SEAN ERWIN
Project Tag: About Face
ALESSANDRO GALLO
ALESSANDRO GALLO
RUSSELL BILES
ON VIEW 2024
Russell Biles select works on view in the Summer Gallery
Ferrin Contemporary at Project Art, Cummington, MA
Email info@ferrincontemporary.com to schedule an appointment to view.
ARTWORKS
NOBODY
CANCELED
RAKE
PRICE TO PAY (BEST I’VE EVER HAD)
NAILED (BABIES MAKING BABIES)
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.
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
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.
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
HUMOR IN CRAFT
2012 | Group Exhibition organized by the Society for Contemporary Craft
July 20, 2012—October 27, 2012
Curated by artist and author Brigitte Martin and organized by the Society for Contemporary Craft, Humor in Craft presents 33 highly ironic, political, sarcastic, and just plain amusing works by 32 makers from across the US and abroad—and highlighting a diverse range of materials, techniques and artists that might not otherwise be seen—the show challenges viewers to move beyond their own frames of reference when considering approaches to contemporary art. The concept of “funny” can vary widely based on a variety of factors such as social background, personal experiences and values, knowledge of popular culture events, education, national origin, etc. There are overlaps but also differences in humor perception. For the artists in this exhibition, hardly any topic is off-limits, apparently everything can be made fun of. And why not laugh at the human foibles, the banana-peel jokes, and, yes, the politicians?
How else could we stand especially the latter?
NEWS & MEDIA
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.
Strip District exhibit examines humor in art
by Kurt Shaw
Trib Live, Saturday, August 4th, 2012
Humor has long been fodder for the creation of artwork. One only need think back to the work of late 18th- and early 19th-century English satirists James Gillray, George Cruikshank or Thomas Rowlandson, or the most famous of the 19th-century French caricaturists and social commentators, Honore Daumier.
Wasteland of the Real | Dominick Manco and Russell Biles’ “Cynical Realism” show at IPFW by Dan Swartz
Fort Wayne Reader, February 2nd, 2012
When does reality need to be augmented to tell the truth? Why is the rejection of idealistic thought seen as negative? And when does the use of hyperbole limit a message, and when does it carry it further? These are only a few of the questions asked and answered by “Cynical Realism,” a two-person exhibition at IPFW’s School of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA), highlighting the work of local artist Dominick Manco, with his photo-pop manipulations, and Russell Biles, a satirical, sculptural, ceramicist from South Carolina, who leaves the viewer in an edgy laughter, wondering if they are indeed laughing at themselves.
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
Howard Kottler
HOWARD KOTTLER