Paper Weight

Conduit Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Paper Weight, a group exhibition of works on paper curated by Stephen Lapthisophon. The artists in the exhibition are current and recent students of Lapthisophon's from both the University of Texas Arlington and Southern Methodist University.

This is an exhibition of drawings. Not necessarily drawings of things but more drawings as things. The show presents drawings demonstrating their presence as a record of an activity—an engagement with paper, mark making, line, material and the act of the hand. Although not always made of traditional materials and paper, the works all engage the process of hand, tool, surface and mark.

Although the works in the exhibition address a variety of issues—language, power, home, race and culture—they share an attention to scale and the reach of the body in making a drawing. The works are constructed, burned, rubbed, pinned, compressed and arranged through and engagement with surface, space, idea and the weight of paper.

Christine Adame – MFA candidate, University of Texas Arlington
Christine Adame is an intermedia artist from Laredo, Texas. Her most recent works on paper are driven by a desire to record the sensitivities of the body to emotional transition. She explores this through imprints of her own body and charcoal applied to builder’s paper.

Lindsey Brown - MFA candidate, University of Texas Arlington
Lindsey Brown is an MFA Candidate in Intermedia Studio and Visual Communication Design at The University of Texas at Arlington and Founder and Editor in Chief of Dinnertime Magazine. As an interdisciplinary intermedia artist, curator, collaborator, and self-publisher, her activities and work revolve around the process and visualization of research. She questions established systems of culture, politics, gender, power structures, and utopian ideals to understand how each of those things affect people at large. The process of collecting information and presenting it in forms that are more accessible is the driving force behind every project that she works on.

Mason Bryant – earned a BFA at University of Texas Arlington and an MFA from Texas Christian University in 2016.

Ashley Cooper –BFA candidate, University of Texas Arlington

Josh Dryk – earned an MFA, University of Texas Arlington in 2015
Joshua Dryk earned an MFA in Intermedia Studio Art, University of Texas at Arlington in 2015 and a BFA in Photography, Texas Woman's University in 2014. In 2015, he was awarded the McDowell Travel Research Grant from the McDowell Foundation.

Spencer Evans - MFA candidate, University of Texas Arlington
“The aim of my work is to contextualize the issue of (skin) color based on my experience. My choice of clothing and dramatic poses in the work is used to reference issues of identity and image within the Black community. My work is also used as a means to create an emotional pull within the viewer that may lead to open discourse, which strengthens the level of understanding of those who are completely oblivious to a world of experiences and circumstances that affect the everyday lives of an entire demographic.“

                                                                                                                    - Spencer Evans, 2016

Cor Fahringer – MFA candidate, University of Texas Arlington
Cor Fahringer is a sculptor and performance artist currently residing in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Originally from Florida, he received his BFA in Sculpture from the University of Tampa. He is currently entering his third year in the MFA Intermedia Studio program at the University of Texas at Arlington. He has been featured as an LGBT art in the 21st century in the publication Art Appreciation: American Diversity and Global Arts by Dr. Pamela Merril Brekka. Fahringer’s work utilize materials that are both temporary in nature and have a direct relation to the physical body, such as lard, leaves, flowers, tree limbs and ashes. In using these materials, he hopes to remind his audience of the fragility of the human condition.

Diamond Gray – earned an MFA at Southern Methodist University in 2016
Gray engages the black female body through research. She produces drawings and videos that investigate characteristics of blackness and whiteness as they are represented in various media. This work confronts emotions of indignation, confusion and sorrow. Diamond Gray lives and works in Dallas,Texas.

Billi London-Gray - MFA candidate, University of Texas Arlington
Billi London-Gray is a Dallas-based artist. She creates drawings, prints, videos, poetry, installations and events that explore rules, systems and personal interactions. With Daniel Bernard Gray, she co-directs Zosima Gallery, an itinerant exhibition project. She earned a B.A. in Theology fromCriswellCollegeinDallasand an M.A. in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. She is currently pursuing an M.F.A. in Intermedia Studio at The University of Texas at Arlington. Her work has been shown throughout the United States, including exhibitions at the University Galleries at Texas State University, the Amarillo Museum of Art, Northern-Southern (Austin), the Bridge Gallery at Denver Seminary, Clinton Street Theater (Portland), Petrified Forest National Park (Arizona), and Phoenix Gallery (New York). She is the recipient of the San Marcos Arts Advocacy Award from the San Marcos Arts Commission, the Innovative Award for Visual Arts from the Charles T. McDowell Center at The University of Texas at Arlington, and the Ideas in Art Award from the James S. Barnett Jr. Foundation. Her first international solo exhibition, "ABANDON/CONTROL," will open July 2 at Residencia Corazón in La Plata, Argentina.

Madison Samas – earned a BFA at University of Texas Arlington in 2016
Born in Mansfield, Texas, Madison Samas earned a BFA at University of Texas Arlington in 2016 where she was awarded Outstanding Senior in Drawing, and the Highest Honors Award from 2012-2016.

Stephen Lapthisophon earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1979.
Stephen Lapthisophon is a Dallas based artist and educator working in the field of conceptual art, critical theory, and disability studies. Lapthisophon earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1979. His early work combined poetry, performance, sound art, and visual arts with postmodern philosophical concerns. He was also influenced by the legacy of the Situationists, who sought to make everyday life a focus of artistic activity.

He has taught at Columbia College in Chicago, the School of the Art Institute, and the University of Texas at Dallas. He currently teaches art and art history at The University of Texas at Arlington.

Recent exhibitions include; Longhouse Projects,New York,NY(2014); the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX (2013), Goss Michael Foundation, with DB14, Dallas, TX (2014); La Box, Bourges, France(2014); Koncertkirken, Copenhagen, Denmark (2014), the sound art video festivak, Rostrum, Malmo, Sweden (2014), Actual Size LA, Los Angeles, CA (2013), A Slender Gamut, NY, NY (2012), Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL(2011), El Escaparate, Barcelona, Spain (2009), and Zagreus Projekt, Berlin, Germany (2008). Recent group exhibitions include, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX (2012), SHOW Studio, London, UK (2011), and Archival Impulse, Gallery 400, University of Illinois Chicago, Chicago, IL (2011). His work has been written about in ARTFORUM, Frieze, Art in America, Art News, New Art Examiner, BOMB, and ART LIES. In 2014 Lapthisophon was named one of the 100 Dallas Creatives by the Dallas Observer and one of the featured Dallas 40 in DMagazine.