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Dominic Chambers and Samual Weinberg render paintings and drawings that involve a translation of pictorial practices and inner mythologies. Chambers uses magical realism and employs concepts such as the Veil, as articulated by W.E.B. Dubois, to examine the black experience in America. Weinberg work features variations on a single recurring character the Pink Man/Pink Men. The hyper and at times absurdly laughable worlds that the Pink Men inhabit reflects the collective yet incoherent voice of modern culture. For each, figures, either in contemplation with themselves or engaged with another, teeter between our reality and another. Chambers and Weinberg both place motifs in their respective work to metaphorically connect their own inner worlds to larger social concerns. The two, pulling from vastly different references and personal experiences, show the breadth of possibility in what narrative art can say and do.
 

Dominic Chambers will exhibit some of his large-scale paintings and drawings that reference literary narratives cited in books, various mythologies, and African-American history. Working in the realm of magical realism, Chambers creates surreal pictorial environments in which black bodies are shown in moments of leisure and contemplation. Reality, vulnerability, and imagination all merge to examine the fact in fiction and the spiritual in the otherwise mundane. The black experience in Chambers is further explored and examined by specific motifs such as the Veil in which Chambers references W.E.B. Dubois book The Souls of Black Folks. Chambers writes, “To better understand myself as an African-American, and the sociopolitical conditions of black
people, I have developed a body of work that investigates the Veil and its various manifestations.” Bodies are covered by the Veil to disrupt their legibility, or bodies as silhouettes, functioning as a metaphor for the literal representation of skin acting as a Veil. Through his work, Chambers is invested in expanding the concept of the Veil, in understanding its limits and uncovering the Veils unrealized aspects.
 

Samual Weinberg will exhibit work from his current series which features variation of a single recurring character called the Pink Man/Pink Men. These fleshy pink, wide-eyed beings are mischievous and childlike in demeanor, often playing out scenarios of light competition and past-time fun. The series references the archetypal school-age juvenile delinquency narrative, cult movies, urban legends and internet forums. For visual composition, Weinberg culls images from personal photos, screenshots from film and television programs as well as the millions of images that can be instantly conjured from a Google Image search. From these sources, Weinberg then acts as an animator whose work passes through the Uncanny Valley of hyper realism and horror where time and space are disjointed, relationships between the Pink Men and their doppelgänger ‘selves’ are tentative, and the ‘scenarios’ that ensue provoke a mixture of anxiety and laughter. Weinberg’s work is built from, and thus reflects, the often incoherent, collective noise of our hyper-culture, as well as suggest a weirder world that may lie just behind it. 

 

Dominic Chambers is an African-American emerging artist from St. Louis, MO. Chambers received his BFA from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and received his MFA at the Yale University School of Art. Chambers creates large scale paintings and drawings that references literary narratives cited in the books, various mythologies, and African-American history. His current work is invested in exploring moments of contemplation and meditation through reading and leisure. Chambers has exhibited his work in both solo and group exhibitions regionally. Chambers also has been the curator of exhibitions at the Kravets Wehby Gallery in New York and the Pitch Project in Milwaukee, WI. He has also participated in several residencies including- The Yale Norfolk summer residency and the New York Studio Residency Program in Brooklyn, NY. 

 

Samual Weinberg recently participated in group exhibitions at The Hole Gallery in New York City, While Supplies Last in Seattle, and First Amendment Gallery in San Francisco. He has shown his work in solo shows at Soo Visual Arts Center, Minneapolis, Thierry Goldberg Gallery’s Project Room in New York City, And Fogstand gallery in Taiwan, as well as received a Jerome Emerging Artist Fellowship in 2016 and a MNSAB Artist Initiative grant in 2017. He received his BFA from the University of Wisconsin–Stout in 2013 and currently lives and works in Saint Paul, MN.