Events' Realm

Supersampler is an exhibition featuring a decade’s worth of work by London-based painter, Mark Stebbins. Inspired by the history of image making, digital media and textiles, Stebbins’ paintings explore the potential of the grid form through realism and abstraction alike.

Often containing thousands of tiny squares hand-painted with hundreds of different tones and hues, Stebbins’ paintings translate source imagery to pose what he calls “visual questions.” By building up and breaking down these images, the artist plays with colour, detail, texture, and contrast to impact what the viewer sees. Here, paint strokes act as stitches and pixels, often distorted.

 A new series employs symbols from historic embroideries found in Museum London’s artifact collection, while other pieces feature vibrant, kaleidoscopic effects that nod to key moments in art history—like 19th-century pointillism and the hard-edge abstraction of the 1950s and 60s. Throughout these diverse influences, Stebbins’ work invites us to reflect on themes of originality, labour, and the evolving role of painting in our increasingly virtual world.

London

Canada

Ontario

421 Ridout Street North

Museum London - Interior Gallery

Mark Stebbins: Supersampler

Throughout his dynamic and multidisciplinary practice, José Villalobos (b.1988, El Paso, Texas) interrogates and deconstructs aspects of gender and masculinity found within the U.S. / Mexico borderlands. His practice underscores the rigid and conservative patriarchal roots of his Evangelical Mexican upbringing merged with the cultural mores of West Texas, bringing to bear how these are often at odds with his own identity as a queer, Brown man. How do you see masculinity represented in your culture?


“Rough Rider” marks the first U.S. solo museum presentation for the artist. It presents a diverse collection of newly created works from the artist’s residency with CALA Alliance in the Fall of 2024. The exhibition focuses on the spectacle of rodeo culture, addressing themes related to machismo, protection and gender. Practice barrels, ropes and flanks, all of which exude preconceived ideas of masculinity, are reinterpreted with a distinct flashiness to assert a tension between what it means to be masculine. Taken as a whole, “Rough Rider” asks us to consider how we exist within the parameters of socially constructed norms and those that endure outside of them.


“José Villalobos: Rough Rider” is organized by ASU Art Museum Senior Curator Alana Hernandez, with ASU Art Museum Windgate Curatorial Fellow Sade Moore and is made possible with generous funding from the Terra Foundation for American Art. Additional funding is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Phoenix

United States

Arizona

51 E. 10th St.

ASU Art Museum

José Villalobos: Rough Rider

The shapes of feathers, wings, flowers and leaves combine in a constellation of ceramic and bronze to comprise Forever (Bird-Botanicals), a site-specific installation by Ecuadorian-Canadian sculptor David Constantino Salazar. The work combines recognizable bird anatomy with plant forms to probe the theme of transformation in contemporary culture.

Often representative of freedom, love, peace, and divinity, the symbol of the bird is ripe with meaning. In South American folklore, for example, birds and other animals are evocative of transformation, often shapeshifting between forms in fables. In Museum London’s Atrium, Salazar’s birds are in a state of transition, too, as if between life and death. Here, botanicals grow around misshapen appendages.

To create each element of the work, the artist meticulously hand crafts birds out of clay and throws them against his studio wall. Radically altering their appearance, this act transforms each sculpture into something new entirely. Each component evokes the natural evolution of all living things, as we journey between one state of being to another.

Museum London - Atrium

David Constantino Salazar: Forever (Bird-Botanicals)

Verde Canyon Railroad is proud to be a sponsor of the Phoenix-based wildlife rescue, Liberty Wildlife. All are welcome to visit Verde Canyon Railroad depot for Raptors at the Rails, an educational presentation on the patio on select dates 11:00am-12:45pm. This free event prior to the train’s 1:00 pm departure features close-up glimpses of Arizona raptors such as eagles, hawks, owls, vultures, falcons and kestrels, amazing residents of Liberty Wildlife’s educational program. During the summer months, Liberty shares cold-blooded creatures such as tortoises, lizards and snakes during "Reptiles at the Rails".

Events

Mark Stebbins: Supersampler

José Villalobos: Rough Rider

David Constantino Salazar: Forever (Bird-Botanicals)

Raptors (or Reptiles) at the Rails

ATX Open Session 5

Swift Current Broncos at Calgary Hitmen