CONTEMPORARY CLASSIC

September 12 - November 20, 2024

Contemporary Classic is a curated group exhibition featuring five artists whose work revisits and reimagines themes from art history. The show investigates the ways in which art connects to the world of its audience, exploring the idea that all history is art history, the ways in which art today always builds upon the art of yesterday, and the necessity of artistic challenges to historical narratives.

“In the show’s title, we use the word ‘classic’ – which does have a specific meaning and connotations within art history – as more of a play on words,” said Madeline McMahan, curator and assistant director at BAM. “We are using the word ‘classic’ the way a radio station would; the artwork in ‘Contemporary Classic’ explores many of art history’s ‘greatest hits’ – certainly not always its best moments, but some of its most influential.”

Due to the vastness of art history, the show narrows its focus to portraiture. Most of the artists are painters. Vitus Shell creates images of black community members that utilize the gold ground of Byzantine icons paired with collaged 20th century advertisements. Carlos Gámez de Francisco uses Photoshop-esque distortions and postmodernist absurdity to form his own whimsical take on the royal portrait. Angela Fraleigh appropriates women from art historical paintings and reimagines them in abstracted, utopian worlds of feminine community. Klaire Lockheart paints masculine “dudes” posed in the same positions as the odalisques of French orientalism, and Ayam Yaldo, the only non-painter in the exhibition, explores many of the 20th and 21st century consequences of that same orientalist propaganda with her video “Impossible Sites.” The video allows her to use the “magic carpet” of the green screen to explore Mesopotamian artifacts layered with footage from the Gulf War. Yaldo’s work also provides a disciplinary bridge between “Contemporary Classic” and its two companion exhibitions: “Meaningful Disruption” and “Overture.” These are exhibitions of portrait photography from artists Chantal Lesley and Benry Fauna.

View the exhibition catalog here.

Artists included in the exhibition are Vitus Shell, Angelia Fraleigh, Klaire Lockheart, Carlos Gamez de Franciso, and Ayam Yaldo.