Rontherin Ratliff, Captivity, 2019
Duality
ARTISTS / CO-CURATORS - Rondell Crier, Rontherin Ratliff, and Monica Tyran
August 27th - November 20th, 2021
Opening: August 27th, 6 - 9 PM
Duality explores the positive and negative spaces in life, between lines and in lived experiences. It is a subjective look at balance and lack thereof existing in dualities such as love and hate, peace and violence, life and death, black and white, courageousness and complicity, visible and invisibility. As with the dual nature of every story and the simple and complex decisions that define its vantage point, the artwork takes an internal and external look at life.
Artist Bios/Statements
Rondell Crier (b. 1975, New Orleans) is based in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His life revolves around creativity, not just in practicing visual art forms, but also by using creative energy as a means to support and inspire communities. He approaches art-making completely open to working with various methods, processes, and materials, understanding that with more skills and knowledge he can better imagine, design, and fabricate unique artworks. As important as it is for him to practice art, it is equally important to discover how to engage communities in the art-making process, and identify how his creativity can investigate solutions towards combatting social injustices. His hybrid-creative role includes art-making, arts advocacy, mentorship, community arts, and cultural leadership, all identified as a social art practice. Embracing his culture of weaving together practice and engagement for social change creates artwork that speaks its own language.
Monica Tyran is a screenprinter/printmaker and arts administrator who was born and raised in New Orleans. She creates illustrations and printed goods that reflect her imagination and formative imagery connected to her upbringing and family memories. She studied screenprinting and printmaking at Penland School of Arts & Crafts and letterpress & bookmaking at San Francisco Center for the Book. Her work has been exhibited at the New Orleans Community Printshop, Contemporary Arts Center, and Stella Jones Gallery in New Orleans. Tyran earned a BA in Visual Arts from Dillard University and a MA in Arts Administration from the University of New Orleans.
Rontherin Ratliff is a mixed media sculptor. His work focuses on ideas of balance and the human condition. He blends functionality, aesthetics, context, and associations to address subjects of loneliness, loss, homesickness, memory, and the burdens we carry. For Ratliff, it’s steps of a journey in search of the equilibrium existing or nonexistent amidst life and art. Ratliff examines the metaphor of the body as a house where the mind dwells. Feeling at home or in harmony within including home as one's origin or domestic place. The work questions the sociocultural constructed concepts of self. With it, he contemplates reservations regarding home as a safe-haven where one experiences positive qualities such as security and comfort. Using architectural materials and domestic objects, his work explores the notion of internal versus external balance.