Date Night
January 8 - February 13, 2021
St. Louis, MO — Monaco is pleased to present Date Night, an exhibition of works by Monaco members Bruce Burton, Vaughn Davis Jr., Visitor Assembly (Alyssa Knowling and Marcus Stabenow), Howard Krohn, Yowshien Kuo, Allison Lacher and Jeff Robinson, Kalaija Mallery, Edo Rosenblith and Janie Stamm. The exhibition opens January 8, 2021 and will run through February 13, 2021.
The perfect antidote to a cool winters day, Date Night, is a collaborative exhibition celebrating comradery and friendship by bringing together work from Monaco members old and new. Social distancing may be necessary but our artwork can still mix and mingle! Date Night also serves as a perfect introduction to some of our newest members: Vaughn Davis Jr., Visitor Assembly (Alyssa Knowling and Marcus Stabenow) and Kalaija Mallery. Romance is in the air and we hope you will fall in love with some art at Date Night! Please e-mail info@monacomonaco.us to make an appointment, we hope to see you soon…
BIOS
Bruce Burton received his BA from Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville. His work is an exploration of the process of making it; gathering, sorting, collating, associating, and staging/displaying. It is rooted in opposing principles; thinking and making — mind and body — rational and organic — structure and experimentation — mechanical and handmade. Investigating the relationships between the object (found or created), the environment, and the viewer. He is one of the co-founders of Monaco, an artist-owned cooperative that operates as an alternative to the traditional gallery model in 2017 and served as a board member at White Flag Projects until its closing in 2016. Burton has been in solo exhibitions at Fort Gondo Compound for the Arts (St. Louis), The Sheldon Art Galleries (St. Louis), PSTL Gallery (St. Louis), and Maps Contemporary Art Projects (Belleville, IL); and group exhibitions at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art (Memphis, TN), World Chess Hall of Fame (St. Louis), White Flag Projects (St. Louis), Monaco (St. Louis), and The Luminary Arts (St. Louis), among others. He lives and works in Belleville, Illinois.
Vaughn Davis Jr, is an artist currently living and working in St. Louis. He received his BFA from Webster University where he practiced sculpture. He has exhibited at venues including Gazebo Gallery, The Luminary, and Philip Slein Gallery. Upcoming exhibitions include a solo shows at Romer Young Gallery and Monaco Gallery. As an artist I create un-stretched paintings on canvas which are distressed in form. Each canvas is a documentation of its making. Since its inception, my painting practice has turned itself, through me, as a composition of systematic cuts and imprecise colors. These systems are predicated upon the dismantlement of the picture plane and the deconstruction of the painting process. Through the process I create objects of madness. It’s an inherited chaos through their occupation in this time. Each canvas is multiple expressions within itself; splatter, spill, dye, tear, fray to become a powerful chronicle of our time.
Howard Krohn received his MFA in Visual Arts from Washington University in St. Louis and his BA in art from Grinnell College. His work has been included in exhibitions across the Midwest and in New York. In addition to his solo practice he has a long-standing collaborative project, bigweirdo, with artist Amanda Bowles.
Visitor Assembly is a multidisciplinary creative studio cofounded by Alyssa Knowling and Marcus Stabenow. VA’s studio philosophy combines methodologies from commercial and creative realms to help brands and makers create, define, and share their voice. Though Visitor Assembly functions as a small business outwardly, the intersections of the business and art worlds are heavily investigated by the studio. Marcus and Alyssa maintain both individual and collaborative art practices, exploring human connection, ancestral memory, and identity politics. Collectively, Visitor Assembly’s work heavily relies on a research-oriented approach, and is guided by a wide array of mediums, such as photography and video, experimental design, installations, digital paintings, object fabrication, and poetry.
Yowshien Kuo was educated in both the U.S. and Taiwan and completed his MFA in 2014 from Fontbonne University. In recent works, Kuo confronts stories that have been shaped by the white imagination and the detriment it causes on self image. His practice explores identity and culture against expectations of what it means to be American. With an interest to empower marginalized communities and highlight the troubles they face in their day-to-day lives through the visual language of Americana and the use of allegory. Kuo has recently exhibited with Praise Shadows Gallery in Boston, The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Superdutchess in NYC, LVL3 Chicago, Projects Plus and The Luminary in St. Louis and Granite City’s Art and Design District. Yowshien has been an artist in residence with Paul ArtSpace in St. Louis and is a recipient of the Regional Arts Commission support grant and the Critical Mass for the Visual Arts award. His work has appeared in publications that include Artsy, MAPS Worldwide, New American Paintings and The Seen Journal Chicago. He has been interviewed by Yale University Radio and Cool-Wip podcast.
Allison Lacher and Jeff Robinson work as studio and curatorial collaborators. They have exhibited at venues that include the Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago), The Franklin (Chicago), Des Lee Gallery (St. Louis), Roman Susan (Chicago), Ski Club (Milwaukee), Outhaus (Urbana), Museum Blue (St. Louis), Co-Prosperity Sphere (Chicago), and University Galleries at Illinois State (Normal). They were awarded with the Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowship Award in 2020 for their collaborative practice. Their work has been featured in NewCity, the Riverfront Times, and FLOOR Magazine, and in 2017, they were collaborative artists-in-residence at ACRE.
Kalaija Mallery is a multiform visual artist, researcher and community liaison. She works in response to notions of liberation and aesthetic irony, and is interested in the formation of underground religious groups and fringe-communities. She started Third Room in 2017 as a space for experimental exhibitions and diy programming for young and underrepresented artists in Portland, OR. She is co-founder of "You Are Here”, a publication platform that centralizes visual artist’s writing. She has exhibited in Beijing, New York, Portland, and Seattle. Kalaija now lives in St. Louis, where she works as manager for The Luminary.
Edo Rosenblith was born in Tel Aviv, Israel but has spent most of his life in the United States. Rosenblith received his BFA in painting in 2011 at RISD and his MFA at Washington University-St. Louis in 2017. Edo is a compulsive draftsman who works in a verity of mediums: murals, painting, drawing, printmaking, and book arts. Rosenblith has exhibited throughout St. Louis, at The Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis; COCA, Gallery 210 at UMSL, The Luminary, Fort Gondo, and Parapet Real Humans. Rosenblith has exhibited nationally at Ortega Y Gasset Projects in Brooklyn; The Elmhurst Museum, Chicago and internationally, at Jenifer Nails Gallery in Frankfurt. A two-year survey of Edo’s sketchbook drawings became the content of his first book, PINK, published by Fort Gondo Press in 2013. Rosenblith lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri. He became a member of Monaco USA in 2019.
Janie Stamm was born and raised on the edge of the Everglades in Broward County, Florida. She is a craft-based artist currently residing on the western banks of the Mississippi River in Saint Louis, Missouri. Her work focuses on preserving Florida’s environmental and Queer history in the face of climate change. She uses a craft-based practice to tell these stories. Janie has received a John T. Milliken Foreign Travel Graduate Award, Regional Arts Commission grant, Critical Mass grant, Dubinsky Scholarship to study at the Fine Arts Work Center, and the Frida Kahlo Creative Arts Award from Washington University in St. Louis. She has been an artist in residence at ACRE in Wisconsin, at the Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris, Aquarium Gallery in New Orleans, and a teaching artist at CAM St. Louis. Her work was featured on the December 2016 cover of POETRY magazine.