PHILADELPHIA, PA.- Pentimenti Gallery continues the fall season with the work of Derrick Velasquez. This show marks Derrick’s third solo exhibition with Pentimenti Gallery.
With his new work, Derrick Velasquez expands upon his thematic investigation into the meaning of structure, and enables us to explore our interaction with structures that we come across in our everyday lives. His pieces project our relation to natural forces such as gravity, and expose the psychological weight of manufactured forces imposed upon us through industry and cheap development. Through these works, Derrick establishes architectural relations to the body and overlaying fabric juxtaposed with the manipulation of ornamental building material now formed as object.
The main gallery space is filled with works composed of hundreds of strips of marine vinyl, a material Derrick has used for bookbinding, meticulously cut and layered over structural wooden objects. As the number of layers grows, the vinyl gradually loses its contour to the shape of the structure it surrounds, eventually culminating to a slight, gentle curve. Derrick will also present a new series of works on paper, all intended to be quick meditations on balance and dualities of our cultural histories and social fabric.
The project room features an installation composed of a brightly painted, faux trim molding surrounded by darts. This piece, a comment on modernism, the cheapening of building materials, and ideas of gentrification, repurposes an object made to mimic classical and European building ornamentation to become an entirely new structure beyond its conventional classic, or even contemporary use.
Derrick Velasquez received his BA from the University of California, Santa Barbara and his MFA from Ohio State University. Velasquez has exhibited his works at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, CO; Black Cube Nomadic Art Museum, Denver, CO; Drexel University, Pearlstein Gallery, Philadelphia, PA; VOLTA NY 2013; Center for Visual Art, Denver, CO; VAC University of Colorado, Boulder, CO; RedLine, Denver, CO, FOCA Biennial, New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, NM and Arvada Center for the Arts, Arvada, CO. He has been awarded by: Black Cube Nomadic Art Museum Artist Fellow; Colorado Creative Industries Career Advancement Award; Fergus Family Material Award, The Ohio State University. Derrick Velasquez is in the public collections of Wellington Management Company LLC, Metropolitan State University of Denver; Miami University, Oxford, OH; Colorado Convention Center; etc. and in numerous private collections. The artist is represented by Pentimenti Gallery in Philadelphia.
