Tag Archive: stencil

  1. Setting The Groundwork

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    May 29 – June 26, 2021
    Setting the Groundworka 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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    A city is constructed for utilitarian purposes but for many artists, it is an eternal canvas or stage that, when used correctly, has the ability to stimulate dialogue within communities and abroad. 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.[/bscolumns]

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    Members Only & Press Preview Night:
    Friday, May 28th  // 6-9pm
    A VIP Preview Night for Gamut Gallery Members:
    become a member today!!
    – Existing Members RSVP for FREE
    – 45 minute reserved tour sessions
    – 20 visitors per tour
    – Masks required
    – Please stay home if you are feeling unwell

    Public Opening Night:
    Saturday, May 29th  // 6-10pm • $7
    – 45 minute reserved tour sessions
    – Pre-sale tickets required
    – 20 visitors per tour
    – Masks required
    – Please stay home if you are feeling unwell

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    ABOUT REGGIE LEFLORE
    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.

  2. Fluidity: A solo exhibition by Yuya Negishi

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    Born in ­a small farming community in the mountains beyond Tokyo, Minneapolis-based artist Yuya Negishi’s artwork is a cultural amalgamation. Combining classical Japanese techniques of calligraphy and SUMI with Japanese pop culture images, his creations display tactile street art techniques while adhering to a whimsical philosophy of art and life. Through their lively movement and vivid hues, Negishi’s paintings embrace a capricious energy fueled by fluidity. Using recurring images, like koi fish who embody that fluidity, Negishi captures the ebb and flow of the natural world around him, letting the extant sensations of the present and the past merge. His paintings allow for a vibrant visual experience of an emotional connection to the animal kingdom, the spiritual realm and to landscape. Blending traditional Japanese roots with his free-spirited “go with flow” ethos, Negishi’s work explores the playfulness of art and examines his own fluid spirit through vibrant outbursts.

    Yuya Negishi is hot on the heels of assisting to create one of the most buzzed about murals of recent years – the towering kaleidoscopic portrait of Bob Dylan in downtown Minneapolis. His wide range of community-driven projects – live paintings and murals work, including a recent interactive mural at the Walker Art Center – are testaments to his exceptional eye for detail in motion and experience working with these au courant art mediums. His solo show at Gamut Gallery will harness his own desire for fluidity as well as highlight the gallery’s own affinity to adapt. This winter, Negishi will be journeying home to Japan for on a interdermintent hiatus, marking this exhibit as the last chance to view his works in a gallery setting in Minneapolis during 2015.

    The opening reception for Fluidity is the inaugural exhibition in Gamut Gallery’s new home in Elliot Park and doubles as the official grand opening. Festivities will include an impermanent outdoor mandala installation by Krista Beier and music by DJ CZU and DJ Seth, plus sake and refreshments sponsored by Fujiya, Origami and Pabst Blue Ribbon.

    ABOUT THE ARTIST

    Yuya Negishi is a Japanese visual artist based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was born in Showa Village, Gunma. Yuya draws artistic inspiration from the memories and sensations of growing up in the Japanese countryside, where he would roam “like a hidden Ninja” exploring the woods, temples and mountain tops of the breath-taking Gunma region. Since relocating to Minneapolis in 2010, Yuya has been a prolific member of the city’s artistic community, involving himself in a wide range of projects. He teaches Japanese artistic styles to students in grade school through college and participates in public art projects, murals, frequently exhibits work, and has a wide portfolio of commissioned work. He also does illustrations and often performs at live paintings events. His work combines his extensive background in the classical Japanese techniques of calligraphy and SUMI with Japanese pop culture images such as koi, dragons and Buddhas, and street-art techniques influenced by his years in urban America. www.yuyart.com

    UPCOMING EVENTS

    Yuya Negishi: Fluidity, Grand Opening of the New Gamut Gallery
    Saturday, November 14th, 7-11pm

    Fluidity Open Hours
    Thursday, November 19th, 3-7pm
    Friday, November 20th, 3-7pm
    Saturday, November 21st, 1-7 pm

    CoLab Art Night
    Thursday, November 19th, 7-11pm