Joshua Chambers 
As Is Was 

September 19 - October 17, 2018

Ro2 Art | The Magnolia
3699 McKinney Ave.
Dallas, TX 75204
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September 19 - October 17, 2018
​Ro2 Art, Dallas, TX

Ro2 Art is proud to present Joshua Chambers in a solo exhibition at the Magnolia Second Floor Bar on September 19, 2018.  As Is Was is about realizing a better understanding of ourselves by appropriating the stories surrounding us and allocating the narratives of the characters to ourselves. Chambers arranges the circumstances in his work in such a way as to compel the viewer to pour part of themselves into the story to complete the piece. By discovering resemblances and oppositions of ourselves within the characters, Chambers’s paintings encourage the viewer to explore the process of being human.

ABOUT THE ARTIST 

Joshua Chambers is a painter who works in acrylic, pen & ink and printmaking. Described as elusive and happily odd, Joshua's work echoes the philosophy of absurdist playwrights and deconstructed sets. Receiving his Master of Fine Arts from Louisiana Tech University in 2009 and his Bachelors of Art from Northeastern State University in Oklahoma, Joshua's work has been published in New American Paintings, Creative Quarterly, and Studio Visit Magazine. Chambers work can currently be found in Graphite Galleries in New Orleans, Ann Connelly Fine Art in Baton Rouge, and The Agora Borealis in Shreveport Louisiana. His works are in the permanent collections of the Masur Museum of Art in Louisiana, the Lessedra Gallery in Bulgaria, and numerous private collections. Chambers lives in Bossier Parish with his wife Leigh Anne and their daughter Sophia.

ARTIST STATEMENT 

We use stories to define us. To better understand ourselves, sometimes we appropriate stories from a wider social sphere folding their arch and moral into our own narrative. In doing so we use those stories to better understand ourselves by drawing parallels between ourselves and the characters of the story. We discover conflicts and find likenesses with the literary or religious traditions that often use parabolic characters and their symbolic actions to explore the process of being human. I create images that begin from an autobiographical point and morph into scenes in which characters and objects of broad cultural references interact within cryptic tableaus. When approaching the work, the viewer has to pour a part of themselves into the story to inform the narrative within each scene and define each character’s agency and circumstances.