Damian Stamer: Unseen
Craven Allen Gallery
September 7 – November 2
Watercolors and Works on Paper
Opening at Craven Allen Gallery September 7th
Damian Stamer (b. American, 1982) received his Master of Fine Arts from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a Jacob K. Javits fellow in 2013 and his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Herberger Institute of Art and Design and Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University (where he studied painting with Craven Allen Gallery artist Beverly McIver) as a National Merit scholar in 2007. He also studied at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts as a Fulbright grantee, and the State Academy of Art and Design in Stuttgart, Germany as a Rotary Ambassadorial scholar.
Stamer was last seen at Craven Allen Gallery with Greg Lindquist in conjuction with his exhibition Altered Land at the North Carolina Museum of Art. His first Craven Allen show was Crosscut, juxtaposing his work alongside photographs from the Jim and Jane Finch collection. Recent museum exhibitions include Area 919 at Duke University’s Nasher Museum, and The Things We Carry: Contemporary Art in the South at the Gibbes Museum in Charleston. In 2019, his work will be seen in exhibitions in the United Arab Emirates and Japan.
Damian’s contemporary paintings explore themes of memory and loss through formal and conceptual approaches. Detailed architectural forms reminiscent of his childhood memories of the South are combined with gestural brushstrokes that push and pull the images into existence. The artist lives and works in Durham, North Carolina.
Statement:
I keep returning to the places of my past over and over again, even though I never quite know exactly what I’m looking for. There is a comfort in familiarity, a sense of guardianship of childhood haunts. But darker stories also soak this soil, and my ruins are pregnant with secrets. Time passes slowly as things fall apart. Painting is the only way I know how to describe such a place, which exists more in my mind than here on earth.
https://www.cravenallengallery.com/damian-stamer/