Baralaye / Rosch: In Time
June 28th – July 28th 2019
Reception Saturday, June 29th 6-9 pm
The Great Highway Gallery is excited to present Baralaye / Rosch: In Time. Window Installation, sculpture and paintings by Ebitenyefa Baralaye and Brion Nuda Rosch.
About the Exhibition
In the summer of 2018, Brion Nuda Rosch invited Ebitenyefa Baralaye to collaborate with him as a part of an informal series of short residencies. Both artists brought to the residency and experimental playfulness and fluidly open dialogue that intersected interests in sculpture, painting, and spoken narratives. The result has been an ongoing exchange of ideas, shared reflections on art practice within evolving contexts of life, and responsive explorations in form and media. A loosely defined but mindful structure continues to make this collaboration productive; its main and most active variable has proved to be the element of time: time as a tool in the processing of clay and paint; time as a landscape for shared dialogue and individual meditation on ideas; and time as a flexible construct for containing, extending, and mediating the output of art production. Baralaye and Rosch will present collaborative and individually composed works that are the product of their ongoing investigations in clay, canvas, and time.
Artist Statements
Ebitenyefa Baralaye – As a generation, we have become increasingly used to juggling in a moment multiple understandings of where we come from, where we are and the futures we are intended for. I use art as a way to deconstruct and expand that moment. I produce compositions in the form of installations and objects that are markers of identity, place, and state, and the fluid dynamics around them. I layer spirituality, culture, context, utility, and desire into works that navigate and rest in between definitions and operate as recorders of time.
Brion Nuda Rosch – My arrangements and compositions are performed following considered movements, and these are confirmed within a defined set of rules. Simple conclusions are developed from banal starting points – paint a face with three parts – paint a nose far too large or an ear – paint a large clock with too many numbers – paint a grid – a calendar. Time. Trip out. Time, trips, forms, places, spaces, materials, objects, habits, movements, language, color.
About the Artists
Ebitenyefa Baralaye is a ceramicist, sculptor, and designer. His work explores cultural, spiritual, and material translations of form/objects, text, and symbols interpreted through a diaspora lens and abstracted around the aesthetics of craft and design. Baralaye received a BFA in Ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA in Ceramics from the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Baralaye was an Emerging Artists Program recipient at the Museum of the African Diaspora in 2017 and an AICAD Teaching Fellow at the San Francisco Art Institute from 2016 to 2018. He is currently an Assistant Professor and Section Head of Ceramics at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit.
Brion Nuda Rosch lives and works in San Francisco, a self taught artist and curator, he has exhibited his work at Et al., San Francisco; Halsey McKay, New York; DCKT Contemporary, New York; ACME., Los Angeles; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; and The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. Recent curatorial projects include OK GREAT THANKS THIS IS SO RIDICULOUS, at ACME. and DCKT. He has also organized exhibitions and projects for SFMOMA’s Open Space, Adobe Books, as well as his residential gallery, Hallway Projects and One-Day Residency Program. Rosch was an artist-in-residence at UC Berkeley’s Ceramics Department. SFMOMA SECA Finalist in 2011, he was the recipient of the Artadia Award in 2009.
