Stephanie Kantor: Mock Pavilion
March 5 – April 7, 2016
EXHIBITION PRODUCED IN CONJUNCTION WITH BLACK CUBE NOMADIC MUSEUM AND CONTEMPORARY ART MONTH
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
For Contemporary Art Month’s annual exchange (CAMx), Black Cube, a Denver-based nomadic contemporary art museum, is partnering with Sala Diaz to produce Mock Pavilion, a site-specific ceramic installation by Black Cube artist fellow Stephanie Kantor. Mock Pavilion explores points of cultural transition through the interpretation of historic design motifs from Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
Inspired by the repurposed domestic space of Sala Diaz, Mock Pavilion oscillates between referencing the interior of bourgeois homes, museum period rooms and cultural pavilions as places of visual and experienced pleasure. Four rooms, loosely grouped by historical period, feature over 1,600 hand-painted tiles and 36 ceramic vessels, tapestries and custom wallpapers. One room draws inspiration from ogival textile patterns, a floral design extremely popular during the 14th century that traveled the trade routes between Europe, the Middle East and Asia, and was translated differently by each culture it reached. Kantor’s vivid ceramic works defy categorization as painting, sculpture or pottery, and the artist’s interpretation of traditional patterns creates a space of cultural amalgamation, hybridization and boundary blurring. Mock Pavilion, questions cultural identity as defined by geopolitical boundaries to highlight the shifting nature of visual culture and the fluidity of the world around us.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Stephanie Kantor (b. 1985, Pittsburgh, PA, living/working in Denver, CO) received her MFA in Ceramics from University of Colorado Boulder (2015) and BFA from Penn State University (2009). Kantor's work explores the paradoxical aspects of culture, both expansive and local. She samples at will, an arbitrary collection of misinterpretations, gentrifying foreign cultures. She utilizes ornamentation and decoration to create a facade where her large-scale ceramic objects speak to multiplicity, cultural diversity and artifice. Kantor has exhibited nationally, including such venues as Patterson Gallery (University Park, PA), Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (Boulder, CO), the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (Overland Park, KS), Paragraph Gallery (Kansas City, MO) and Belger Crane Yard Studios (Kansas City, MO), among others.
http://www.stephaniekantor.com/
This exhibition is funded in part by Black Cube (Denver, CO) & Contemporary Art Month (San Antonio, TX).
SPECIAL THANKS TO: David Alcantar, Christie Blizard, Sonya Dawson, Rick Frederick, Manuel Victor Sr. & Victor Garza, Chuck Hassel, Nina Hassel, Ross Hutchinson, Reagan Johns, Ken Little, Rigoberto Luna, Michele Monseau, Devi Norton & Wes Oliver, Risa Puleo, Ed Saavedra, Chris Sauter, Ethel Shipton & Nate Cassie and Universal Rentals.
For more information about CAM's annual exchange program CAMx, please visit http://contemporaryartmonth.com/calendar/camx/
PRESS
Glasstire http://glasstire.com/2016/03/03/top-five-march-3-2016/
Rivard Report http://therivardreport.com/cam2016/
San Antonio Current http://m.sacurrent.com/sanantonio/five-cam-2016-events-to-check-out/Content?oid=2510706
San Antonio Current http://m.sacurrent.com/sanantonio/through-controversy-cams-mission-remains-important-its-scope-impressive/Content?oid=2510651