Exhibition details
On display March 24 – April 15, 2023
March 24 – April 15, 2023
Location
Project Space
Reception
Lecture
Frederick Wright Jones, A Blueprint for Survival- There are No Screams in Space, 2021, 8x2x2ft
Works on display
Growing up a light-skinned African-American and then living as a foreigner in Germany, the home of his life companion, motivates the work of Frederick Wright Jones. The uniqueness of each place, the parallels and slight cultural shift between New and Old Worlds—Europe, with its varied levels of reconciliation with past atrocities, and America with its history split along color lines—leaves Frederick floating in the Atlantic. He is inspired by the utilitarian and the folk: religious reliquaries, merchandise, illustration, and propaganda. He takes the canons of the institutions, the dream state of the West, weaving these with folklore, politics, and pop culture to dissect political and cultural placement. Though tactile, his multimedia objects and installations materialize things we cannot see and forces we cannot measure, visualizing his deepest fears, darkest thoughts, and biggest uncertainties. His work is a method of researching the contradictions of the human condition and his life narrative. On his way to teaching, alongside raising a family and continuing his artistic research, Frederick Wright Jones has 13 years of experience working as a rope-supported arborist. The inherent risks, team oriented dynamic, exposure to the elements, and intensity with material connected to urban forestry, all feed into his sculptural practice. An associate professor of sculpture at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA, Frederick is currently working with the mapping of history and memory. He is currently collaborating with a Providence, RI-based group, mapping histories of Black and Indigenous inhabitants