The art of Jenn and Frank Selby will be on exhibit through Nov. 7, with an opening reception tomorrow from 6-8 p.m.
The collaborative exhibition is called “There, Not There.”
The exhibition deals with the idea of narratives, both personal and cultural, and utilizes a wide variety of media and approaches. The works include photography, drawing, painting, large-scale video installation, and sculpture, combined to form a cohesive, thought-provoking whole.
The ghost story is one thing the artists explore. Part of the exhibit includes a video projection, “One After the Other,” which is a sequence of unidentified men and women giving their personal accounts of experiences with ghosts or the unexplained. These individuals have a variety of relationships to the stories that they tell: some seem to believe firmly that their experience was real and significant, others objectively relay another person’s experience, still others speak of a personal experience with complete ambiguity and a great deal of doubt.
Jenn Selby’s mysterious, powerful photographs, taken with an antique medium-format camera, ask the viewer to use his or her imagination and subjective response to unpack the images’ meaning.
Frank Selby’s drawings of text and imagery also make demands of the viewer. His images ó as carefully and accurately rendered are they are ó are presented in a way that makes them oddly out of context, untethered from any basis by which to interpret them.
Jenn Selby is a native of Salisbury. She received her bachelor’s degree from North Carolina State University in 2001. Upon graduation she relocated to London and in 2004 received her master of arts in fine arts from Central St. Martin’s College of Art and Design, where she specialized in analogue and digital lens-based media. She returned to North Carolina in 2005 and currently teaches fine art at Rowan Cabarrus Community College and Pfeiffer University. Jenn Selby has internationally exhibited her work in numerous solo and group shows in London, Berlin, and throughout the United States.
Born in Palm Springs, Calif., Frank Selby received his bachelor’s degree in fine arts from The University of New Mexico in 1998 and his master’s degree in fine arts from London’s Central St. Martins College of Art and Design in 2004 with an emphasis in painting and drawing. He is represented by Museum 52 in London and New York and Galerie JeanRoch Dard in Paris and has internationally exhibited his work in solo and group shows. Upcoming exhibitions include “A House That Will Never Be Built” at Galerie JeanRoch Dard (this month), “When I Grow Up” at Galerie JeanRochDard (October).
Jenn and Frank met in graduate school and married in April 2009. This is their first collaborative museum exhibition.
Jenn and Frank led a middle school residency in July that resulted in the works on display in the Young People’s Gallery.
With a group of 27 students selected from Rowan County’s middle schools, the idea of personal narrative and mythology was extended through a series of projects. The students employed the symbolic properties of color with paint, collage, sculpture and mixed-media artworks.
The primary project was the “Personal Mythology” shadow box, an environment designedto represent the personal mythology of each artist.
The young artists participating in the residency exhibition are Allana Ansbro, Joey Ashley, Katie Ashley, Joel Bates, Emily Baty, Allison Brindle, Katherine Carter, Alexandra Cheek, Michael Earnhardt, Sabrinah Hartsell, Ashlyn Heidt, Michael Jenkins, Zahra Khan, April Lamb, Veronica Leasure, Shannon Mitchell, Hannah Pressley, Elizabeth Riggsbee, Erin Roy, Jessica Roy, Amy Shank, Brendan Smith, Dillon Stevens, Samantha Thomas, Maria Weber, Elle Wimmer, and Samantha Wright.
Gallery hours are Monday ń Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Thursdays from 10 a.m.-7 p.m. and Saturdays, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Admission is free.
For more information, call 704-636-1882.