FEBRUARY 16 - 25, 2024
An ongoing project exploring the legacy, burden, and retrospective inspirations of recent decades of contemporary China and their implications for the existence of the artist. A duality manifests itself as the living conditions of the people gradually improve since the late 1970s where as a line of forgotten/hidden/erased events and history quietly evolve. Through distant tales, Wikipedia, and indirect underground literature, to know about a comprehensive history of the past (largely through these censored materials) has become itself a defiant behavior to this day in artist's home country. Departing from a personal collection of archival vernacular photographs purchased in China, the artist incorporated found literature, newspaper articles, and news footage stills to clash with the lives these characters chose to remember through the taking of vernacular photographs: their collective history, recent past, present, and future.
OPENING RECEPTION
FEB 16, FRIDAY
6-9 PM
92 ARTIST GROUP EXHIBITION
OF PEEL THEMED ART
Allison Tierney
Ann Thaden
Ash Lorusso
Audrey Dezern
Be Boggs
Becca Ibarra
Ben Alper
Ben Felton
Billy Morehouse
Bithersea
Bjorn Bates
Bob Goldstein
Bri Gribben
C. Bales, Star Reporter
Cait Schmitt
Chamomile Fleagle
Chieko Murasugi
Christiaan Lopez-Miro
Christy Vacca Wright
Cindy Morefield
Cindy Waszak Geary
Claire Kiester
Clover Ferrell
Crystal Silva
Cyd Gottlieb
Don Stevens
Elizabeth Pyle
Ella Mannion
Emily Eve Weinstein
Emma Stevens
Esmé Kerr
Eva Mannion
Gretchen Klein
Grey Von Cannon
Jaime Johnsen
Jenn Adams
Jenna Futrell
Jennifer Cantwell
Jess Lewis
Jimmy Fountain
John Shaw
Joseph Gu
Jphono1
Julia Nagle
Julie Rikkers
Kassidy Bradley
Lanna Read
Layla Wood
Lindsay Metivier
Lynda Curry
Madison Speyer
Marcela Slade
Markus Hill
Marsha Hoffman
Martin Molloy
Marty Rogers
Matthew Tauch
McKayla Walker
Meredith Haggerty
Michael McCue
Mimi Stockton
Myles Brown
Nicole Driscoll
Paget Fink
Paul Deblinger
Paula Siwek
Peter Marin
Polina Varlamova
Rachel Hill
Rendon Foy
Ron Liberti
Rob Votta
Ruta Schuller
Saba Jordan
Samasu Evans
Samir Knego
Sarah Joelle Holstein
Seraphina Ingledue
Shawn West Hoffman
Sophia Dominici
Sterling Bowen
Suzanne Bates
Taro Takizawa
Tonya Solley Thornton
Vincent Whitehurst
Wayne Marcelli
Will Rigby
Yi-Ting Chiu
This exhibition was shown in conjunction with the 2023 Click! Photo Festival
“…Sometimes the present is so present that we can't see it. Knowing that we can always point our camera at the things we can't really see and hope that when we look back years later we might find some fish in our nets. There's not a lot to be hopeful about at the moment, politically, economically, or environmentally. Frankly, the malls weren't too helpful in those regards, but if the images can connect people to their younger imagined selves, and that can make them feel joyful, or even a little bit hopeful, I’ll take that. In short, I hope you enjoy the show as much as I enjoy your enjoyment.” - excerpt from Michael Galinsky’s exhibition statement
SEPT 6 - OCT 1 2023
AMY HERMAN
UNTIL AND THEN AGAIN
SOMETIMES I NEED ONLY TO STAND WHEREVER I AM
TO BE BLESSED
Aug 9 - Sept 3, 2023
In this group show, three women artists are sharing their work that focuses on the natural world. Their images are complicated, engaging, filled with light and pattern, and concerned with making connections between nature, culture, and the unknowable.
Allegorical, primitive, personal, and political, Jamie McPhail’s mixed media encaustic work is inspired by the simple lines and forms of the natural world and the nuanced complexity and chaos of the human condition. Diana Borden is a photographer who shoots mainly outdoors, in natural light, taking inspiration from the stark sun and limestone creeks of central Texas. She’s also interested in the “landscapes within” that are hidden in plain sight on ordinary days in ordinary surroundings. And Megan Winget, a surface designer and textile artist working in Chapel Hill, is inspired by the interplay of light, color, space, and movement. Her designs are complicated and unique, and she is interested in translating the natural world into beautiful abstract forms that still convey meaning.
JULY 5TH - AUGUST 6TH, 2023
APPLIED FORCE
APPLIED FORCE is an exhibition of North Carolina based printmakers.
Screen Printing is an act of pressure -
pushing and pulling ink through mesh to layer color into image.
Beyond its standing reputation of being the visual zeitgeist of popular culture, screen printing can go beyond Warholian repetition and graphic line and letter. Within the canon of contemporary art practices, this medium gets pushed out to commercial arts and merchandise more times than included in any fine art category. There can be solely a visual purpose behind this practice, and it can be as fine as the mesh it uses. We don’t all print T-Shirts.
Curated by Mimi Stockton
ARTISTS:
Beth Grabowski ✦ @segrabow
Bill Fick ✦ @linobill
Bob Goldstein ✦ @bob__goldstein
Brie Kane ✦ @briekane
Chieko Murasugi ✦ @cmurasugi
Christopher Williams ✦ @plasticflame
Dominick Rapone ✦ @dominickrapone
Georgia Paige Welch ✦ @paigewelchart
Matthew Tauch ✦ @matthewtauch
Raj Bunnag ✦ @jungle_asian_redneck
Robby Poore ✦ @biovarg
Ron Liberti ✦ @ron_liberti
opening reception
2nd Friday + July 14th + 6-9PM
LIVE SCREEN PRINTING! LIVE MUSIC! DRINKS! & ART
Pals at Peel will showcase the creative connections that exist across the Triangle area between artists who all share one common passion: skateboarding. The exhibit explores the unique perspective that skateboarders possess with respect to their physical environments, represented across a wide range of mediums. When the entirety of the built world around you presents itself as a blank canvas for kinetic, full-bodied expression, what creative impulses are left over to gratify afterwards?
OPENING RECEPTION
2nd Friday + June 9th + 6-9PM
CLOSING RECEPTION
Sunday + July 2nd + 3-5PM
MAP OF MY CHILDHOOD
ANNA-CHRISTINA DE LA IGLESIA
May 10 - June 4, 2023
“Map of My Childhood” is a series of abstract paintings that focus on specific moments, charged with feeling and memory. They are an exploration and discovery of being “home”, and the anxiety of leaving it.
The question “How do you put a frame around a feeling and a memory?” led to placing large rectangular fields of color to vibrate against each other on the canvas and to allowing the (painted) frame to be part of the composition itself. Creating a surface without texture resulted in an even further distillation of the emotions of everyday events.
Together, the paintings create a metaphorical map of the past.
Anna-Christina De La Iglesia is a painter and writer living and working in central North Carolina. Her work is collected internationally, from Prague to Texas. She has been painting since 2015 and studying privately with David Michael Slonim since 2020. Anna-Christina earned a Masters in Creative Writing from Hollins University as well as a BS in Business from Kenan Flagler Business School, UNC-Chapel Hill.
See more of her work at annachristinastudio.com and @annachristinastudio.
OPENING RECEPTION
2nd Friday Art Walk
May 12th from 6-9pm
LIVE PERFORMANCES BY ENTREZ VOUS, SWEET HOME, & PINK WAVES!
BAGELS & BELLINIS // CLOSING RECEPTION
SUNDAY, JUNE 4TH @ 3-5PM
JOIN US TO CELEBRATE ANOTHER SUCCESSFUL EXHIBITION!
THERE WILL BE A HOSTED Q&A WITH THE ARTIST FOLLOWED BY AN OPEN DISCUSSION ABOUT HER WORK.
CATERING PROVIDED BY BRANDWEIN’S BAGELS & SOME BELLINIS TO TOP IT OFF
On view April 14 - May 7, 2023 with opening reception on Friday, April 14th from 6-9pm.
Closing Reception Sunday, May 7th from 2-5 with artist talks.
This web we’ve spun is not a trap. Here are the telltale signs: life under highways and in gun clubs and in mountains shedding their names: food and food and food. This web we’ve spun is not a trap—it’s a cocoon. “Pull up the boards and you shall see,” a tell-tale heart beats inside.
A Tell Tale is an exhibition of narrative artworks that speak emergently from our contemporary moment. Spanning a variety of mediums, the work of Mark Anthony Brown Jr, Molly English, Matthew Troyer, and Vera Weinfield seeks to explore, uncover, and interpret a range of experiences, telling tales of what transformation is forming just under the surface.
OPENING RECEPTION FRIDAY, MARCH 10, 6-9 PM
Something In The Water is a collection of textile works that operate as a theoretical and spatial exploration of consciousness, belief systems, and transformation. Utilizing indigo dyeing and twill weaving as well as manufactured denim, the materiality of the exhibition is simultaneously one of vulnerability and progression through the metaphor of cloth. The movement of weaving mimics that of the ocean’s tides - pendular, merciless. Referring to biblical anecdotes of water, the formal language in this autobiographical exhibition antagonizes the nature of indoctrination and its underlying uncertainty.
MARCH 5 - APRIL 8, 2023
Kimberly English lives and works in western North Carolina as a teaching artist. She earned her BFA in Fibers as a Distinguished Scholar from Savannah College of Art and Design and her MFA in Studio Art subsequently. Her work has been exhibited widely, recently through Vox Populi, Museum of Craft and Design, and the Ackland Museum at UNC Chapel Hill.
JAN 5 - FEB 5, 2023
OPENING RECEPTION FRIDAY, JANUARY 13 6PM - 9PM
Unnatural Bodies showcases the mixed media work of Kathryn Desplanque and Grey Von Cannon, two queer artists exploring their relationship to gender expression, queerness, femininity and the femme, and liminality. Both artists explore their relationship to the body and to embodiment by using disorienting strategies to approach embodiment obliquely, imbueing their work with a surreality and an alienness - an unnaturalness - that speaks to their experience of liminality and their advocacy for queerness as a holistic strategy for reshaping relations.
NOVEMBER 25,2022 - JANUARY 1, 2023
Paget Fink // Carson Whitmore // Jenn Adams // Reid Haithcock // McKayla Walker // Malina Chavez // Lee Nisbet // Jphono1 // Maya Rampel // Shawn West Hoffman // Becca Ibarra // Ella Kiley // Payton Kaeding // Angela Eastman // Jason Lord // Bjorn Bates // Kennedy Hall // Emma Stevens // Meredith Haggerty // Ash Lorusso // Rachel Moon // Phia Dearing // Anna-Christina De La Iglesia // Pat Perrin // Audrey Dezern // Martin Molloy // Krystal Boney // Jimmy Fountain // Kassidy Bradley // Samir Knego // Allison Tierney // Lynn Masters // Bob Goldstein // Carolyn Rhinebarger // Isabella Losskarn // Jenna Futrell // Grey Von Cannon // Mimi Stockton // Madison Speyer // Lynda Stuart Curry // Esmé Kerr // John Shaw // Saba Jordan // Renzo Ortega // Georgia Paige Welch // Azure Mignon // Jiahn Kang // Calder Brown // June Nam // Isabella Gamez // Alex Bee // Pipa Cudahy // Don Stevens // Gadisse Lee // Marsha Hoffman // Edward Max Fendley // Brandon Hoskinson // Larissa Wood // Jennifer Cantwell // Rainey Scarborough // Danielle Daly // Rachel Hill // Chieko Murasugi // Cyd Gottlieb // Emily Eve Weinstein
MAKE // TAKE is an exhibition of photographic works by North Carolina-based image makers, curated by gallerist and photographer Lindsay Metivier of Peel Gallery + Photo Lab. The exhibition title evokes the conversation about whether or not photographs are made or taken. Semantically, you typically take something that already exists, whereas you make something new. Perhaps photographs with heavy post-production editing have been made and those straight out of the printer or darkroom are taken? Maybe we take photographs documenting reality, the everyday, or to use as memory objects while we make photographs intentionally arranging elements in the frame or altering the image after it’s been taken? Jimmy Fountain, Gadisse Lee, Lee Nisbet, and Cornell Watson each approach the creation of their photographic images in unique ways.
This photographic exhibition is presented in conjunction with the Click! Photography Festival which celebrates the medium and its cultural influence by engaging the photography community with exceptional photo-based works, artists, and programming.
Block Gallery October 5th, 2022 -January 20th, 2023 [Reception Friday, October 7th from 5:30-7pm]
Peel Gallery October 1st - November 20th, 2022 [Reception is on Friday, October 14th from 6-8pm]
SKINS OF NATURE
JULY 8 - AUGUST 21, 2022
EVERYWARE: COSMIC RAYS DIGITAL
March 1 – April 2nd, 2022
OPENING RECEPTION:
Friday, March 11th 6–9pm
CLOSING RECEPTION:
Saturday, April 2nd 6–8pm
EVERYWARE: COSMIC RAYS DIGITAL is a selection of Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and interactive artworks by national, international, and North Carolina-based artists which will be installed at Peel Gallery (708 W. Rosemary St., Carrboro, NC) from March 1st - April 2nd, 2022.
EVERYWARE critically engages with the new media technologies that surround us while investigating digital forms of privacy, identity, and nature.
“The Triangle is a growing technology hub and our region’s cultural art offerings should reflect the impact of emerging media technologies.”
- Sabine Gruffat
ARTISTS:
Bassam Al-Sabah
Joelle Dietrick and Owen Mundy
Matthew Gantt
Claudia Hart
Jason Isolini
Shasti O'Leary Soudant
Elly Vadseth & Boris Kourtoukov
Richard Michael Haley
Kristin Lucas
LIVE AUDIOVISUAL PERFORMANCES:
Brent Coughenor
Governance (Quran Karriem and Rebecca Uliasz)
COSMIC RAYS DIGITAL celebrates artists working with emerging digital media technologies. It is a brand-new programming initiative of the COSMIC RAYS FILM FESTIVAL which is co-directed by local artists and filmmakers Sabine Gruffat and Bill Brown, and will take place from March 31st - April 2nd, 2022.
For more information, please visit www.cosmicraysfilmfest.com.
Left Image: Bassam Al-Sabah Image Still from I am Error, 2021. Courtesy of the Artist
THE EARTH MAKES US
PAUL ESTRADA & SABA JORDAN
SCULPTURES, PRINTS, AND PAINTINGS
ON VIEW JANUARY 14TH-FEBRUARY 27TH, 2022
RECEPTION FEBRUARY 11TH, 2022 6-9PM
The Earth Makes Us, an artistic celebration of the artists’ interconnectedness and collective harmony; creating space for diverse perspectives and identities in a rapidly changing world.
PEELIN’ IN
THE YEARS
A GROUP EXHIBITION OF “PEEL” THEMED ARTWORKS CELEBRATING PEEL’S ONE YEAR BIRTHDAY
DECEMBER 10 - JANUARY 2ND
OPENING RECEPTION FRIDAY, DEC 10 6-9PM
*MASKS MANDATORY!
Looking forward to seeing you all on Friday, December 10th from 6-9pm! Masks mandatory! Refreshments will be served In the parking lot.
ARTISTS INCLUDE:
Jenn Adams
Margaret Albaugh
Charron Andrews
Ryan Arthurs
Sean Bailey
Alex Bajuniemi
Nicole Berland
Jenna Billian
Mark Blanchard
Annie Blazejack & Levenson
JoJo Bonnici
Maria Britton
Jesse Brown
Marissa Butler
Rachel Campbell
Austin Cathey
Coleman Churchill
Jaina Cipriano
Allison Coleman
Lynda Curry
Emma Dickson
Galen Draper
Adam Edmundson
Jenny Eggleston
Paget Fink
Sarah Frisbie
Michael Galinsky
Ria Garcia
Bob Goldstein
Patrick Gookin
John Gossage
Caroline Golden Kirkland
BRGoldstein
Rick Grime
Sabine Gruffat
Meredith Haggerty
Isys Hennigar
Wilson Herlong
Rachel Hill
Tama Hochbaum
Joel Hopler
Adrianne Huang
Marissa Marie Iamartino
John Wiley Johnson Jr.
Jphono1
Izabela Jurcewicz
Jiahn Kang
Samir Knego
Jess Lewis
Tiffany Luong
Wayne Marcelli
Susan Martin
Lynn Masters
Reneesha Mccoy
Lindsay Metivier
Fred Mitchell
Matthew Monteith
McClain Percy
Katie Prock
Marie Rossettie
Eric Ruby
David Ryan
SCB
John Colin Shaw
Marcela Slade
Nico Smith
Ed Speas
Alina Taalman
Allison Tierney
Guillaume Tomasi
Derek Toomes
Elizabeth Trefney
Grey Von Cannon
Robert R. Votta
Joe Westerlund
*Poster by Max Huffman
TRUTH IN THE TIME OF COVID
CHIEKO MURASUGI
OCTOBER 22 - NOV 28TH
OPENING RECEPTION FRIDAY, NOV 12TH 6-9PM
Peel is pleased to present Truth in the Time of COVID, a show of abstract collage paintings by Chieko Murasugi. Conceived amid the COVID19 lockdown, her works respond to current ideological and temporal forces by creating tension between formal and material elements. Employing visual illusions and painterly forms reminiscent of puzzle pieces, Murasugi constructs a diverse and optimistic unity. Given the current barrage of discordant views about what is fact or fiction, this is an opportune moment to ponder, and strive to resolve—what is truth/true?
Chieko Murasugi was born in Tokyo, raised in Toronto, and based in San Francisco for 20 years before moving to North Carolina in 2012. She has degrees in Experimental Psychology (BA McGill, Ph.D. York U) and Studio Art (BFA York U, MFA UNC-Chapel Hill). She has exhibited her work in galleries and museums in California, New York, and in the American South where her paintings reside in the public collections of the City of Raleigh and Duke University. Recently, she was awarded a Hambidge Center Residency and an Artist Support Grant from the North Carolina Arts Council. She is a co-founder and co-curator of BASEMENT, a provisional, artist-run project space in Chapel Hill, NC.
This project was supported by the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, and Durham Arts Council, local grants administrator.
POST-HUMAN
BOB GOLDSTEIN
Statement by the artist:
"The pandemic gave me a lot of time sitting in one place, working from home alongside my family, our dog, and our chickens. On weekends I went to my shed-studio and screen printed homemade public service announcements about pandemic safety. My son and I posted them publicly late at night. And I worried about the future. At times our chickens walked into the shed, and eventually, they crept into the artwork.
This work imagines a near-future in which humans have failed to save the earth for future generations. Pandemics, global warming, and our own divisiveness have finally eliminated us. But this imagined apocalypse comes with a silver lining: the earth will probably be just fine. Animals and plants will survive and perhaps even thrive in our absence. The animals that we’ve domesticated, like chickens, just might need to move indoors.
My artwork often involves subtle levity in the face of serious or dire situations. Humor has a long history of helping people rethink entrenched ideas, by circumventing naturally defensive responses to more direct forms of confrontation. And humor can sometimes make real, human connections across broad divides.
The technical stuff: Most of the art in the show began by building imagined scenes using photography and digital collage. I then re-created the scenes in multiple-layer screen prints of lines, fields of color, and stipples, including stippled textures generated by a homemade computer algorithm, with additional watercolor and pochoir added by hand. Two of the pieces in the show are photogravure prints.
Bob Goldstein (b. 1967) is an artist and a scientist. He runs an active research lab at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he is a Distinguished Professor in the Biology Department. Goldstein co-teaches with artist Beth Grabowski an unusual cross-disciplinary studio art and lab course for art and science students, Art & Science: Merging Printmaking and Biology.
PAST EXHIBITIONS
SELF.ABSORB / JESS LEWIS
JULY 9 - AUG 28
Statement from the artist:
In 2020, I had an abundance of time to think about myself, whereas before, I had only a somewhat above-average amount of time to think about myself. Now I could really stew in me; take a solipsistic soak, if you will.
What better time to look inward than when looking outward is so stupefying?
It seems to me that our social and cultural moment demands constructive introspection while equally valuing and rewarding self-absorption. I am striving to represent that in my work, through a process of scrolling and saving, drawing, and painting. Being primarily a fan of illustration, the ‘cartoonish’ style of my paintings established itself and endured without any real thought, but I have a strong attachment to and affection for the characters I portray. The creation of this personal visual language provides me with indulgent purpose and fulfillment—after all, being strange and funny is important to me as a person and as an artist.
I use computer-based illustration software to collage and manipulate images from books, magazines, art, and my own photos, but mostly from the internet at large. Old treasured tumblrs (consumeconsume.com), stills from FAIL vids, whatever Pinterest wants to spit out when I search “80’s cig ads”. To create the environments around my characters, I use found materials such as magazine clippings, photos, and thrifted fabrics. The framed glass hotel art materials that I repurpose are freshly picked from local organic thrift stores and yard sales. I love how using printed materials behind the painted glass gives the appearance of just the slightest amount of depth.
Bio
Jess Lewis (b. 1982) is a self-guided artist based in Durham, NC. Influenced by the uncanny hodge-podge and memes of the early Internet era, Lewis’s work plays on a tension between flattened absurdities and a messy emotional interconnectedness, permeated by pop-culture references. Her practice is nurtured by personally iconic imagery wrested equally from IRL memory and animated GIFs.
Lewis seeks to create works fraught with levity. She employs an efficient linear style and bold colors—evocative of cel animation—to confront the psychological turmoil of the Absurd. Primarily utilizing reverse glass painting and collage techniques, Lewis creates surreal composites with a combination of acrylics, printed fabrics, and manipulated found digital images.
Prior to moving to Durham, Lewis served for seven years as the Administrative Officer at the Permanent Observer Mission of the Sovereign Order of Malta the United Nations (New York). In an altogether drastic pivot, she left the UN for the music industry, managing significant domestic and international concert tours since 2012.
FINALLY NO COVER
An art show and launch party for the release of COVER NOT FINAL, a graphic novelette by Max Huffman. Original pages from the book will be on display from June 28th to July 6th. Opening reception and book release party July 2nd 6pm-9pm!
In this collection of intertwined stories, paranoid conspiracy and soft-boiled noir bubbles under every aspect of daily life— and at the center of it all is Career Criminal, the tuxedo'd conduit between our square world and its cosmic underbelly.
"It doesn’t take a decoder ring to understand these comics, just a willingness to accept the high velocity...It’s the first time in ages I’ve read a comic book that seemed to articulate a comedic voice that was new and unique to itself" - The Comics Journal
LOCAL PRODUCE
MAY 14 - JUNE 27
Opening Reception: Friday, May 14, 6-8 pm
Featured Artists: Charles Chace, Kimberly English, Jimmy Fountain, Chieko Murasugi, Jengiz Mahir Musavi, and Louis Watts
Curated by Lindsay Metivier
Peel is delighted to present its inaugural exhibition, Local Produce, featuring work by six North Carolina-based artists.
Each participant’s work speaks to questions of identity, history, process, and materials, rooted in a shared locale, but with distinct lenses. Kimberly English’s textile-based practice is informed by her research into the history of global industry. Taking the garment industry as a microcosm of human production, her work employs contemporary labor theory and transforms everyday cloth through subtractive sartorial techniques.
Chieko Murasugi uses the language of abstraction to challenge simplistic interpretations of identities and histories. Mining and synthesizing diverse histories, materials, and artistic influences through her Japanese-Canadian-American perspective, she creates works that defy, especially Orientalist stereotypes and tropes.
Jengiz Mahir Musavi was born in the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan. Since age 34, Musavi has accumulated a collection of paintings, with no previous formal training, working on multiple pieces simultaneously, employing his fingers directly on the canvas, to allow for a direct transmission of inspiration from his soul.
Louis Watts' work evokes what he terms “a quiet beauty” capturing “moments often missed in the routine of everyday work”. Foregrounding repetition and intention, Watts has slowed the customary pace of his practice, resulting in novel insights regarding the consequences of creative processes.
Emphasizing the locally produced, Chapel Hill native, Jimmy Fountain’s analog C-Print was shot in the parking lot behind Peel, in 2005. The image is from Fountain’s “Now It’s Dark” series, works all made at night and characterized by large fields of darkness interspersed with industrial lights.
Isolation and mystery are central to Charles Chace’s collage work. The subjects in his collages, whether pictorial or textual, are intentionally chosen to grab the attention of the viewer, eliciting a range of responses.
The exhibition will be on view from May 14th until June 27th. Viewing hours are 12-7 Wednesday-Sunday and by appointment. For more information please contact Lindsay Metivier at peel.carrboro@gmail.com.
PAST EXHIBITIONS
2011-2021
