November 3, 2022 - January 14, 2023 —

To Die For

Opening Reception: Thursday, November 3 , 5-8PM
Gallery Hours: By Appointment on Saturdays, 12-3PM.

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Specialist presents To Die For, an exhibition featuring the collaborative works of Addoley Dzegede and Lyndon Barrois Jr.  

In a chromatic shift, interdisciplinary artists Addoley Dzegede and Lyndon Barrois Jr. continue their deep investigation of color, exploring red as a central reference point in their collaborative works. Drawing on their respective expertise in craft, textile production, image-making technologies and the visual language of print and design, Dzegede and Barrois Jr. bring together motifs and iconography that center the color red as a source of desire and luxury. The textiles, photography and collage in To Die For weave together ideas of material value, color and cultural signification, as well the often intertwined instances of violence and beauty that complicate and confound red’s brilliance and potency

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Addoley Dzegede is a Ghanaian-American interdisciplinary artist who grew up in South Florida and has a home base in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with her partner. She currently lives in Rotterdam where she is a 2022-2023 Fulbright awardee in Craft to the Netherlands. During her nine-month residency, Dzegede will gain a deeper understanding of the history of cross-cultural textile production, imitation, and adaptation. In the spring, she will lead workshops with MFA students to cultivate dye-producing plants in the Piet Zwart Institute’s garden. Dzegede received her BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art and MFA from Washington University in St Louis, where she was a Chancellor’s Graduate Fellow. She has been an Artist-in-Residence at Loghaven Artist Residency in Knoxville, Tennessee, AIR Green textile residency in Norway, the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida, Osei Duro in Accra, Ghana, Thread: a project of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in Senegal, and Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, among others. Solo exhibitions include, Ballast, at Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Missouri, and millefiori at KSMoCA in Portland, Oregon. Special projects include the Ask Addoley + Anna podcast with Anna Ihle, with seasons commissioned by Coast Contemporary, the National Museum of Norway, and most recently A Structure Envisioned for Changing Circumstances, by CAC Brétigny.

Lyndon Barrois Jr. is an artist and writer based in Pittsburgh, PA where he is an Assistant Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University.  Using magazines, advertising, cinema, and vernacular imagery as primary subjects of inquiry, Barrois’ multimedia practice breaks down and re-configures the languages of print, design, and popular culture in order to investigate underlying ideology, ethics, and conceptions of value. Recent solo exhibitions include How to Make a Mirror at Melanie Flood Projects, Mirage Collar at Artists Space, Others Who Struggle with Nature at Rubber Factory NYC, and the two-person exhibition Dreamsickle with Kahlil Robert Irving at 47 Canal. Barrois Jr. received his BFA in painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore (2006), and his MFA from Washington University in St. Louis (2013), where he was a Chancellor’s Graduate Fellow. He has recently completed residencies at Latitude in Chicago, Loghaven in Knoxville, the Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, Netherlands, Fogo Island Arts in Newfoundland, and the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, Ireland.

Together they have worked as the collaborative duo LAB:D, and have produced three exhibitions, and co-authored a book of essays (Elleboog, at the Jan van Eyck Academie in 2019), most recently staging the two-person exhibition Mercantile at Sharp Projects in Copenhagen, Denmark.

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