Brenna Youngblood said that “Loss Prevention,” her new exhibit at Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAM), has “layers of meaning.”
“‘Loss prevention’ is a retail system you put in place to stop shrinkage and fraud,” Youngblood told The American. “But it’s also reusing discarded elements, like the sole of a shoe or a CVS bag.”
Her mixed-media works on exhibit in the Front Room at CAM do, in fact, incorporate the sole of a shoe and a pharmacy bag, which introduce humor into images that tend to have a brooding beauty. “There is a darkness,” she said.
Youngblood also paints around torn fragments of her own photographs – of the sky and a bare light bulb. She started out as a photographer, but found she “wanted a hand in the work.” This led her to make photo assemblages, which evolved into this mixed-media work, which is shaped from photographs, abstract paintings and found objects.
The found objects – some might call them trash – now play an active role in her artistic process.
“I’ll work on 10 or 12 paintings at once, and on the floor I’ll have a bunch of objects,” she said. “And I’ll try to match the palette of the painting with found things or things friends gave me, which then make their way into the paintings.”
Youngblood, 35, earns her living through her art. “Loss Prevention” is the Los Angeles-based artist’s first solo exhibition of her work at a Midwestern museum. She was issued an open invite by CAM Executive Director Lisa Melandri, who first saw Youngblood’s work at Honor Fraser Gallery in Los Angeles.
“I was given a lot of freedom,” Youngblood said. “Lisa said, ‘Do what you want here. We have a space for you.’”
This is her first visit to St. Louis, a city she immediately judged to her liking. “It’s cool,” she said. “The people are real chill, relaxed.”
“Loss Prevention” opened Friday at CAM, 3750 Washington Blvd., and closes June 22.
Sims stoked on STL
CAM’s “Great Rivers Biennial 2014” also opened on Friday. This prestigious juried exhibition offers financial and professional support – and the elite exhibition space of the museum – for the artists who make the jury’s cut.
None of the three talented artists selected for this biennial – Brandon Anschultz, Carlie Trosclair and Cayce Zavaglia – is African-American, but one of three jurors was. Lowery Stokes Sims, curator at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, was deeply impressed by the quality of work submitted by St. Louis artists.
“We saw a lot of strong work. Artists in this market are maintaining a very high standard and approach their work with a great deal of integrity,” Sims told The American.
“It goes to show that New York is not the center of creativity and reminds us that a lot of the creativity in New York came from elsewhere.”
“Great Rivers Biennial 2014” opened at Cam on Friday and closes August 10. For more information on CAM, which is offering free admission this summer, visit http://camstl.org/.
