Wright exhibit prompts viewers
to create their own narrative

Paintings and prints by Louisiana artist Joshua Chambers, who asks viewers to take an active role in establishing narratives for his art, will be on exhibit Sept. 27- Nov. 5. in the Wright Gallery, located on the second floor of building A in the Langford Architecture Center on the Texas A&M campus. The exhibit, “The Internal Sublime,” is sponsored by the MSC Visual Arts Committee.

"My work is to be honest and entertaining, so I pull from personal life to construct symbolically heavy narrative scenes," said Chambers, who is interested in the psychological dynamics between viewer, artist and subject. "The viewer is to use his or her own perceptions of the symbols to translate the narrative. Much like a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book, I want the viewer to have an active role in establishing the story."

Chambers, who mainly works in painting and printmaking, received his Bachelor of Arts at Northeastern State University in Oklahoma, and his Master of Fine Arts from Louisiana Tech University.

Chambers’ art, said Barbara O’Brian, curator of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Mo., “fines the intimate within the monumental,” His work has been published in New American Paintings, Studio Visit Magazine and The Red Clay Survey. Featured in many national and international group and juried shows in the United States and Europe, his work is in permanent collections at the Lessedra Gallery in Bulgaria and Osage Gallery in the Gilcrease Museum of the Americas.

The artist currently resides in Ruston, La., works for the Meadows Museum of Art and teaches drawing at Centenary College of Louisiana.

“Artmaking is attempting to make sense of the world we live in," he said. "The paintings I create are a kind of mythology resulting from personal narrative. Every good myth has symbolism that is practically universal. The symbols present in these paintings each have at least two to three different cultural origins. This provides each symbol multiple meanings and applications, creating a series of double entendres."

Although these narratives are of a highly personal nature, he said, the imagery created is to encourage the viewer to use their knowledge of the symbolism to find central themes, and to apply it to their own individual experiences.

More about Chambers' work is available on the artist’s website at www.joshuachambers.com.

- Posted: Sept. 3, 2010 -

Contact:   Phillip Rollfing, prollfing@archone.tamu.edu or 979.458.0442.