Settle Down
Vin Caponigro
Reception: Saturday, June 13, 6-9pm
June 13 – July 5, 2015
Lease Agreement
3718 Ellerslie Ave
Baltimore, MD 21218
<><><><>
“Of course, thanks to the house, a great many of our memories are housed, and if the house is a bit elaborate, if it has a cellar and a garret, nooks and corridors, our memories have refuges that are all the more clearly delineated. All our lives we come back to them in our daydreams.”
- Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
Settle Down is a solo exhibition of installation and sculptural works by Chicago-based artist Vin Caponigro. Their work for Lease Agreement is site-specific: through pattern, as is found in her hand-printed wallpaper installation, it physically references the formal elements found in the house while in essence it locates the psychological tensions found in a well-lived space. Caponigro’s minimal installations containing fluorite crystals, moss, astroturf, and rocks function as domestic signs that have been denied their normal role in order to expose the presences and absences found therein. Just as Bachelard defines Topoanalysis as the “systematic psychological study of the sites of our intimate lives” through lyrical philosophy in The Poetics of Space, Caponigro finds their analytic voice in the poetry of the physical object and geometry of living.
Before receiving their MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Vin Caponigro attended Bryn Mawr College where they earned their BA in the History of Art. In their work, Caponigro explores ideas of restriction through repetition, reproduction, and translation. They have taught classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Olive Harvey College, and currently teaches studio and academic classes at Harold Washington College. They have exhibited work at the DePaul Art Museum, Chicago Cultural Center, and the Highland Park Art Center. Their work is in the permanent collections at California State Long Beach and the Joan Flasch Artists’ Books Collection. They are a member of the feminist art collective Tracers, and frequently participates in workshops, most recently at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and NYU Florence. More of their work can be seen at www.jessicacaponigro.com.
Lease Agreement is a collaborative curatorial project by artists Adam Farcus and Allison Yasukawa. Set in the living room of the couple’s rental house, Lease Agreement continues in the tradition of apartment gallery exhibition spaces by exhibiting conceptually rigorous, engaging work within the context of a home.
This exhibition is hosted by Lease Agreement as a partnership with the artist residency, ACRE. ACRE (Artists’ Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions) is a volunteer-run non-profit based in Chicago devoted to employing various systems of support for emerging artists and to creating a generative community of cultural producers. ACRE investigates and institutes models designed to help artists develop, present, and discuss their practices by providing forums for idea exchange, interdisciplinary collaboration, and experimental projects. More information about ACRE can be found at www.acreresidency.org.
