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Shawn Burkard
Vaughn Davis
Conor Murphy
Nick Schleicher
Gallery of Contemporary Art at
Forest Park Community College
Saint Louis, MO
October 8th - November 1st, 2018
The Gallery of Contemporary Art at Forest Park Community College is pleased to announce a group exhibition featuring new works by Shawn Burkard, Vaughn Davis, Conor Murphy, and Nick Schleicher. All four artists have their own respective styles concerning practice and materials, however opposite, the unifying thread of this exhibition, is through various degrees of each artist's own investigations relating to topics of the significance of place, systems of actions, and social constructs. The works in this exhibition upends conventional assumptions about household hardware, beauty, consumption and the artistic subjectivity.
Shawn Burkard is a multimedia artist. His work includes abstract gradient paintings and emplors industries such as photographic digital printing. He engages with manufactured items and presents them formally. His work alludes to surf culture intertwined with particular culture of Instagram and uses it for inspiration as raw material. Burkard embraces and slants the cliches of today's “American Dream” as interpreted through the lens of Los Angeles, CA, the iPhone and Instagram influencers calculated “Brand” creation, as a fundamental online strategy.
Burkard holds a BA 2015 with emphasis on painting from Webster University in Saint Louis, MO and his MFA 2017 from the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in Saint Louis MO. His artwork has been exhibited at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Des Lee Gallery, Andrew Edlin Gallery New York (group exhibition), and Grease 3 Gallery. Burkard currently is resident artist at Granite City Arts and Design District, Granite City, IL.
Instagram @shawnburkard
The work of Vaughn Davis is frequently a synthesis of actions enacted by himself. Frequently cutting, dividing, filleting, fraying, slicing, splitting and tearing his dyed canvases reveal the aftermath of a premeditated process. Soaked in bright hues most surfaces contradict the post action. Davis received a BFA from Webster University in 2017 where he studied sculpture.
Recent exhibitions include Freedom: American Hustle, Arcade Contemporary Project, St. Louis, MO; Freestyle, Philip Slein Gallery, St. Louis, MO; Dwell In Other Futures, Pulitzer Arts Foundation, Saint Louis, MO; Kingz Pleazure III, Urb Arts, St Louis; This Won’t Last Long, Electro Pathologies Museum, Vienna Austria; Oppositions, The Luminary, St Louis, MO; and SHOW SHOW SHOW SHOW, a group pop up exhibition in Saint Louis, MO.
He currently lives and works in Saint Louis, MO.
Instagram @vaughnbattledavis
Conor Murphy’s recent work focuses on American consumerism by using common utilitarian materials that make up our built environments. By using minimalist gestures and abstracting materials typically found in hardware stores, his work asks the viewer to be conscious of the space they are in and how they interact with it. Murphy received his BFA in photography from Webster University in 2015 and is an MFA painting candidate at University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana.
Recent exhibitions include Screen Time, Granite City Art and Design District (2017)
Instagram: @lousycon
Nick Schleicher’s work ranges from a formalist approach to color field painting inspired by cosmology and popular culture to sculptural works that take form as monolithic shapes. Conceptually these works stimulate thoughts and theories of origin and significance of location. Schleicher received a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011 where he focused on painting and sculpture.
Recent solo exhibitions include 6 Paintings 9 Sculptures, Grease 3, Saint Louis, MO; .skin, PLAQUE at Granite City Art & Design District, Granite City, IL; Synthesizer, Hoffman LaChance Contemporary, Saint Louis, MO; and Vibration Process, The Millitzer Gallery, Saint Louis, MO. Selected group exhibitions include SHOW SHOW SHOW SHOW, a group pop up exhibition in Saint Louis, MO; Whitney Houston Biennial, Julius Caesar, Chicago, IL.
He currently lives and works in Saint Louis, MO.
Instagram @nickschleicherart