Setting the Groundwork: Artist Talk
Setting the Groundwork– a solo exhibition by Reggie LeFlore exploring his take on the multidimensional elements of creating, storytelling, and relationships with space and time.
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Join moderator Teqen Zéa-Aida alongside Setting the Groundwork, solo artist, Reggie LeFlore in a discussion of awareness and appreciation for the multifaceted perspectives and practices of art in the public sphere.
Setting the Groundwork creates a visual autobiography informed by LeFlore’s everyday interactions and collaborations with folks in the community, organizers, graffiti writers, curators, and fellow artists. His work embraces the nuances and complexities of street art, allowing him to interrogate the power of space in the built environment and its connections to the natural world.[/bscolumns][bscolumns class=”one_half_last_clear”]
ARTIST TALK:
Saturday June 26th, 2021 // 11am – 1pm
$9 pre-sale • $5 Gamut Gallery Members
Sweet treats, sparkly beverages, and coffee from Segue Coffee will be provided.
This is a limited capacity event we recommend purchasing in advance, there will be only be 35 seats available. ALL tickets are will call.[/bscolumns][bscolumns class=”clear”][/bscolumns]
ABOUT THE EXHIBIT
Reggie LeFlore’s solo exhibition, Setting the Groundwork, incorporates his awareness of and appreciation for the multifaceted perspectives and practices of art in the public sphere to interrogate the power of space in the built environment and its connections to the natural world.
Informed by his everyday interactions and collaborations with folks in the community, organizers, graffiti writers, curators, and fellow artists, LeFlore’s work embraces the nuances and complexities of street art, guiding him throughout his creative projects. While Reggie primarily uses spray paint and hand-cut stencils to create vivid, large-scale portraits and imagery, intentionality and subjectivity, unconditional to medium, provide him the space to examine the various layers of identity and legacy of cultural abundance. Boundless to the constraints and aesthetic expectations, Setting the Groundwork showcases LeFlore’s exploration of storytelling and the strength and healing that comes from sharing our ancestry and honoring it.
Setting the Groundwork is Reggie LeFlore’s visual autobiography. Through the use of six portraits, each representing a different chapter of creativity in his life, viewers will have the opportunity to get a look into his inspirations as a child and to his collaborations across his life, highlighting his connections to community and the environments that surround it. Each foundational portrait represents a piece of LeFlore’s methodology, supported with elements containing his past, future and his current bookmark resounding on identity, afrocentricity and purpose. These experiences and influences create a larger than life, bold, vibrant story; a mural per se of his life, from his roots in Omaha to his life in Minneapolis.
ABOUT THE ARTIST & MODERATOR
REGGIE LEFLORE is a visual artist who creates to praise individual and collective stories through human portraiture. His inspirations are drawn from the concepts and philosophies of Street Art culture and Illustration – using aerosol, acrylic paint and various graphic design techniques to construct pieces in varying styles, scales and surfaces. Reggie uses visual arts to amplify both his surrounding environments and the narratives contained within them.
For 25 years Teqen Zéa-Aida has been a business, cultural, and artistic force in Minneapolis. Zéa-Aida was cofounder of the iconic Vision Management Group, Inc. modeling agency, and the founder of the equally iconic—now nomadic—City Wide Artists inner city art gallery. Zéa-Aida described himself as someone with deep ties to the city’s art, fashion, and philanthropy communities, with a long-time resident’s knowledge of its inner-city neighborhoods. Today, Teqen is running to be the Ward 7 Delegate & Representative of Minneapolis.