Curtis Gannon in Conversation with Jessica Campbell
Feb 6, 2016
Saturday, February 27 at 4pm, THE MISSION
Please join us at 4pm on Saturday, February 27 for an artist talk with Chicago-based artist Jessica Campbell and THE MISSION’s Curtis Gannon for a discussion about the influence of comics on artistic practice.
Gannon omits storylines and signifiers from the sourced content and preserves the distinctive, iconic qualities of the comic book page — grids, thought and voice bubbles, and vibrant hues. Cutting by hand, Gannon extracts these elements from the page and creates superimposed assemblages. Void of narrative and figurative representations, Gannon builds his collages referencing the patterns and motifs found within various templates of comic book design. The fragility of the medium is evident in his floating, framed collages, and continues to appear palpable in Cosmos #2, an installation of 60 suspended glass vials filled with strips from comic book pages. The illusive weightlessness of the installation mimics the boundless, physics-defying elements of the science fiction genre.
CURTIS GANNON received a BFA in Painting from the University of Houston and received an MFA in Painting from San Diego State University. Recent solo exhibitions include Never Enough at the Galveston Arts Center (Galveston, TX), Remnants of Yesterday/Fragments of Tomorrow at THE MISSION (Houston, TX) and Urban Myths at Beeville Art Museum (Beeville, TX).
JESSICA CAMPBELL has exhibited work in Canada, the US, Australia and Greece, was selected as one of NewCity’s 2015 breakout artists, and teaches comics studio and history classes at SAIC and DePaul. She is a member of the Chicago-based comics collective Trubble Club, has published comics with micro press Oily Comics, and contributed to Drawn & Quarterly: Twenty-Five Years of Contemporary Cartooning, Comics, and Graphic Novels. Her book, Hot or Not: 20th-Century Male Artists, is forthcoming from Koyama Press (Fall 2016).
Please join us at 4pm on Saturday, February 27 for an artist talk with Chicago-based artist Jessica Campbell and THE MISSION’s Curtis Gannon for a discussion about the influence of comics on artistic practice.
Gannon omits storylines and signifiers from the sourced content and preserves the distinctive, iconic qualities of the comic book page — grids, thought and voice bubbles, and vibrant hues. Cutting by hand, Gannon extracts these elements from the page and creates superimposed assemblages. Void of narrative and figurative representations, Gannon builds his collages referencing the patterns and motifs found within various templates of comic book design. The fragility of the medium is evident in his floating, framed collages, and continues to appear palpable in Cosmos #2, an installation of 60 suspended glass vials filled with strips from comic book pages. The illusive weightlessness of the installation mimics the boundless, physics-defying elements of the science fiction genre.
CURTIS GANNON received a BFA in Painting from the University of Houston and received an MFA in Painting from San Diego State University. Recent solo exhibitions include Never Enough at the Galveston Arts Center (Galveston, TX), Remnants of Yesterday/Fragments of Tomorrow at THE MISSION (Houston, TX) and Urban Myths at Beeville Art Museum (Beeville, TX).
JESSICA CAMPBELL has exhibited work in Canada, the US, Australia and Greece, was selected as one of NewCity’s 2015 breakout artists, and teaches comics studio and history classes at SAIC and DePaul. She is a member of the Chicago-based comics collective Trubble Club, has published comics with micro press Oily Comics, and contributed to Drawn & Quarterly: Twenty-Five Years of Contemporary Cartooning, Comics, and Graphic Novels. Her book, Hot or Not: 20th-Century Male Artists, is forthcoming from Koyama Press (Fall 2016).