NOTHING BESIDE REMAINS

“The owl of Minerva takes its flight only when the shades of night are falling” 
-G.W.F. Hegel

We (Brian Barr/Lauren Rice) are interested in the potential for economic, social, and ecological collapse. This collapse comes as the Western world moves from a society that makes “things” to one that trades in ideas. As a collaborative team, we are interested in visually compressing the past, present, and future of Western civilization, focusing on the shifting cultural significance of ideas, objects and images. We consider Western culture’s objects and images as ephemera from our historic moment. Imagining a world where today’s glut of images have become functionless elements within a deteriorating landscape, we create a vision of a potential future for objects and images.

Brian Barr

Brian Barr is an artist and independent curator based in Richmond, VA. He received his MFA from American University and his BFA from The College for Creative Studies. Barr has been awarded fellowships at the MacDowell Colony and the Kala Art Institute as well as a residency at the Luminary Center for the Arts in St. Louis. Barr regularly collaborates with his wife, artist Lauren Rice. Their collaborative solo exhibitions include, Totems at Vox Populi in Philadelphia, Fake Empire at Flashpoint Gallery in Washington, DC, The Shades of Night are Falling at Purdue University, and DATA/TRANSFER/OBJECT at the Artist Alliance Inc.’s, Cuchifritos Gallery and Project Space in New York. Barr has had solo exhibitions at Popps Packing, and Hatch, both in Detroit. His work was featured in New American Paintings no. 95. Barr was the founder of PASSENGER, an exhibition space in Detroit where he was Director and Curator from 2012-2014. He has curated exhibitions at PASSENGER, ORG Gallery (Detroit), Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN), The Museum of New Art Detroit, Delicious Spectacle Gallery (Washington, DC), and the Katzen Art Center Museum (Washington, DC). Barr currently teaches for the Foundations and Sculpture departments at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Website: brian-barr.com

Lauren Rice

Lauren Rice received her MFA in Painting and Drawing from American University in Washington, DC and her BA in Studio Art from Knox College in Galesburg, IL. Rice’s work exists in the space between painting and sculpture, often exploring the complex relationships between images and objects in an installative capacity.

Her solo exhibitions include Parts and Wholes at The Arlington Art Center, Tools for Better Living at Popps Packing (Detroit, MI), Doubleness at COOP Gallery (Nashville, TN), Heirlooms at Transformer (Washington, DC), Heirlooms at The South Bend Museum of Art (South Bend, IN) and Vestiges at Org Contemporary (Detroit, MI). She has had collaborative exhibitions with Brian Barr at Vox Populi (Philadelphia, PA), Flashpoint Gallery (Washington, DC) and Cuchifritos Gallery and Project Space (New York, NY). Select group exhibitions include Trash4Gold at The Spring/Break Art Show (New York, NY), Abstracticus at Passenger (Detroit, MI) Off the Wall, Mirus Gallery (San Francisco, CA), Miami University’s 2012 Young Painter’s Competition for the William and Dorothy Yeck Award, (Oxford, OH) and Art on Paper 2010 at the Weatherspoon Museum of Art (Greensboro, NC). Rice has been a fellow at The Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, CA and a resident artist at The Luminary in St. Louis, MO. Her recent work was published in New American Paintings, edition 118. Rice currently lives and works in Richmond, Virginia where she is an Assistant Professor of Art at Longwood University.

Website: lauren-rice.com