Gregory J. Rose’s solo exhibition at Concordia Gallery is a vibe-driven endeavor. Working with curator Dr. Megan Arney Johnston, the interdisciplinary artist has designed different portals throughout the gallery spaces that shift in mood and tone, inviting a peek into Rose’s autobiographical viewpoint and expression.
The exhibition follows a survey show featuring Rose at Modus Locus Expansion space, a venue that is much bigger than the Concordia Gallery, last fall. That show charted Rose’s 20-year career, and was made up of pictures, video, literature, music and more.
“It had an East coast vibe to it,” Rose says. “I have that energy. I’m not from the Midwest, I’m a transplant. And so the vibe is— this isn’t passive. It is in your face, it’s energetic.”
Like that exhibition, “The Gates of Awakening: Provide and Nurture,” takes disparate bodies of work and places them around the space as different worlds to enter. “These all are different bodies of work that talk to each other, but they are a different experience,” Rose says. “They are different ways of looking and healing or digesting— telling the story.”
Rose has titled the first portal “Code Switch Experiment” (2024). He made it in collaboration with Christopher Heidman, Josh Sundby, and Max Khale with sound, imagery, and Artificial Intelligence generation. On two walls, the piece is made up of projected images that have been mixed with A.I. Next to the looped videos is a QR code that links to a Tik Tok account. There you’ll find moving abstracted images with sound. When multiple people play the Tik Tok videos, the interactive piece becomes a cacophony of layered sounds and a kaleidoscope of moving abstraction.
Rose says AI was a useful tool the collaboration employed to develop the work. “I’m letting go of control,” Rose says. “It’s basically fun. You know, the F word with the ‘u’ and without the ‘ck.” We’re not taking it too seriously.”
In another of the gallery’s portals, Rose features a series of two-dimensional mixed media pieces made with different kinds of colored tape as well as acrylic paint, pen, graphite and marker. Called “Street Glyphs Series,” 2023, these works don’t have Tik Tok accompaniment, but there’s a musicality to Rose’s gestures.
“To me it’s the rhythms,” Rose says. The beat of different cities from Pittsburgh to New York to Dakar, Senegal, move through the cityscapes. Rose talked to me about the graffiti he encountered in his travels, as well as the attempts by cities to cover that language and the battles over territorial walls. All of that informs the work’s language.
At the same time, he’s capturing the patina of each city— it’s light, it’s mood, it’s vibe. Living in the distinctive marks or “codex,” as he refers to his visual language— are the specifics of a place, like how the rain looks or feels at that location. He’s also bringing how he’s existed in these places as a person with Black skin, and the vulnerability that brings.
Rose’s “Neo-Khemitian Express Street Hieroglyphs Series” (2023), made with paint marker, bears similarity to Rose’s “Street Glyphs Series”, with its energy and also reflective curiosity. Meanwhile, the elaborate “Rose’s Mal de ojo y Comida” (2024) installation offers a dramatic entry point into storytelling and spirituality. Made of giant mortar and pestles made of clay and adorned with Rose’s gestural markings, the work creates a scene of chickens, artifacts, and a search for connection. The work examines the Zen Buddhist concept of satori, or the enlightenment that comes from understanding the true self, and meditates on Rose’s own background as well as Mexican cultural motifs the artist has engaged with through family connections.
Above the “Rose’s Mal de ojo y Comida” installation hangs “Street Academics,” (2018) made from mixed media on an old door. The two-dimensional work supplements the autobiographical themes he’s exploring in the three-dimensional work.
Rose’s recent exhibitions at Modus Locus and now Concordia follow a notable exhibition he curated in 2022 at SooVAC called “Change is God-Take Root Among the Stars: Black Abstraction in the Midwest.” Rose says working on that show allowed him to invest in talking about healing spaces and creating opportunities to speak to his personal experiences.
“It’s hard to talk about being a Black man in today’s world without it always being heavy or dark or about trauma. And there’s more to that. I’m talking existential,” Rose says. “I’m talking about my skin, I’m talking about universal, intergalactic things and just trying to spread it all out in those intersectionalities.”
In the end, he’s inviting the visitor to step into his vibe through those different intersectionalities, through both urban and city landscapes, migrations, and diasporas, to the beat of punk rock and hip hop.
“Gregory J. Rose: The Gates of Awakening: Provide and Nurture” has an opening reception Thursday, Feb. 22 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., with a “walk and talk” at 6 p.m. The exhibition is on view through March 20 at Concordia College and H. Williams Teaching Gallery (free). More information here.
Sheila Regan
Sheila Regan is a Twin Cities-based arts journalist. She writes MinnPost’s twice-weekly Artscape column. She can be reached at [email protected].