Brooks Oliver & Joshua Dodson: Twists and Turns

Brooks oliver & joshua dodson: twists and turns

March 26 - April 30, 2022

Press Release

Ro2 Art is proud to present Joshua Dodson and Brooks Oliver: Twists and Turns.The exhibition will run from March 26 through April 30, 2022, with an opening reception held at Ro2 Art in The Cedars, located at 1501 S. Ervay St, Dallas, TX, 75215 from 7-10 PM.

For the exhibition, Twists and Turns, Brooks Oliver and Joshua Dodson combine aesthetics to bring playful, yet functional objects together with energetic, shaped paintings. With Brooks Oliver’s dynamic and colorful pottery, the work blurs the boundaries between craft , design, industry, and technology, providing new visions of utilitarian ceramic wares. Joshua Dodson explores bold shapes, lines, symbols, and color compositions from his past as a graffiti artist. With the inspiration based in drafting and geometry from architecture, he is able to create juxtaposition of complementary colors to mold these structures into solid forms. By combining these works in Twists and Turns, we bring vivid color, contemporary design and playful structures together to form a bright and dynamic new landscape.

artist statement

Brooks Oliver:

The ambition of my work is to reimagine and reinterpret the familiar functional vessel. By isolating, altering, and exploiting the necessary components of a vessel, I attempt to provide new visions of utilitarian ceramic wares. My work inherently blurs the boundaries between craft, design, industry, and technology as I am inspired by the charged gray areas between these binaries. By marrying the production techniques of CAD software and rapid prototyping technologies with the creation techniques of the hand, a unique dialog can be formed between the digital and clay that ultimately influences both ways of making.

Joshua Dodson:

I have a strong structure based subject correlating with drafting and geometry from architecture integrated with bold shapes and correct color compositions from graffiti is very prevalent in my work. Creating juxtapositions of complementary colors to mold these structures have made them seem to have a solid stance while being playful and open. Continuing to expand on these sometimes metamorphic style archetypes is the ultimate goal for me.

about the artist

Brooks Oliver is an Assistant Professor and Program Coordinator of Ceramics at the University of North Texas and a studio artist based out of Denton, Texas. In 2016 he completed a long-term residency at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana and currently serves on the Board of Directors there. He received his MFA from The Pennsylvania State University, his BFA at Southern Methodist University, and completed his post baccalaureate studies at Syracuse University. He taught in Jingdezhen, China in 2016 with West Virginia University and regularly teaches workshops in and out of university settings, including Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and the Anderson Ranch. In 2017 he was named an Emerging Artist by the National Council on Education in the Ceramic Arts. He actively exhibits work and has recently been included in exhibitions at the San Angelo Museum of Art, Ceramics Park Mino Museum, the Dallas Museum of Art, Ulrich Museum of Art, the LacosteKean Gallery, Northern Clay Center, The Archie Bray Foundation, the Artstream Nomadic Gallery, the Dallas Pottery Invitational, the Penland Gallery, Belger Crane Yard, and Western Carolina University Fine Art Museum.

Joshua Dodson (b. 1988) is an urban contemporary artist based in Dallas,Texas. Dodson’s work is inspired by the mysterious and intriguing subculture of graffiti. Meeting other "writers'' he quickly began learning the ways of the practice from being a "toy'', a newbie with no skill or style to being able to produce a fresh body of work(tags,throw-ups,burners,etc.) Over the years, Joshua studied many different interpretations of artworks including futurism, architecture, modern art, constructivism, minimalism and pure abstract expressionism, while still keeping in check the roots of his current works. He has shown at Fort Works Art, Ro2 Art, the Janette Kennedy Gallery, and was featured in D Home Magazine.