Recently on view:
Russell Biles’ Canceled, displayed in the Entrance Hall, and Rake, displayed in the Office of the Wickham House at the Valentine Museum, Richmond, VA, 2024
FEBRUARY 20, 2024 – APRIL 21, 2024
ARTWORKS
CANCELED
As a child growing up in the 60’s I enjoyed watching a TV show called The Rifleman. Chuck Conners, the ‘Rifleman’, justly dispatched 120 bad guys during the show’s run. As an adult I still enjoy watching “The Rifleman” gun em down but no longer feel that sense of Freedom and Security once enforced by the ‘magical gun’.
Today I realize that our Country’s Freedom and Security have actually come from the end of a gun and those willing to use this gun in our defense- My concern and motivation for creating Canceled is my fear that today’s and tomorrow’s generations will fail to accept this reality. Thus compromising our Country’s Freedom and Security.
RAKE
My works being exhibited are from the series “Gone”. This series looks back 50 years to memories of my childhood in the racially divided mill town of Concord, North Carolina. It highlights events and circumstances that I believe reflect our social evolution and invite comparisons between the past and the present. These comparisons can be viewed literally or metaphorically.
When compiling subjects for this series I tried to think of memorable scenarios that spoke to issues of today and to my responsibilities as a parent and grandparent. Also, I wanted to evoke the perspective of a child experiencing a world created for them by adults. An adult influence, good and bad, not only creates the moment but steers generations to come.
The last piece I produced for this ongoing series is “Rake”. As a kid raking leaves and mowing grass was a job for kids. That was how we made money. I don’t know what happened but we got lazy. And now we hire immigrants to do our work for nothing and then complain about it.
Russel Biles
2017
Rake
porcelain
9.5 x 9 x 8”
ADDITIONAL WORKS
GONE
GONE TOO
CHILD’S PLAY
TAKING A BEATING
ABOUT
American, b. 1959
lives and works in Greeneville, SC
A self-described “son of the South,” Russell Biles was born, raised, and still lives in the southern U.S. He remembers playing around with clay at a young age, making animals and monsters, but it was not until he entered college to study architecture that he was re-introduced to art and ultimately to ceramics. Since his graduation Biles has been a studio artist in Greenville, SC, working in sculptural forms that range from large totems reminiscent of Northwestern Indian work to small, carefully crafted, colorful porcelain figures. He is best known for the latter work which confronts the direction in which society is moving and finds it severely lacking. Biles uses such American icons as the Cleavers and the Cartwrights as well as contemporary newsmakers to satirize social, religious, and political issues and to engage the viewer in the discussion. Biles employs irony and satire in his work and believes that the humor inherent in satire tempers the critique and hopefully produces a thoughtful reaction rather than an automatic rejection. As important to Biles as the message is the craftsmanship of his work, the quality that gives the work integrity and cements his position as a noted artist whose work is included in a number of both private and public collections.
Russell Biles, “Canceled”, 2022, porcelain, faux bronze finish (powdered bronze and floor wax), 22 x 11.5 x 9″
ON HIS WORK IN OUR AMERICA/WHOSE AMERICA?
As a child growing up in the 60’s I enjoyed watching a TV show called The Rifleman. Chuck Conners, the ‘Rifleman’, justly dispatched 120 bad guys during the show’s run. As an adult I still enjoy watching “The Rifleman” gun em down but no longer feel that sense of Freedom and Security once enforced by the ‘magical gun’.
Today I realize that our Country’s Freedom and Security have actually come from the end of a gun and those willing to use this gun in our defense- My concern and motivation for creating Canceled is my fear that today’s and tomorrow’s generations will fail to accept this reality. Thus compromising our Country’s Freedom and Security.
– Russel Biles, 2022
CURRENT + RECENT EXHIBITIONS
Ferrin Contemporary presents Paul Scott in “Our America/Whose America?”. Installation for NCECA Richmond, 2024 at the Wickham House at The Valentine Museum, Richmond, VA. Image courtesy of The Valentine Museum.
OUR AMERICA/WHOSE AMERICA?
2024 | Group Exhibition in the Wickham House at the Valentine Museum | Richmond, VA
February 20, 2024 – April 21, 2024
Our America/Whose America? Is a “call and response” exhibition between contemporary artists and historic ceramic objects.
Ferrin Contemporary “Our America/Whose America?” Anteroom Stair hall Installation at the Wickham House, Richmond, VA, 2024
Our America/Whose America? Installation View, 2022
OUR AMERICA/WHOSE AMERICA?
2022 | Group Exhibition at Ferrin Contemporary | North Adams, MA
Our America/Whose America? Is a “call and response” exhibition between contemporary artists and historic ceramic objects.
View the exhibition page HERE & View the historic collection HERE
Our America/Whose America? Installation View, 2022
NEWS & MEDIA
Russell Biles, “Captain America Calling”, 2019
In the Galleries by Mark Jenkins
The Washington Post, December 6th, 2019
Ceramicist Russell Biles musters battalions of small figurines, most of them caricatures of people seen recently on TV news programs. But the most compelling creatures in “Subversive Nature,” Biles’s show at the District Clay Gallery, are turtles. The South Carolina artist has a special affinity for the animals, whose patterned shells resemble hard-edge yet delicate porcelain.
Biles calls himself a “son of the South,” but his politics are compatible with those of true-blue Washington. He parodies President Trump, shown hefting a naked porn star, as well as Kim Jong Un and a devil-horned Vladimir Putin. A bust of Barack Obama features a predator drone on his forehead, a protest of the former president’s sanction of automated assassination. Hundreds of tiny figures, their heads drops of A, B, AB or O, assemble to protest the ban on gay people’s donation of blood.
Those turtles also bear messages. A beautifully rendered pairing of bloodied turtle and skull-headed eagle is a parable of European colonization of the Americas. Biles also offers a sculpture of a little girl atop a box turtle in which the shell’s pattern has migrated to the child’s face and hands. It’s a vision of rapport with nature that’s also a celebration of human virtuosity.
Russell Biles: Subversive Nature Through Dec. 14, 2019 at District Clay Gallery, 2414 Douglas St. NE.
INQUIRE
Additional works may be available to acquire, but not listed here.
If interested in lists of all works and series: Send us a message
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