October 7, 2024
Annual LUMP Fundraiser LUMP will be hosting its yearly fundraiser on November 1st 6-9pm. All artists are welcome, we are pricing all works at 25, 50, 100, and PLUS dollars, and are giving the option for artists to take a percentage or donate all profits to LUMP. We encourage affordable prices so that other artists have a chance to purchase other artists’ work. You can drop off work for donation during open gallery hours up until the event. You can mail your work in if you are out of town and want to participate. Or you can drop it off during the week of install which is October 29-31. We can also organize another way to get your work here if neither of those options work for you. People will be able to take work off the wall to purchase, […]
August 21, 2024
In a sense / In essence, solo show by Chanelle Allesandre September 7-October 27 Opening Friday, September 6, 6-9pm Performance Line Up: Friday, September 6 : Opening ceremony featuring Ambering (Chanelle Allesandre & Katie Addada Shlon) with Ryan Martin Saturday, September 14 : Conner Calhoun & Julia Santoli, Jameela F. Dallis, Phantomime, and Tenisele (Chanelle Allesandre & Mindy Stock) Friday, September 20 : Equinox celebration featuring Cornelius Van Strafin III, Kelli Francis Corrado, White Gourd, and Marta Núñez Pouzols & Chanelle Allesandre October: TBA In a sense / In essence is an invitation to immerse oneself in the layers of residue that connect us all: into the integrity of presence: into the invisible worlds in which we are all tethered. This interdisciplinary exhibition is an arrangement of installations which incorporate sound, flower essences, 35mm photography, poetry, and the live sculpting […]
June 5, 2024
“Back in 2015, I curated the nothing that is (a drawing show in 5 parts) at CAM Raleigh. The exhibition then traveled to the Carnegie in Cincinnati and picked up drawers along the way. I’ve been thinking a lot about that show in recent years and I never felt it was complete and hopefully it will never be. Chapter 6 investigated queer strategies last month at Lump, Chapter 7 investigates the relationship between sound and drawing.” -Bill Thelen The 3 part ‘sound as drawing’ event will have 3 music events during the weekends of: June 7 – 9 | grow with us – enmossed and hot releases music labels June 14 – 16 | Exquisite Corpse – All Data Lost June 21 – 23 | The Devil finds work for the unoccupied mind – Wifflefist Weekender Please note all of June […]
April 22, 2024
Drawing Room Invitational Opening on Friday, April 5th, 6-9pm Open Saturdays & Sundays 1-5 until May 25th the nothing that is – Chapter 6 : Drawing Room Invitational – a queer, trans, non binary, 2 spirit, plwa drawing summit/ conclave opening at Lump on April 5th. “So back in 2015, I curated the nothing that is (a drawing show in 5 parts) at CAM Raleigh. The exhibition then traveled to the Carnegie in Cincinnati and picked up drawers along the way. I’ve been thinking a lot about that show in recent years and I never felt it was complete and hopefully it will never be. I started drawing room (a queer, nomadic, drawing initiative) in 2016 and I decided to add two more chapters.” -Bill Thelen Chapter 6 investigates queer/trans/nonbinary/2spirit drawing strategies and is presented by drawing room for its Invitational. Chapter 6 opens next […]
January 20, 2024
LUMP presents SLUMP at ATLANTA CONTEMPORARY January 25, 2024 – March 24, 2024 An informal conversation between artist Jerstin Crosby and artist/LabSpace gallery co-director Julie Torres about her painting titledSlump led to a group exhibition at LUMP in September 2023. The concept, inspired by Torres’ approach to painting, focused on a broadly shared, but rarely acknowledged, mood through artworks that flop, clump, sag, dangle, droop, go limp, sprawl, loaf, slouch or fall flat. April Childers Amanda Barr Brandon Boan Bill Thelen Conner Calhoun Celia Gray Drawing Room Fred Smith Jasmine Best Jerstin Crosby Julia Gartrell Julie Torres Kathryn Desplanque Maria Britton Leif Zikade Raymond Padron Skully Gustafson Tonya Solley Thornton Tory Wright More info: https://atlantacontemporary.org/exhibitions/lump
January 20, 2024
LUMP is proud to present the solo exhibition of Conner Calhoun – Like a Fog Holds the Light, a presentation of new paintings and drawings. Spanning many different themes and ideas Conner’s work mostly uses the self as a means to explore the psychological interior. Pushing the figure beyond its physical limits, setting it out on symbolic tasks, and contorting it into labyrinthine knots, ambiguous narratives unfurl, exploring the complex psychologies of recovery, grief, longing and desperation with humor and irreverence as a retainer of hope. In newer paintings, the self turns a corner, enters another room and there’s a darkness that is as abrupt as relapse. The walls feel like shrouds that are moving, gently carrying gradients of light from one corner to the next, it feels oceanic, or like a crystal moving through a space that has a […]
December 1, 2023
Join us also this Friday, December 1st, 6-10pm for a LUMP BENEFIT !!! Come get first dibs on affordable artwork by artists in the Lump sphere both locally and beyond. There will be food, drinks and music all evening. Artwork that remains unsold will stay up on Saturday & Sunday, 1-5pm and will continue to be available for purchase. We look forward to seeing you there. Thank you in advance for your support. *note from Bill Thelen below: “Bill Thelen here. I just wanted to let y’all know I’ve signed on to direct Lump for the year 2024 in hopes to fully realize Lump as a volunteer-based, artist-run space into the future. Lump has pretty much been this all along since our past directors (Kelly, April and George) were never paid a living wage. Right now it costs around $2,000 […]
October 17, 2023
American Standard Opening Saturday 10/21, 6-8pm 10/21-11/26, Sat-Sun 1- 5pm Luke Kempton Williams (b.1983), a multi disciplinary artist and publisher based in New York joins us at Lump for his first solo show: American Standard. Through painting, sculpture, drawing, photography and video, Luke’s work confronts the hallucinations thrown up by the political and economic landscape of a sick and dying superpower as it descends into darkness. The pieces address economic disparities, violence, paranoia, decay of infrastructure, homophobia and general malaise created by corporate welfare and increasing tensions between working class citizens in a country previously thought of at times as a global beacon of hope. Williams employs experimentation of common objects, turning them potent and poignant, reaching out to the viewer provoking introspection, as well as putting them in the position of an inactive observer of our nation’s maladies. Luke […]
August 28, 2023
SLUMP is on view at LUMP from September 1st – October 8th, 2023, with an opening reception on Friday September 1st from 6-9pm. SLUMP is a group exhibition that came about through an informal online and IRL conversation between Jerstin Crosby and New York-based artist and LabSpace gallery co-director Julie Torres, about her paintings. The concept of a group show emerged and grew into an exhibition featuring works that flop, clump, sag, dangle, droop, go limp, sprawl, loaf, slouch or fall flat. While many artists are based in the triangle they are joined by others based in the Bay area, Tennesse, Georgia, New York and Colorado. Exhibiting artists include: Amanda Barr April Childers Bill Thelen Brandon Boan Celia Gray Conner Calhoun Ellen Letcher Fred Smith Jasmine Best Jessica Langley Julia Gartrell Julie Torres Maria Britton Nico Smith Rachel Bernstein Raymond […]
July 4, 2023
OPEN SOURCE, group exhibition Artists: Freddie Bell, Sterling Bowen, Natalia Torres del Valle, Jason Lord, Peter Marin, Jean Gray Mohs, Cindy Morefield, Carson Whitmore Open source, in the world of software code (the hidden structure of much of the world as we view it), is source material that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Open source is a decentralized software development model that encourages open collaboration. At our current point in the history of making Art, there is also a decentralized framework within which abstract artwork can be and is made. No single artist or group owns the source of meaning for this modality, and a wide range of collaborations with and utilizations of the elements developed out of the historical canon is possible, as well as the incorporation of content and materials from outside that world. […]
May 29, 2023
SYZYGY Art Box (A syzygy – SIZ-ə-jee – is an alignment of planets and/or stars.) Eleven NC-based artists are contributing work to a limited edition of 40 portfolio boxes. Along with Annie Blazejack & Geddes Levenson (the creators of the portfolio), a total of eleven artists will be showing work on the other side of Lump this month: Jonh Blanco, Aliyah Bonnette, Alexandria Clay, Jerstin Crosby, King Nobuyoshi Godwin, Clarence Heyward, Pete Sack, Shelley Smith, Yuko Taylor, Bill Thelen). It’s an instant art collection! Each 22” x 15” box has 11 artworks in it, one from each participating artist. Thirty boxes are for sale for $1,300 each. To reserve your Art Box, just email [email protected] or DM @annieandgeddes on Instagram. SYZYGY Portfolio on Instagram HERE
May 29, 2023
A Matter of Life and Death (Probably Death) Annie Blazejack and Geddes Levenson June 2 through July 2, 2023 Opening reception: Friday June 2nd, 6-9pm A Matter of Life and Death (Probably Death) is a painting show with a plot twist. It is a show about how truth shifts depending on your point of view. It’s a show about how both looking and knowing that you’re being looked at can be assertions of power. The paintings imagine precarious choreographies between women and wild animals, perilous partnerships that only exist because they are frozen in paint. Saturated light splashes across nightscapes. Fluorescent colors and crisp lines contrast with mushy grays and muted hues. Portrait subjects look back with bravado – though the eye contact doesn’t always come from a human. As we play out the performance of the gaze in a […]
April 10, 2023
Yeah Chapel Solo Show by Amanda Barr On view April 14th through May 21st Opening reception, First Friday, May 5th, 6-9pm Amanda Barr is back with another weird and wonderful installation about the bait-and-switch between spirituality and vain consumerism. Amanda’s work always delivers razor-sharp humor, hidden beneath layers of her idiosyncratic process and craft-embued resourcefulness. In Yeah Chapel, a misguided spiritual journey comes packaged as an amalgam of painting, sculpture, stained glass, and ceramics. Follow Amanda Barr on Instagram.
April 10, 2023
The Good Ear Solo show by Bob Ray April 7th through May 21st If you pair Bob Ray’s prolific output with his personal mystique, you’ve got all of the ingredients of that Tom Waits song, “What’s He Building In There?” And this Friday, Bob’s first-ever Lump solo exhibition might provide an answer to that question. Bob has been making drawings and sculptures for decades, and this show is just the tip of the iceberg. It includes a massive series of graphite drawings made on 8 1/2 x 11 copy paper, lowbrow, sculptural objects, and an installation of handmade album covers, titled Baby D’s Record Shop. The work reads like a personal journal of fantasy and machination. Bob’s drawing hand is unflinching, even harsh, but his text that often accompanies those drawings reveals a type of humor, wonder, and self-doubt that […]
March 2, 2023
The Digital Wilds Group show curated by Cosmic Rays Digital March 3rd through April 2nd, 2023 The Digital Wilds is a digital art exhibition curated by Cosmic Rays Digital, a programming initiative of the 5th Cosmic Rays Film Festival (www.cosmicraysfilmfest.com). The artists selected for this exhibition observe human-made digital technology as it interacts with the natural world. The works include computerized bivalves, botanical fakery, species séances, and vegetal matrices. Through the twisting tendrils of digital code, these artists render nature as both wild and programmed, toggling between responsive and impervious states. The show highlights critical engagement with the new media technologies that surround us– technologies that threaten to ensnare us at the same time they promise to set us free– while investigating digital forms of privacy, identity, and nature. Patricia Dominguez Meredith Drum eteam (Franziska Lamprecht and Hajoe Moderegger) Tama Hochbaum Kristin Lucas Jessye […]
March 2, 2023
ROUTINE Solo show by Sean Livingstone March 3rd through April 2nd, 2023 Sean’s work melds his own strange brand of analog nostalgia with one of the darkest aspects of American culture: gun violence. To say that gun violence has become ROUTINE, is an understatement, and the work in this show highlights the unsettling banality that characterizes our response to that violence. Through a series of deftly simple drawings, Sean has abstracted crossword puzzles, taken from the New York Times on each day that a mass shooting occurred. He has created a series of shrines to cassette tapes which contain music that are connected to three gun-related, teenage suicides during the 1980’s. In each case, the parents blamed the music and sued the bands for causing the deaths. And Sean punctuates the show with a low-fi video that pairs militaristic TV channel sign-off clips, with CCTV footage of the school shooting at Columbine. See Sean’s full body of […]
February 1, 2023
FETISH Drawings by Beth Tacular January 13th through February 19th First Friday reception, February 3rd, 6-9pm Beth’s drawings channel tumult and serenity, rage and ecstasy all at once. They plunge into those deep caverns of the subconscious that most people prefer to leave unexplored. Despite tight, aggressive line work and sub-human forms, most of which are sexualized in bizarre ways, the purpose of these drawings is to heal. The ultimate goal is transcendence. And Beth has created a trail of cryptic totems, in ink on paper, to lead you the entire way.
February 1, 2023
Countdown to Entropy Drawings and animation by Louis Watts January 13th through February 19th First Friday reception, February 3rd, 6-9pm Louis brings us a series of drawings that allude to the emotionless eye of HAL 9000. Mesmeric forces are at play in each, all-seeing orb, two of which are animated – slowly rotating in concentric circles that confound and hypnotize in the same moment. But closer scrutiny reveals that each of these works is created from thousands of minuscule, hand-drawn hashtags. This seemingly infinite repetition points an accusatory finger at social media and all of its brain-dulling tactics. It’s an old sentiment, to say that technology is out of sync with our humanity. But so is the computer; old, I mean. Louis’s concern goes beyond Instagram and the smartphone or the latest meme. He sees an algorithmic drive toward mediocrity, forever […]
November 4, 2022
ZACH STORM September 9th through October 9th A conversation with Zach Storm inevitably veers toward literature. Real books. Bound paper, slathered with words printed in ink, seem always to be on his mind. And this consummate reader’s love of syntax correlates directly to his love of pigments, inks and paints. In his world, a “line” is literary and visual, at once. And the specific speed of that line, in either realm, is essential. Zach reads slowly, deliberately, so that his experience of a story is immersive. The same goes for his drawings and paintings, whose abstract narratives smolder, rather than unfold. His method of creating the work is akin to a real time rehearsal of our experience of seeing the work. In the end, everything is quiet. This entanglement between, ink-line and sentence, between saying and seeing, is best illustrated […]
November 4, 2022
INTRODUCING, THE LUMP VOLUNTEERS September 9th through October 9th This might be one of the best Lump shows of the year. We all know that Lump is an artist-run space, but did you know that the person who peers from behind the desk at the back of the gallery, also makes precariously balanced sculptures out of hand-made, wooden blocks? Or, has been collaborating with the same creative partner since the 4th grade? Or, makes paintings based entirely on a fascination with cheap, metallic barrettes? This show presents a handful of Lump’s volunteer army; the people who keep the doors open (almost) every weekend, year-round. Without these folks, the schedule would be totally erratic, the art would hang lopsided, and there would be no toilet paper, just when you need it the most. But the indomitable quality of the work in […]
November 3, 2022
A great amalgam of creative activity at Lump, curated by Bill Thelen November 4th through December 18th Opening reception this Friday, November 4th, 6-9pm the love letter is a culmination of everything Lump’s founder, Bill Thelen, has been doing since he stepped away from the gallery in 2017. To be fair, he was never truly away. This show is, in fact, a broad collection of isolated curatorial concepts that Bill has been testing at Lump in various forms, such as Drawing Room and Bad Touch 2.0. Whatever the project, the foundation is always drawing. And this is where Bill’s curatorial impulse is clearly inexorable from his own practice, which is dominated by an even stronger impulse to draw. Bill says, “My practice had always been a little bit here a little bit there but one thing always remained consistent was my drawing practice. I was always thinking about how I could utilize my curating background […]
July 18, 2022
ABORTION STORIES USA Artist/activist group show July 22nd through August 28th Opening reception this Friday July 22, 6-9pm Abortion Stories USA is a courageous, activated, sacred space celebrating women, queer and trans bodily autonomy. We hold space for abortion stories, reproductive justice and coalition-building across the United States and affirm unequivocally that the right to choose is a fundamental human right. Immediately after Roe v. Wade was overturned, artist/curator Rebecca Goyette organized a group of artists and activists who speak bluntly about the growing crisis created by the nationwide cascade of bans on abortion. For everyone involved, this show is an essential step in normalizing and decriminalizing abortion by sharing stories, strategies, up-to-date information on abortion pills, and building support networks and mutual aid. Whether sculpture, video, works on paper, or an experiment in oral history, each piece of art is unapologetic […]
July 18, 2022
FOLDING SPACE John Felix Arnold July 22nd through August 28th Opening reception this Friday July 22, 6-9pm For his first show at Lump, John Felix Arnold has created a sculptural installation that he describes as “a reimagining of mythologies that have come to dominate our current times.” His preoccupation with alchemy and other forms of mythic transformation inspired Arnold to create a series of objects out of rusted tin roofing sheets, bundles of burned branches, rope, and other found objects. Spacial tension between these pieces is a key to Arnold’s work, which weighs aesthetic relationships between objects, against the metaphysical implications of his assemblages. There’s an unshakeable narrative quality to these works, as if Arnold were tracing an etherial history, both forward and backward, simultaneously. He is, without a doubt, a seeker. Feeling his way through a process that opens him up to a deeper sense […]
June 1, 2022
RUNNING TIME June 3 – July 10, 2022 Every week of RUNNING TIME, a different video will be projected into the center of the gallery. Each piece documents a unique undercurrent of American culture and its corresponding rituals. The show mutates over time. It starts with a dingy, unhinged video tape, but ends with a tightly lensed 16mm piece that is playful and clever. It shifts from one very American phenomenon to another while spanning a wide swath of geographic settings. From a claustrophobic New York rock club, to the banks of the Mississippi river, then through a bizarre amalgam of the Austrian Alps and East Texas, up through the midwest, ultimately landing down in Amarillo. 6/3 Minor Threat, by Dan Graham Graham captures a pioneering hardcore band at a world famous punk rock club on blurry hand held video […]
June 1, 2022
Future Fakers: curated by Mike Geary “Future faker” is a dating term. It is someone who paints a rosy picture of the future, in a relationship, knowing full well that there is no future at all. It goes beyond dirty tactics. It takes plotting, organization and vision. More broadly considered, a future faker is any entity that uses a detailed vision of the future to facilitate or manifest events. Each of the works in this show is deceptive in a similar way. It takes its time, lays the groundwork, projects an illusion, then strikes. The show’s curator, Mike Geary describes it as, “a holographic semblance projected back at the viewer through a technique/anti-technique that misleads or removes the artists hand.” He raises the question of whether or not it is possible for a collective belief to become so thoroughly defined […]
April 12, 2022
UNC MFA thesis exhibition with Raj Bunnag, Charlie Dupee and Stella Rosalie Rosen April 15th through May 22nd Opening reception this Friday April 15th, 6-9pm The artists in UNC’s MFA thesis exhibition at Lump aren’t brooding. They’re mad. A cloud hangs over the gallery, seeded by slyly transgressive sculpture, drawings, and video. But as always at Lump, you need only to stay long enough to recognize the divine beauty in these artists’ work, and the tough-to-swallow message that comes with it will fall gently into place. Raj Bunnag’s large format, starkly rendered linocuts pose the question of where we stand in the spectrum between complacency and oppressive violence in a hyper-polarized America; a question that’s all the more discomfiting because the answer leaves no room to claim high moral ground. Stella Rosalie Rosen’s animated, video trilogy resonates with a similar […]
March 3, 2022
ARIEL WILLIAMS March 4 through April 10 Opening reception this Friday March 4th, 6-9pm Lump is proud to host Ariel Williams’s first solo show ever, comprised of baroque portraits of cakes and people. They veer quickly into dark territory, as each subject in this series is beautifully and bafflingly infested with ants, fungi, slugs and parasitic abstractions, all presented with the aim of tackling grave issues like chronic illness and grief. The execution is exquisite. The subject matter is intoxicating. And the unease that you’ll walk away with, is matched by awe at Ariel’s fast emerging talent and vision. ARTIST STATEMENT Cake is meant to be something beautiful and desirable, but that is not always the case. This series started out as a way to communicate the abundance of emotions that came with the low points in my life, […]
March 3, 2022
JASON LORD March 4 through April 10 Opening reception, this Friday, March 4th, 6-9pm Jason Lord has walked thousands of miles since the beginning of the pandemic; miles a day, every day, regardless of weather or general mood. On the way, he has collected flotsam and jetsam of a peripheral world. These are places that people deem worthy of nothing more than trash, but for Jason, those cast-off items, retrieved from street gutters and stretches of railroad track, provide an opportunity for intimate connection and aesthetic rebirth. ARTIST STATEMENT I have walked 5600 miles since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. March 10th will mark two years–731 consecutive days–of walking at least five miles, regardless of weather, temperature, workload, or mood. As I walk, I look, listen, and gather: thoughts, sounds, images, and objects. I notice, pick up, and […]
February 3, 2022
TV PARTY (UP ALL NIGHT 2) VIDEO GROUP SHOW CURATED BY GEORGE JENNE January 21 – February 27 Closing reception, Friday February 25, 6-9pm In 2017, Lump exhibited a show called Up All Night that paired music video with avant-garde video by long-established artists, alongside underrepresented artists. Up All Night described the point at which video art and music video intersect. Born close to the same time and out of a single technology, these disparate forms evolved in divergent economies, whose ideals seem to be at odds, yet inextricable. TV Party moves the dial in another direction and focuses on material born out of the public access television model, starting with Glen O’Brien’s raucous, New York City public access variety show, TV Party, which aired from 1978-1982. Here is yet another microcosm of creative expression made possible solely by video technology. As with Up All Night, Lump’s TV Party presents a playful […]
February 3, 2022
FLAT AFFECT GROUP SHOW CURATED BY HARRISON HAYNES January 21 – February 27 Closing reception, Friday February 25, 6-9pm Harrison Haynes launches his first ever curatorial endeavor with a group of fellow artists who have created works that are, at once, flat and sculptural. Playful deception runs throughout the show as each work oscillates between thing and picture. Making sense of a trick of the eye can be maddening, but also fun. These works force a person to slow down perception and decide wether or not to trust what their brain is showing them. “But it is precisely this quality of indecision,” Harrison says of the show, “connected to my ongoing, simultaneous discomfort with and dedication to the flat picture, which draws me to these works. And that, I believe, will be the catalyst for curiosity and conversation around them.” The show includes: Amanda Barr, Jared Buckhiester, Dawn Cerny & Nancy Shaver, Jerstin […]
November 29, 2021
BAD TOUCH 2.0 GROUP DRAWING SHOW CURATED BY BILL THELEN December 3 – January 16 opening reception, Friday December 3, 6-9pm Bill Thelen and a few of his cohorts originally came up with what would become the title to this show, in reference to their common approach to drawing: a style so lackluster that the end results were often great. They would refer to other artists with this peculiar gift for drawing as having a “bad touch.” It could be the charming way the lines are lazily put to the paper, or a drawing’s endearingly sophomoric feel. Or, it could be an awkward rendering, where the beauty of an object is muddled, but somehow comes out beautiful anyway. Whatever the cherished flaw, a drawing like this has the potential to cut through the bullshit in an exceedingly conservative art market, one with a logic of value that strains credulity. The first Bad Touch […]
October 11, 2021
TOOK A PIC WITH LEAVES, GLUED A SKULL IN THE TREES PHOTOGRAPHS BY JIMMY FOUNTAIN AND JOHN BOWMAN October 15 – November 21 opening reception, Friday October 15, 6-9pm In a first time collaboration, photographer Jimmy Fountain teams up with collage artist John Bowman to create a series of wild and weird images made from excised pieces of medium format digital photos. Low key humor pervades the work, building on a compositional format that subverts our immediate expectations while honoring the mixed media gods of yore. The way it works is, John collages parts of photos that Jimmy takes. Then Jimmy rephotographs those collages and, in some instances, alters them digitally. It’s a game of tit for tat, where layers of action build while the image is increasingly galvanized into a single stratum. It’s tough to tell who did what, where the […]
October 11, 2021
MORE LIFE NEW PHOTOS AND VIDEO BY LYDIA MCCARTHY October 15 – November 21 opening reception, Friday October 15, 6-9pm Lydia McCarthy’s latest Lump show splits into two bodies of work that are both based in morse code signal for help, SOS. Her video series, Life After Death, pinpoints the desperation and boredom that Covid 19 imposed upon Lydia, as she dot-dot-dot-dash-dash-dashes her way through bizarre games, self-help rituals, and feminist texts, captured in vivid colors and performed with intimacy and great humor. Send Nudes is a photographic series that reveals Lydia’s practice in uproarious selfie-indulgence. Here, she presents a vast array of nude selfies that were intended to lure prospects from Tinder, Hinge, and Instagram. But what is at first glance a predacious act, quickly devolves into desperation and, once again, the SOS emerges. The constant repetition and revision […]
August 31, 2021
A BEAUTIFUL PROXY SOLO SHOW BY JASMINE BEST August 27th through October 3rd A type of low grade terror pervades Jasmine Best’s work in her inaugural Lump show, A Beautiful Proxy. Mangled Black femme bodies, rendered in various types of fabrics, serve as the base for an ethical and social atrocity that Jasmine underscores: the exploitation of black bodies for commodity, paired conveniently with our distorted sense of beauty, which she calls out as being oppressively anglocentric. Horrors aside, the work is exquisitely made, invigorating to look at and brilliantly intertwined. Soft sculptures point toward fabric collages, which in turn point toward videos that nod to unconventional works on paper. The show takes an immovable stance in the gallery, inhabiting the space with gravitas and beauty. But the more the colors pop, and the looser the fabric hangs, the more you’ll feel […]
July 5, 2021
STICKS AND STONES INTRODUCING PATRICIA SHAW July 2nd through August 8th OPENING RECEPTION, Friday July 2nd, 6-9pm Patricia Shaw spent the bulk of her career as a much feared lawyer. Eventually, she became fed up with the unending, predacious maneuvers required by the job, so she checked out and focused all of her intensity on ceramics. She’s been making sculpture, no less maniacally, ever since. In Sticks and Stones, Pat is bluntly allegorical. Good and evil are in a taught battle here, and the message comes en mass from an enormous taxonomy of ceramic grotesqueries, highlights of which are: eleven bodiless representations of vices and virtues and a vast series of tiny rocks-turned-characters that each express some version of every emotion under the sun. There are too many pieces to even count, so Lump’s advice is to bring good shoes, pack a snack, and prepare to spend a significant amount of time in the uproarious world of Patricia Shaw’s creatures, great and small.
July 5, 2021
IS-NESS NEW WORK BY JESSICA LANGLEY July 2nd through August 8th OPENING RECEPTION, Friday July 2nd, 6-9pm Jessica Langley’s creative toolset runs the gamut: foraged materials, fresco, digital prints, sculpture, collage. But the Colorado-based artist uses these disparate methods with a single concept in mind – “intrinsic significance” – a kind of all-encompassing interconnectedness that Aldous Huxley described at length in his legendary mescaline-fueled text, The Doors of Perception. Is-ness presents Jessica’s own version of the underlying fabric of space and time. Her collage paintings are visual renderings of abstract systems and networks, created in gouache, watercolor, and ink, on paper made from mushrooms, cast onto scraps of ubiquitous blue polystyrene insulation. Through narrative tact and material mastery, Jessica forces harmony between repellent compounds and the respective ideological forces that they represent. She melds crisis and comfort, offering works that are […]
July 5, 2021
DRAWING ROOM PRESENTS, BETH TACULAR July 2nd through August. Drawing Room, curated by Bill Thelen presents work by Beth Tacular, whose drawings take aim at grief and loss, gender and embodiment, the passage of time, and an intensely felt interconnectedness with the universe.
May 24, 2021
PLAN 9 NEW WORK BY GEORGE JENNE May 21st through June 27th OPENING RECEPTION, Friday June 4th, 6-9pm The plot of Ed Wood’s famously bad, Plan 9 From Outer Space, pivots on an extraterrestrial plot to sow chaos among the human race in order to get mankind to listen. The message: “Don’t build a doomsday weapon that will destroy the universe, dummies.” In George Jenne’s mind, the deep antagonism of the last four years suggests that Plan 9 got the green light, and that the aliens are on a fool’s errand. His latest, color saturated video installation imagines this strategic chaos through an amalgam of images and a cacophony of sound. The work features a cryptic newscast, an anarchist cooking show, a man with vampiric delusions, a menacing altar, a taxonomy of conspiratorial totems, and the warbling voice of Reverend Jim Jones as he […]
May 24, 2021
WHOLED UP INTRODUCING ALEXANDRIA CLAY May 21st through June 27th OPENING RECEPTION, Friday June 4th, 6-9pm Durham-based artist, Alexandrea Clay writes, “At the apex of the pandemic, we bore witness to massive gatherings to protest continued racial injustice. But a demonstrated strength in numbers held a new level of risk for people of color who hoped to see change in their communities.” This is the crux of Wholed Up, by the second of Lump’s, Artist First Fund recipients. In it, Alexandria explores and celebrates closeness during a time when a new sense of danger accompanies proximity and overshadows many of the nurturing aspects of intimacy, especially in communities of color. So she renders tender, interpersonal moments in charcoal on stretched and dyed paper, in a sprawling series of images. But what we see is not wholly pleasant. In a clever inversion, through the manipulation of paper, Alexandria taunts us with hints of the double standard that American culture has […]
April 19, 2021
DRAWING ROOM NEW DRAWINGS BY JASON LORD April 9th – May 15th Drawing Room, curated by Bill Thelen presents a series of drawings by Jason Lord that converge into single, sprawling piece. Jason says, “This is a continually expanding, meditative drawing – a mandala that I’m making as I think about dharmas, atoms, memories, what it means to be or seem whole, and what it means to be connected. While I draw it, each square has new potential for intersection, belonging, or individualism.”
April 13, 2021
With Purpose Anthony Patterson April 9 – May 15, 2021 For our inaugural Artist First Fund exhibition, Anthony Patterson treads his old haunt, the Crest Street community, in Durham, where he was born and raised. The show combines documentary photography, archival video and original, site specific works to describe the struggles, victories and unresolved tensions surrounding this historic, black community. Anthony sees the show as less of an art exhibition and more of a cultural experience, one that is at once, deeply personal and broadly relevant to our current social climate.
April 13, 2021
Hyperstition Mike Geary April 9 – May 15, 2021 “Anything that removes the crippling nature of decision making, I’m a big fan of,” says Team Lump bad boy, Mike Geary. The title of his show refers to the experimental science of self fulfilling prophecies. As opposed to a superstition, which is simply a false belief paired with magical thinking, a hyperstition functions to manifest its own reality through specific methods. Geary’s personal hyperstition employs the generative techniques he uses to create improvised, modular music; he allows the machine and the method take over as a kind of low brow, artificial intelligence that manifests its own reality. The result is a series of acute, abstract paintings that present an invigorating exchange between cool control and unfettered madness.
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 […]
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
February 8, 2020
SPECIES COMPLEX Pictures and films by Jeff Whetstone February 7th through March 14th The term “Species Complex” describes the muddled area where the distinction between different species becomes unclear. Jeff Whetstone, who was originally trained as a zoologist, offers new meaning to that term, through a series of deeply toned, floor to ceiling, gelatin silver prints and a stark, video installation, taken from degraded images produced by infrared hunting cameras. Many of the images are startlingly intimate. Through them, Jeff leads us by the hand into a beautiful but unsettling place, where humans and their supposedly lower counterparts in mutual existence, look and behave nearly the same. jeffwhetstone.net The first book I ever bought was the Audubon Field Guide to North American Reptiles and Amphibians. I was eleven years old when my mother took me to the mall where it was on a lower shelf in the Christian Book Store in the Nature section. This book became my […]
October 27, 2019
MYSTICAL LOGICAL November 1 – December 13, 2019 Opening reception: Friday, November 1st, 6 – 9pm Celia Gray, Jessica Ciocci, Brandon Boan and Ben Kinsley For this group show, four artists have encamped in a kind of No Man’s Land of reason. Curators, Orvokki Crosby and Jerstin Crosby, derived the title from a childlike misnomer of the word, “mythological.” The works are created from a variety of materials: clay, fiber, 3-D printed resin, and sound. Seen at once, they reveal a natural convergence between mysticism and science, fantasy and rational logic. Their mysterious presence maps a topography where the laws of science are skewed, and the rules of creativity have come undone. http://jessicaciocci.com http://benkinsley.com
October 27, 2019
WHISPERS FROM WIZARD MOUNTAIN November 1 – December 13, 2019 Opening reception: Friday, November 1st, 6 – 9pm A solo exhibition by Conner Calhoun For his first solo exhibition at LUMP, Conner Calhoun digs for his pagan roots and conjures highly personal folklore through drawings, paintings and sculpture. The work is inspired by illuminated manuscripts and fantasy narratives. The resulting phantasmagoria is rife with trauma, conspiracy and wry humor. It warns us to tread lightly in Calhoun’s creative dominion, because no pleasure goes unpunished. https://www.connercalhoun.com
August 15, 2019
Feels Warm, Like Things Burning September 6 – October 26 Opening reception September 6, 6 – 9pm Natalie Escobar, Alex C. Kerr, Saige Rowe, Hannah Tarr Curated by Jamie Steele www.camayuhs.com Closer, closer, getting warmer… Desire becomes a snake on the mountain. By turning to the natural world, the work in Feels Warm Like Things Burning presents the idea of looking for something as well as hints at the inherent danger involved. We live in a world that dictates humans as agents of desire. Within this framework we struggle to create and to love. In a self-centered social order, where do we come together and what do we gather around? These four artists tend to work outside, depict an imagined natural landscape, or use materials found in nature as a means of finding beauty in darkness, […]
April 22, 2019
Kirsten Stoltmann I am Sorry May 3 – July 31, 2019 Kirsten Stoltmann is an artist living in Ojai, California who makes work about being uncomfortable and just trying to fit in, or not. Her work has been influenced by her Midwestern roots, self-deprecating and humorous nature, and Feminism. Kirsten Stoltmann’s installation in gallery 1 includes the opportunity for mess…so “don’t worry about making a mess”. Stoltmann invites us to wallow on the floor with our emotions, wine, and whatever else you feel. It’s all a mess, living is a mess, and we are all messy. The exhibition continues in gallery 2, with revised and reworked pieces originating from 2006. This series. aptly titled “Mariah Carey, Then and Now”, includes large, text based collage works. Stoltmann has altered initial interactions within each work as if to re-word […]
March 7, 2019
LUMP SUM BENEFITFriday, April 5, 6-9pmLUMP, 505 S. Blount St. Raleigh, NC 27601Free, no ticket required100% of proceeds go to LUMP Lump’s first fundraising benefit, titled LUMP SUM, will occur Friday, April 5, from 6-9. The benefit includes a silent auction of over 72 original artworks, performances by Crowmeat Bob, Dan Melchior, and Jasmyn Milan, a memory capturing installation by Mollie Earls. Moon By Moon Apothecary (Chanelle A. Bergeron) will be providing herbal tonics and elixirs. The first issue of the Blount Force Magazine will be released as well! All this while DJ Gallimaufry helps guide us through the evening’s events. Seats to an elaborate and performative dinner by Victor Lytvinenko will be available for purchase. These seats are limited and will go fast. There will be other pieces, made especially for the benefit, that will be available for […]
March 7, 2019
Amanda Barr Group Hoarder Face Time March 22 – April 27 No material is off limits for Amanda Barr’s latest show, Group Hoarder Face Time. Barr explores the confusion of being a human in our current climate of excess consumption, clutter, and botched communication. In a performance titled Aerobica, she explores a decorative paper cup by bringing the design to life with handmade flamingo costumes, and an original soundtrack by Mac McCaughan. Barr will also present an installation that incorporates FaceTime video imported from an alternate universe, along with curated collected junk, painted textiles, ceramic sculptures and some sneaky contributions from fellow artists Conner Calhoun, April Childers and Bill Thelen. Barr invites you to investigate this story with popcorn clues or by asking Yellow Clairvoyant Therapist and assistant Sea Shell Icon. What the heck is happening? “Each being in the world is […]
January 21, 2019
Calvin Brett General Labor February 8 – March 16, 2019 Opening Reception and performance: Friday, February 8, 6 – 9pm General labor is an installation about unskilled work. Inspired by nature and following intuition, Calvin Brett creates trash agglomerations to display the aesthetic qualities of items gathered from public spaces. Through the creation of “lumps” and other sculptural groupings, he questions our relationship to consumption, waste, and reuse. He exhibits trash as artifact, ultimately reflecting the negative effects of capitalism today. The installation will include a performance by the artist on February 8, 6 – 9pm. “I’m interested in the creative capacity of entropy. Inspired by nature flourishing from it’s own discards, I work with trash to emulate this intuitive process through gathering and arranging garbage, from public spaces to interior consumer spaces. My work inside and outside […]
January 17, 2019
SENTINELS (I): INFILTRATE February 8 – March 16, 2019Opening Reception: Friday, February 8, 6 – 9pm Part of The Neon Heater’s Year 7: The TemperatureThe Chess Club, curated by The Neon Heater and Teréz Iacovino Artists include: Amy Sacksteder, Christopher Martin, Eli Gfell, Emily Swanberg, Everything Is Collective, Marc Mitchell, Prerna, Rebecca Steele The Temperature is a curatorial project of The Neon Heater, an artist run space in Findlay, OH. As part of their seventh year of exhibitions, The Neon Heater will be curating a series of 26 exhibitions across the United States between September 2018 and May of 2019. A loose conceptual narrative will connect the exhibitions via a monthly framework that unfolds throughout the course of the year. The narrative is a critique of the Art world and capitalist art market, American nationalism and exceptionalism, and universalized Hollywood blockbusters. February’s […]
January 3, 2019
Recognition Is a Form of AgreementJanuary 4 – February 2 Featuring works by Corey Escoto, Steve Mykietyn, and Carmen Tiffany Corey Escoto (b. 1983 Amarillo, Texas) has shown nationally and internationally, with solo exhibitions at Regina Rex, NY; Halsey Mckay, East Hampton, NY; Corbett vs Dempsey, Chicago, IL; Taymour Grahne, New York, NY; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; and the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. His work has been included in exhibitions at Smack Mellon, Brooklyn; The ArtHouse at Jones Center, Austin; and international venues including ACC Galerie, Weimar, Germany; Seven Days Brunch, Basel; FRAC Nord-Pas De Calais, Dunkerque, France. He is a recipient of the Gateway Foundation Grant, the Kala Art Institute Residency Program and Fellowship Award, and an Aperture Portfolio Prize finalist. Corey is a graduate of Texas Tech University (BFA 2004), Washington University in St. Louis (MFA 2007), […]
December 21, 2018
Aaron Zalonis GOD, LUCIFER AND THEIR NEIGHBOR: A Situation Comedy January 4 – February 2, 2019 “For the past couple of years, I have been thinking about Heaven, Hell and the belief that we are characters in a simulation of reality (as hypothesized by Nick Bostrom, Elon Musk and Neil deGrasse Tyson). Do we unknowingly exist both as characters in our familiar world of disease, boredom, waiting at the DMV, sitting in a dentist’s office, arguing about politics, ordering pickle & pimento loaf at the deli, crushing disappointment and occasional happiness while simultaneously existing as super-evolved versions of ourselves piloting our characters? Are we the nerve cells for a universe stranger than we can imagine? My paintings in this exhibition examine this and other worlds. I write and paint equally with my left and right hands as a way of […]
December 12, 2018
Midwinter Day, Bernadette Mayer A group reading celebrating the 40th anniversary of Midwinter Day Saturday, December 22 at 1:00pm From the back cover of Midwinter Day: Perhaps Bernadette Mayer’s greatest work, Midwinter Day was written on December 22, 1978, at 100 Main Street, in Lenox, Massachusetts. “Midwinter Day,” as Alice Notley notes, “is an epic poem about a daily routine.” In six parts, Midwinter Day takes us from awakening and emerging from dreams through the whole day — morning, afternoon, evening, night — to dreams again: “a plain introduction to modes of love and reason, / Then to end i guess with love, a method to this winter season / Now I’ve said this love it’s all i can remember / Of Midwinter Day the twenty second of December.” *** Please join us in celebrating the 40th anniversary of Bernadette […]
November 20, 2018
Paul McMahon It Takes a While to Figure Out Who You Really Are November 30 – December 29 Artist reception and performance, December 7, 6 – 9pm Lump is proud to present painting, sculpture, video and a performance by Paul McMahon. The exhibition will open Friday, November 30, 6 – 9pm. An Artist Reception and performance by McMahon will occur Friday, December 7, 6 – 9pm. In 1982 Paul McMahon (b. 1950) and Nancy Chunn created 10 large paintings. McMahon and Chunn refer to these works as SONG PAINTINGS. Each painting is a very literal illustration of its song. These paintings were originally intended to be backdrops for McMahon’s performance of these songs. They were used for that purpose only once, at Artists Space in New York City in May of 1982. The two main subjects are vicious art world gossip and cute little songs about […]
November 13, 2018
Leaving Impossible Things Unattended LITU interventions are made by Mike Dimpfl and Ginger Wagg lituperformance.com #LITU #lituisyou “Leaving Impossible Things Unattended (LITU) is an ongoing site and viewer specific performance tracing the relationship between our bodies, the body politic, and the waste we think we can leave behind. Part call-to-action, part call-and-response, it evokes a problem and the games we struggle to play in our daily life to avoid responsibility. On Saturday, November 17th Ginger Wagg brings #LITU’s dirty plastic bag rope out for an afternoon of endless and unrequited unraveling. For the closing of “Semiotics of Cruising” we wonder about the unwelcome commodity of waste, the unwanted, the ignored and the private spaces where we find each other. “
October 6, 2018
Trace message from under quarry stone. October 12 – November 17 A group exhibition with works by Tarik Garrett (Los Angeles), Doris Guo (NYC), Sarah Viviana Valdez (NYC), and Jack Crowley (NC). The objects in this exhibition come from the present day with the speculation that they are 50-60 years wiser. Crystallized behaviors. Dust covered anxieties. We hold them, turn them over, observe the geological imprint of their creators. A home is found in the coordination of superposition, a mutual understanding of where we are layered. With the fossilized process of trace dreaming, the future self follows the creators footprints toward present desires and fears as though they have been petrified for rediscovery.
October 6, 2018
The Semiotics of Cruising Exhibit A : Tearoom by William E. Jones October 12 – November 17 The Semiotics of Cruising presents seminal works that explore the intersection of “cruising” and contemporary art practices. The exhibition will address cruising from a historical perspective. Works from artists William E. Jones – “Tearoom” (1960’s), Robert Blanchon “untitled (s/m top/bottom)” (1970’s), Dean Sameshima (1980’s) among others will be presented singularly in stand alone exhibitions that will one day cultivate into a cohesive group show. The exhibition(s) will be curated by Bill Thelen and initiated at Lump Projects in Raleigh, NC. Exhibit A: William E. Jones – Tearoom (16mm film transferred to video, color, silent, 56 minutes, 1962/2007) Tearoom consists of footage shot by the police in the course of a crackdown on public sex in the American Midwest. In the summer of 1962, the Mansfield, Ohio, Police Department photographed men […]
August 12, 2018
Janks Archive: Research Triangle Opens Friday September 7 Artists Jerstin Crosby (NC), Ben Kinsley (CO) and Jessica Langley (CO) will present Janks Archive: Research Triangle. This exhibition is part of their ongoing Janks Archive project (2012-present) which investigates traditions of insult humor in cultures from around the world. This multifaceted study documents this tradition through field recording, and presents the collection through an online database, public events, exhibitions, installations, publications, and a podcast. Janks Archive: Research Triangle will include a two-channel video installation, a series of sandwich boards donning insult jokes, and a Janks Archive research library. They will also be staging a series of public events around Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, where they will interview residents to learn more about local traditions of insult humor. Using signs, banners, billboards, and sometimes murals, they re-present insults from their archive […]
May 16, 2018
Siebren Versteeg windowseat June 16 – August 18 Lump is pleased to announce windowseat, an exhibition of new work by New York based artist Siebren Versteeg. windowseat opens Saturday June 16, with a reception for the public from 6-9pm. windowseat features a generative media installation entitled ‘Thoughts without A Thinker’. In this work, Lump’s gallery is continuously monitored and uploaded to image recognition A.I. Screens hung throughout the space present the results in real time as an ever evolving exhibition of pictures gleaned from the artificial intelligence of our collective making. Other works include new algorithmic paintings that exemplify the artist’s interest in clouds and a continuous live image search for ‘perfect weather’. Born approximately 17,000 days ago, New York based artist Siebren Versteeg uses digital technologies to make work that synthesizes solipsistic painterly abstraction with coding in our hyper-connected present. The algorithms he writes tirelessly combine high […]
April 24, 2018
Joy Meyer The Lovers May 4- June 9 ” This large video project will involve thirteen-channels of video and sound. The complete show will also consist of large scale video installation, projections, faux fur rugs, neon signs, and vintage TV sets. The Lovers draws on speculative fiction, the tarot, theories of possible worlds, epistemology, and feminism to explore questions surrounding love and desire. In particular series of work I am raising questions about space, time, and romantic love. The series also ponders the tarot and television as two forms of pictorial yet antiquated myth making.” -Joy Meyer
March 5, 2018
April Childers Sensitive Situation March 16 – April 28 Childers develops complex relationships by re-contextualizing objects and imagery in popular culture. Working toward a de-familiarization and sense of detachment, she aims to create numbing alienation contrived from referencing ephemeral, everyday forms. Using hard and fast truths to display urgent expressions, she ultimately renders the original subject’s intention vacant. Working with and from existing objects—from mass culture to private life, from philosophical meanderings to routine responses, Childers incorporates personal imagery and autobiographical artifacts for their formal qualities to examine an invisible or negative space that is often created in the re-interpretation of the image or object’s intended reference. Working with a variety of materials and processes, she often magnifies, arranges, overlays, remakes and alters objects and images to transgress roles of their design, functionality and ownership. At times, deliberate gestures appear as […]
February 27, 2018
Maria Britton Low Relief March 16 – April 28, 2018 Britton’s works incorporate painting, sewing, and relief sculpture in her continued explorations of notions of femininity and feminism, high and low forms of art making, and dreams and disasters. Her circuitous route as a painter, compelled to work primarily with used, mostly floral, patterned bed sheets, has led her to more sculptural concerns of bending the grid. Works included in Low Relief include paintings and sculptures but often hover between the two. Britton (b. 1982 Florence, South Carolina) lives and works in Carrboro, NC. She received her BFA from Winthrop University in Rock Hill, SC and her MFA in painting from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Recent exhibitions include Camayuhs in Atlanta, GA; Tempus Projects in Tampa, FL; Flagpost with Tether Projects in Durham, NC; The Scrap Exchange in […]
January 27, 2018
Becky Flanders PAIN BODIES Political resistance and the accumulation of psychic pain Feb 2 – March 10, 2018 LUMP is pleased to announce artist, Becky Flanders, as our next installment. Becky Flanders is an artist and entrepreneur based in Tampa, FL. Born in the Washington DC area in 1980, she received her BS in Artificial Life and the Digital Arts from UMBC in 2002, and her MFA in Photography from USF in 2009. She is a leading member of the photography collective Fountain of Pythons, and a member of the all-female curatorial collective CUNSTHAUS. Her work has been exhibited from Miami to Puerto Rico, Switzerland, Japan, and Australia. Her works have recently been accepted into the permanent collection of the Kinsey Institute. Her focuses are the mythic feminine, transcendent and ecstatic states, sex positivity, and the relationship between subjects and states. More info […]
November 27, 2017
Analog Playhouse consists of two exhibitions, Moving Pictures (opening December 1st in gallery 2) and Aura Retrieval Machines (opening December 8th in gallery 1). Moving Pictures There are no motion pictures. There are only sequences of still images. Motion is a neurophysiological effect. It is the trick movies play on our brains. 3 CHANNEL SLIDE ANIMATOR is a sculptural consideration of the illusion of motion created by the rapid projection of still images. Three 35mm slide projectors equipped with photocells project a series of simple geometrical shapes at precise intervals. The slide images are projected onto two screens: one screen is fixed, while the other is motorized and moves through the planes of focus of the projected images. As the motorized screen travels through the gallery space, the three channels of still images alternately combine into a single animated image, […]
October 4, 2017
Description In this project I will create related work in two different locations at the same time. On November 9-18, I will build one large object at Lump Gallery, in Raleigh, and another at the Greensboro Project Space, in Greensboro. I will begin with deconstructing a piano in each space, which I will use as source material to create the new work. Additionally, each space will be outfitted with a camera and a monitor. The camera in Greensboro will send video in to the monitor in Raleigh and vise-versa. Over the course of the project, I will travel back and forth to work in both locations. Visitors at one location will be able to observe the current status of the construction in both spaces. They will also be able to watch me working, even if I’m at the other location. […]
September 1, 2017
You’ve Reached the Office of Stuart Ullman George Jenne October 6 – November 4, 2017 A near exact recreation of the office set from the Overlook Hotel in the 1980 film, The Shining is the centerpiece of George Jenne’s third solo show at LUMP. You’ve Reached the Office of Stuart Ullman measures the veracity of cinephilia by taking verisimilitude to its threshold. The show will open with the fully realized office on display, empty of its necessary characters. Opposite the installation, there will be a two channel video that portrays a fan of the movie as he discomfortingly mouths the words of a notorious scene while the movie plays offscreen. The banality of Stuart Ullman’s office makes the portentous moments that occur inside of it all the more palpable. It is an outlier, embedded deep in the eerie spacial and […]
July 24, 2017
Up All Night September 1 – 30, 2017 Statement by George Jenne Up All Night describes the point at which video art and music video intersect. Born close to the same time and out of a single technology, these disparate forms are like fraternal twins, having evolved in divergent economies and separate creative worlds. Each was created by people whose ideals seem to be at odds with the other, yet inextricable. a brief history of timecode It’s possible to imagine a void where MTV originally existed, if it were not for Glen O’Brian’s TV Party, which first appeared on New York City public access television in 1978. It was a raucous blend of art and music that made a point of being “no budget,” technically naive and deeply cynical. It reflected the bankruptcy and disrepair of New York that had […]
July 10, 2017
BEFORE THE WAR August 4 – September 16, 2017 Before the War is a first-of-its kind art exhibit in North Carolina that will take visitors on an immersive journey, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in traditional gallery environments. The artwork is based on the sketches, paintings and models of NC based artist, Tyler Jackson. Experienced through the medium of Virtual Reality, the loose narrative unfolds through six vignettes exploring the life, death and afterlife of Jackson’s characters. The Team: Tyler Jackson – Artist & Animator Alisha Hawkins – Project Manager Doug Kinnison – Developer Derick Childress – 3D artist Alex Davis – Sound Designer and Composer Fabian Marquez – Story Consultant Special thanks to our community partners: Lenovo Legion Team Lincoln Hancock
July 4, 2017
Show Off July 7 – 29, 2017 This July the Lump interns are curating each side of the gallery and inviting viewers to score their exhibits. Exhibition guides will act as score cards for visitors to use as they think about the exhibitions and the curating styles. Digiscapes! Curated by Anthony Hamilton Anthony Hamilton was born in Kingston, Ontario. He received a BFA in Studio Art from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and currently works as an artist in Durham, NC. Behind the pixelated screen, a current cuts through the landscape: digitization. Discovering new places is both easier and harder due to the complete digitization of the American wilderness. With 1.3 trillion photos taken a year, landscape has taken the role of any exterior space: parking lots, suburban backyards, working quarries; not solely public picturesque vistas. New […]
July 4, 2017
Show Off July 7 – 29, 2017 This July the Lump interns are curating each side of the gallery and inviting viewers to score their exhibits. Exhibition guides will act as score cards for visitors to use as they think about the exhibitions and the curating styles. WAVES TO LIVE BY Curated by Conner Calhoun Conner Calhoun earned his BFA in Visual and Critical Studies from the School of Visual Arts, NYC in 2015. He’s recently shown his work in Leipzig DEU, Raleigh NC, New York NY and Barcelona SP. WAVES TO LIVE BY is a group show with works by Julia Santoli, Rachel Zaretsky, Jinhee Qwak, Shaun St. Lucas, Harris Bauer, Tedd Anderson, Doris Guo, Logan Britt, Lizz Thabet, Austin Caskie and Julia Stoddard. Mourning Dew was the original title of the exhibition, morning spelled with a “u” is […]
June 23, 2017
Carmen Neely 17 feet away June 2 – July 1, 2017 For the past year I have collected striking phrases from personal conversations and encounters. These phrases become the titles for my compositions. They also guide my decision making as I work through constructing a visual embodiment of the experience housed in those abstracted words. These particular works summarize a six-month period during which most of my actions revolved around the preparation for and expectation of looming and uncertain change. Thus, the images are documents of anxiety, longing, restlessness, hope, and apprehension. Additionally, they represent a directionless pursuit of things and people that feel close but are momentarily obscured. The sensation is a universal one – of searching for a defining opportunity that should be “right around the corner”, meeting a life partner that has lived in the same neighborhood […]
May 5, 2017
LOG at Lump Mini Series, Part Three: Data Plan for a Preserving Machine May 5 – 28, 2017 Featuring Elizabeth Ferry, Takashi Horisaki, and William Paul Thomas LOG presents the third and final installment of its mini series at Lump, Data Plan for a Preserving Machine. The three person group show includes works by Elizabeth Ferry, Takashi Horisaki, and William Paul Thomas. PLOT SYNOPSIS This guy, who is a doctor, is all worried about what is gonna happen to all the art in the world when everything goes to shit, kinda like it looks like it’s going to now. Like, I mean, he is worried about what will happen to all the art and music when it’s all destroyed. A buddy comes out and visits him in L.A. He tells him of his plan to save or preserve all this “high culture” material. […]
May 5, 2017
OTHER NATURE May 5 – 28, 2017 Curated by: Orvokki Crosby & Jerstin Crosby Featuring Esther Ruiz, Renee Delosh, Jessica Langley, Christina Van der Merwe, Olivia Ciummo, John Bowman, Ippis Halme, and Lovid. Other Nature brings together work that highlights our mediated relationship with the natural world through abstraction, humor, hallucination, intervention and critique. The work in the show brings together artists based in New York, Los Angeles, Berlin and Chapel Hill working in painting, video, collage, sculpture and mixed media. Lump is located at 505 S. Blount St, Raleigh, NC. More information about our mission and exhibition programs can be found at lumpprojects.org.
April 27, 2017
Treatment for A Year of the Rabbit April 7 – 29, 2017 Lump is pleased to announce Treatment for A Year of the Rabbit by Hong-Ân Truong. Lump will host an closing artist’s talk on Saturday, April 29th at 11am. The exhibition will run from April 7 – 29, 2017. Lump has expanded its public hours: Thursdays – Saturdays from 12pm – 6pm (other days by appointment). …. This film has already been made. It was made better than I could have ever made it. I’m glad it was made because to make a film about you is to risk death. When I went home for the first time I met your sisters, your brother, all their children, and all of their children’s children. They were alive even though I had hardly thought about their lives. I saw your […]
March 15, 2017
Deadpan March 2017 LOG at Lump Mini Series, Part Two: Deadpan Featuring Kerry Law, Alex O’Neal and Kirsten Stoltmann After the conclusion of its first season at the Sugar Shack, Chapel Hill’s LOG (Low Occupancy Gallery) presents Deadpan, Part Two of a Mini Series at Lump in Raleigh, NC. Deadpan features works by Kerry Law (NY), Alex O’Neal (NY) and Kirsten Stoltmann (CA). +++ I’m laughing so hard. I can’t even tell you. Even if i can get it out, it wont be funny. Ding Dong… Should I tell you what it’s about? Whooooo iiiiiiis iiiiiiiiit? You’ll never get it. You won’t understand. If I tell you one part, you’ll be thinking about another. I don’t even know where the parts are that you’ll be looking for. I mean…like…I didn’t lose an earring. See, they are both here. The front […]
January 21, 2017
We Are Happy To Serve You January 28 – March 1 We Are Happy to Serve You sets off a full month of spectacle as LUMP transforms from a grassroots DIY space to a community supported non-profit project space. Founded by Bill Thelen and Med Byrd, Lump began as an artist run gallery in 1996. Over the past twenty years, Bill, Med, and artists of Team Lump have served the NC community providing space for thought-provoking art, while acting as a pipeline for conversation between North Carolina and the larger contemporary art world. This February we celebrate LUMP and kickstart the next twenty years with what we believe are required viewings: Over 20 collaborations and performances that you must see by artists you need to know. Installations: “El lugar de tus ideals” – (an elaborate mexican market, dreamlike, something) […]
November 5, 2016
LOG at Lump Background November 2016 Mini Series, Part One: Background Featuring Lauren Clay, Julia Gartrell and Angelina Gualdoni After the conclusion of its first season at the Sugar Shack, Chapel Hill’s LOG (Low Occupancy Gallery) presents Background, Part One of a Mini Series at Lump in Raleigh, NC. Background features works by Lauren Clay, Julia Gartrell and Angelina Gualdoni. +++ Motion sensor on a really old screen door. Outputs, maintain time is but the stream I go a-fishin in. Why did Thoreau live in the woods? He was inventing a toaster with three slots. Same old brick, but it’s different yay. Yeah that’s candy paint, on my 7 Tre. An extra never ends, it’s background replication. Extra lasts, extra long. +++ Before the scene can be developed, the background must first exist. Physical movements, screen progressions and gestures toward […]
October 5, 2016
Just Another Animal October 2016 Chris Musina writes — “My work considers the animal in visual culture, and I have started thinking about things like masks, traps and trinkets, specifically what those types of things might mean in the lexicon of what is animal. This research delves into the darker aspects of the animal as it leads to conversations in post-humanism and a critical response to the hubris of the “anthropocene”. I have an interest in subjects like terror management theory, deep ecology, and nihilism — more specifically as they relate to representing animals and the cultural discomfort with the animal inside of us all. In an attempt to erode those comfortable boundaries between nature and culture, I work in the liminal space between the wild and the domestic, the humorous and the horrific, the acceptable and the absurd. Making […]
September 5, 2016
On Today September 2016 On Today features an installation of 64 charcoal drawings of a single form. For the past few months Watts has been repeating this single composition daily in order to reach the final amount. It is an exercise in finding moments of grace and appreciating unintended errors within the slog of daily routine. The form employed in the composition appears as a seemingly universal image. Yet, while alluding to familiar forms it strays away from any particular iconography or object. On Today not only explores the quiet singularities within quotidian labor, but also the interpretation of the holistic result of that labor. Wanting to not only exhibit the inner workings and conceptual drivers of the artist, the project also employs the thoughts of Dr. Gary Slater, a philosophy academic based in Austin, TX. While a myriad of […]
July 28, 2016
Rooms on Fire Curated by Mike Geary and Joe Grillo July 2016 ROOMS ON FIRE is a group exhibit curated by Joe Grillo and Mike Geary. Grillo and Geary have been collaborating for over 20 years. In ROOMS ON FIRE they have invited other long time collaborators to exhibit in Lump during their residency in Flanders. Artists work in a variety of media from experimental sound and performance to collage and painting. Works will be added and rotated throughout the month of July. Lump is located at 505 S. Blount St, Raleigh, NC. More information about our mission and exhibition programs can be found at lumpprojects.org.
July 27, 2016
Geary and Grillo July-August 2016 For July and August, Flanders and Lump work together to host Joe Grillo and Mike Geary in a collaborative residency with pop up performances, a group exhibition curated by Grillo and Geary, and a two person exhibit in August presenting the works created during residency. “Mining a kind of throwaway culture of 99-Cent stores, the ubiquitous thrift shops of his home town of Virginia Beach, with their long-forgotten cartoon characters or cereal box mascots, broken toys or instruments, crazy fabrics or discarded lamps, Joe Grillo generates a constant flow of remixed and regurgitated visual information of hybrid pop nonsense that when organized and presented in his artworks and shows, stops seeming random and starts speaking meaningfully to an audience that can synthesize the amount of cultural information he does, and who looks as closely at […]
May 2, 2016
Arise! Bald Man! King of Hair People! Team Lump May 2016 In celebration of Lump’s 20th year of programming, Lumpxx comes to an end with Arise! Bald Man! King of Hair People! an installation by the collective Team Lump. “Second Book of Kings (2:23) the prophet Elisha is met by a group of children who taunt him for his baldness. So great an offense is this derision to the prophet that he curses the children in the name of the Lord, and immediately two bears come out of the woods to mangle them.” Team Lump is an artist collective that has been actively collaborating for over a decade. The group began as an outgrowth of the Raleigh, North Carolina project space Lump. Bill Thelen, its founder, curates artists into the collective, and the team fluctuates slightly on a project-to-project basis. […]
April 2, 2016
Four Man Show April 2016 Lump presents Four Man Show: Albee/Carland/Hauser/Oleson, four outstanding artists who have had solo exhibitions at Lump in the past. Carland’s Queer Youth, 1999, black-and-white portraits taken in Durham, shown at Lump in 1999 (and never elsewhere), will return to the gallery. Albee’s photographs, condition reports, 2015-16, positions condition reports for portraits by Man Ray in color block formations. Hauser’s painting FR(blue), 2014, combine shield-like image of initials and bodies. Oleson’s video Actually, blue is not a warm color, 2014, made on Fire Island, is about time spent making things with friends and mourning—a vision of queer life that perhaps counters recent, more popular portrayals. Lump is located at 505 S. Blount St, Raleigh, NC. More information about our mission and exhibition programs can be found at lumpprojects.org.
March 2, 2016
Michael A. Salter Gristle Sausage March 2016 ” Hyperconnectivity and globalization offers us an all-you-can-eat visual buffet. I seek those sweet or salty pleasure responses that provide the awe and terror of my visuality. Scraping bits, pieces, and parts from the fringes of visual culture as my ingredients; I grind the parts and stuff them into a resolution, into a kind of gristle sausage. Pharmaceutical drugs, blurry portraits, psychedelia and goofy faces are some of the drawings that comprise a giant billboard sized installation along with a bric-a-brac kitsch bauble sculpture made of smaller bric-a-brac kitsch bauble sculptures and some big wall text in ‘GRISTLE SAUSAGE’ by michael a. salter, at Lump Gallery/Projects, March 2016 “In our urban world, in the streets that we walk and the buses we take, in the magazines we read, on walls, on screens, we […]
February 2, 2016
Richard C. Black Holes February 2016 Richard C. is an enigma. You can never just focus on the single image that is before you. Every word, every image is a black hole. The images you are presented with are in a constant state of flux, able to morph, spaceshift and defy time as if they exist in a black hole. The work presented in Black Holes is from the past, present and possible futures. Spanning decades, the exhibition includes drawings, correspondence, sculpture, readymades, doodles, collage and many other pieces of detritus installed through the Lump lens. This is one show not to be missed. Richard C.’s work was reintroduced in The Nothing That Is – a drawing show in 5 parts at CAM Raleigh this past summer. His correspondence between Ray Johnson from 1968 until his death in 1995 was […]
December 2, 2015
Urchins December 2015 Urchins is a group show featuring: Amanda Barr, Kelie Bowman, Archie Lee Coates, Max Hubenthal, Ryan McLennan, Eli McMullen, Allyson Mellberg, Travis Robertson, Sto, Souther Salazar, Jeremy Seth Taylor, and Amandine Urruty. The works in Urchins investigate our relationship with nature and our effect on the natural world. Urchins are important to the life of the ocean as they help maintain the coral reefs, but their overgrowth can be detrimental. There is a delicate balance in nature between helping and hurting, this serves as an interesting analogy of our place in the environment as humans. As part of Lumpxx, this show brings together old friends/collaborators from Team Lump, Cinders Gallery, Thanky Space, and some new friends too. Lump is located at 505 S. Blount St, Raleigh, NC. More information about our mission and exhibition programs can be […]
November 2, 2015
WE PAIN November 2015 The exhibition is a collaborative installation of Philadelphia artists that have come together to recreate the likeness of an infirmary room inhabited by patients who are mysteriously absent from view. The asylum-like room is littered with personal belongings, bearing signs of their attempts for recovery and rehabilitation. It is difficult to ascertain whether the objects in the room portray earnest attempts by the medical staff to find a cure or rather the individual’s desperate attempts at self-healing. The boundaries between real and imaginary, homeopathy and quack sciences become confused as the slapstick and deadly serious sit side by side. The whole field of view, albeit melodramatic or darkly comical and poignant, is bracketed by an empathetic, humanist view of life and suffering. Contents of the infirmary room include: a self-wetting bed, a giant medicine cabinet of […]
October 2, 2015
Dress/Shield October 2015 Dress/Shield, a group exhibition of new works by six women artists who have a history of showing at Lump. The artists featured in Dress/Shield include Leah Bailis, Philadelphia, PA; Lee Delegard, Brooklyn, NY; Lydia Moyer, Covesville, VA; Molly Schafer, Chicago, IL; Tory Wright, Greenville, SC; and Laura Sharp Wilson, Salt Lake City, UT. Their working processes are diverse, encompassing sculpture, textiles, video, photography, and works on paper. For the artists, their identity as women underpins the work they make. Individually, their voices are distinct and varied. This group show is an opportunity to see how the perception of those voices changes when they are in chorus and to explore the connections between the work of women artists who are disparate in geography and media while sharing a formative connection to North Carolina and Lump. Schafer and Wright […]