff is just noise that funnels directly toward a few moments spent with a mesmerizing abomination whose portrayal is pretty offensive even for the day. This is the nature of exploitation; cheap shots leading to a payoff that leaves you feeling icky. This is also what happens when movie-magic nerds try to develop a project of their own. In this case, two world famous special effects makeup artists penned a screenplay just to show off a disturbing character makeup they probably dreamed up between gigs. Then they passed it off to the writer of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, whose […]
September 17, 2020
BEGAT Prints and sculpture by Warren Hicks September 18th – November 1st Closing reception Friday, October 30th, 6-9pm (pandemic permitting) For his first solo show at Lump, Warren Hicks will give us an irreverent reworking of The Book of Matthew in a series of searing, hilarious prints and biblical artifacts. He has transformed the gallery into his own version of a Bible museum. This is the culmination of over two years of work that stems from Warren’s antipathy toward his own hardcore Christian upbringing. Warren says, “My first experience with the insanity of extreme Christian beliefs hit me personally when I was fourteen years old. I lost my cousin because his parents wouldn’t take him to a doctor when he sick, because they believed in miracles and God would protect him. Neither God nor his parents protected him, and he died from their neglect. They said, ‘The good Lord was ready […]
September 17, 2020
HOME RANGE Photographs by Lindsay Metivier September 18th – November 1st Closing reception Friday, October 30th, 6-9pm (pandemic permitting) For her first solo show at Lump, Lindsay Metivier has created a phantasmagoric series of photographs that she took during the wee hours of the morning, when most humans are pleasantly absent and deer emerge to track across their claimed territory, commonly referred to as “home range.” The show displays the logic of a mind that has given in to insomnia and accepted as reality, the faltering line between consciousness and dreams. Anyone who has stayed up all night knows that there are moments of acute perception at the height of exhaustion. Lindsay catalogs those moments in technically exquisite prints that each build on a mysterious, after hours narrative. Price List and Press Release