Tinney Contemporary
Address: 237 Rep. John Lewis Way North, Nashville, Tennessee 37219
Dates: March 3 - April 15, 2023
Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 10am - 5pm
Website: tinneycontemporary.com
Tinney Contemporary is proud to present A Human Synthesis, a solo exhibition of conceptual works by Wesley Clark, guest curated by Michael J Ewing.
A Human Synthesis aims to evoke an abstract personal dialogue that exists within the individual; giving way to a singular, human perspective. In my curatorial approach, I couple psychological theories, literary devices, and visual language to shape the exhibition’s cognitive framework through a southern hermeneutical lens.
“These explorations in mark-making are an effort to recouple the hand-mind-body connection seeking a truer interior/inward expression. These works are journals, recording each step, each mark made - graphite or erasure. They are artifacts of the moment (or moments). Records that string together a loose narrative woven, when reading the marks made. Conversations, arguments, responses and revelations stream through with contributing percussive-based, Go-Go [upbeat D.C. based music], influencing the energies behind each mark.” - Wesley Clark
WESLEY CLARK
Wesley Clark was born in Washington, DC and grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland. Clark currently resides in Hyattsville, MD, with his wife and two beautiful children. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from Syracuse University and a Master of Fine Arts from The George Washington University.
Clark is a multidisciplinary artist creating drawings, paintings, and sculptures under a conceptual framework. His three-dimensional works can be described as narrative driven, mixed media wood assemblages — often hybrids of two or more objects or concepts — that read familiar to viewers. Clark sees these objects as fictional artifacts. His two-dimensional works — graphite on paper— explore mark making from an inwardly focused meditative release of pent up energies. Erasures play a major role in these works turning marks into artifacts of a moment(s) — recording the journey.
Wesley Clark has exhibited works at institutions such as the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, Washington DC; Columbia College Glass Curtain Gallery, Chicago, Illinois; Fisk University, Nashville Tennessee; University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Princess Anne, Maryland; as well as Scope and Prizm Art Fair, Miami, Florida during Art Basel.
In 2021, Clark was one of three artists commissioned to create an installation by The Phillips Collection as part of their centennial celebrations. Clark’s work can be found in public and private collections such as, The Asheville Art Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Duke Ellington School for the Arts and Kaiser Permanente.
Clark has taught at George Washington University’s Columbian College/Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, teaching Introduction to Painting, Introduction to Drawing, and First year Studio 2D. He is a member of the DC based artists’ collective Delusions of Grandeur.
MICHAEL EWING (curator)
Michael Ewing is an independent curator and artist from Houston, TX. He studied at Fisk University earning his B.A. both in Art and Psychology in 2013. He would go on to move to Paris, France in 2015, working for BackSlash gallery and curating his first international exhibition. This experience broadened his perspective on the sociocultural diversity in the contemporary arts world while also reinvigorating his sense of home and the relationship geography plays in the shaping of one’s cultural identity.
He would later continue international curation and cultural projects through the vehicle of relational art and human-centered design experiences. His aim is to engage into a dialogue to explore and celebrate global intersections within the American South and other international destinations, including South Africa and his most recent installment in Matanzas, Cuba in 2019. His focus is on reimagining and discussing ideas around Pan-Africanism, Cultural Capital, and place making and place keeping.
Michael’s artistic projects explicate the intersection between memory, imagination and identity. In his civic practice as curator, he utilizes folklore and mythology, speculative future. As a lifelong Southerner, Fisk graduate, and returned Nashville resident, he is steeped in this lineage of Black artistic consciousness and the spiritual life that accompanies it.
