Moss spring exhibitions explore socially charged narratives and constructs

Susan Bland

15 Jan 2025

A surreal painting by Shaunté Gates titled Holy Parachutes, 2023. The artwork features dynamic, futuristic figures with metallic and organic textures, set against a layered background of abstract urban landscapes. Parachute-like shapes float amidst fragmented architecture, glowing lights, and vibrant colors, evoking themes of transcendence and transformation. The composition combines realism with abstraction, creating an otherworldly, dreamlike atmosphere. — Shaunté Gates’ work “Holy Parachutes,” 2023, features acrylic, photo, pulled paper, collage on wood panel. 48-by-72 inches. Work courtesy of private collection and Sperone Westwater Gallery, New York. Photo courtesy of Shaunté Gates.

The Moss Arts Center’s spring exhibitions feature the work of Shaunté Gates and Charisse Pearlina Weston, two artists who experiment with the tension between beauty and destruction, using fragmented compositions to showcase multiple perspectives and narratives.

Both artists will be in attendance for the opening reception of their solo exhibitions — Gates’ “This Is Not a Test” and Weston’s “I saw the room but darkly dreamed it...” — on Thursday, Jan. 23, from 4-6 p.m. in the Moss Arts Center’s Grand Lobby. They will also join Brian Holcombe, the center’s curator, for a panel discussion on Friday, Jan. 24, at 11 a.m. in the Cube.

The galleries and all related events are free and open to the public. Both exhibitions are on view through Sunday, March 30.

Shaunté Gates, "This Is Not a Test"

Thursday, Jan. 23-Sunday, March 30
Ruth C. Horton Gallery

Gates’ solo exhibition features a survey of mixed-media paintings and densely layered works combining photography, painting, collage, and found materials to create surreal, dreamlike compositions that merge portraiture, landscape, and architecture.

Trained in traditional painting and portraiture, Gates’ paintings evolved into a mixed and multimedia expression in 2004, when he began working in television as a motion graphics artist and video editor. Working with images and video footage of music artists and television personalities to create show openings and promotional content subtly and organically influenced his paintings, integrating elements of motion and media into his evolving artistic practice.

“The relationship was reciprocal. The painter spirit was feeding the digital work and in turn my paintings,” Gates said. “Aesthetically and thematically, I embraced the contradiction, as the paintings began to explore themes of introspection and the influence of mass media on society. I started to see the works as theatrical. As I did for television, I began photographing and casting images of family and friends as protagonists for my paintings. I take photos and find photos for other cast members and architecture, as well as capturing stills from cinema and video games to collage into these densely layered stage-like settings.”

Extracting from multiple time-based media that include current events, history, and cinema, perhaps paradoxically, somehow untethered from notions of linear time and space; psychogeographical labyrinths or worlds are constructed to be deconstructed into what Gates describes as, “moments that feel to be on the brink of an unconscious truth.”

Charisse Pearlina Weston, "I saw the room but darkly dreamed it..."

Thursday, Jan. 23-Sunday, March 30
Miles C. Horton Jr. Gallery and Sherwood Payne Quillen '71 Reception Gallery

Charisse Pearlina Weston’s work, “pyrolytic envelop i (into the bright and distributed subject side),” 2024. The sculpture includes text etched on slumped and folded Mirropane surveillance glass and concrete and rests of a white geometrically-shaped pedestal. © Charisse Perlina Weston. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York and Dr. Charles Boyd. — Charisse Pearlina Weston’s work “pyrolytic envelop i (into the bright and distributed subject side),” 2024. The sculpture includes text etched on slumped and folded surveillance glass and concrete. 51 1/2-by-22-by-14 1/2 inches overall. Work courtesy of Charisse Pearlina Weston and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, and Charles Boyd. Photo courtesy of Charisse Pearlina Weston.

Weston’s solo exhibition engages with themes of surveillance and tactics of Black refusal by transforming materials associated with observation and control through repetition and reuse. It features new glass, lead, and concrete sculptures and works on canvas that challenge fixed narratives and systems of control. The core of this disruption lies in the manipulation of a reflective and transparent glass, essentially a one-way mirror, that is often used for monitoring. Weston's alteration of the glass’ reflective surface through kiln-firing and folding disrupts its surveillant function, rendering the surface opaque, cracking the reflective skin, and obscuring her etched text. This material transformation symbolically subverts the mechanisms of surveillance, questioning who holds power in the act of observing and being observed.

In addition to the stand-alone sculptures, the exhibition’s works on canvas employ Cubist fragmentation and abstraction, incorporating dismantled materials such as glass and frit fused with epoxy and oil stick. They disrupt through formal strategies of breaking apart and reassembling forms and disparate materials. This strategy underscores the ways in which surveillance reinforces systemic violence by dictating visibility, access, and control. By distorting the boundaries between creation and collapse, Weston’s works metaphorically challenge the structures and ideologies that perpetuate oppression, highlighting Black interiority as a site of resistance and refusal.

Through these materials and methods, Weston blurs lines between visibility and invisibility, observer and observed, offering a layered critique of surveillance as both a material and ideological construct.

Curator-led gallery tours

Take a deep dive into the exhibition with the center’s monthly noontime curator tour “Beyond the Frame.” Join Moss Arts Center Curator Brian Holcombe on the second Thursday of every month. Starting promptly at noon in the Grand Lobby, the tours are free and open to the public.

Holcombe will provide expert insight and contextualization, offer behind-the-scenes glimpses into the acquisition and installation processes, and answer participant questions. Learn more about the artists featured in the galleries and their works, including historical and thematic contexts, and be inspired to look at art and the creative process in new ways.

There will be two tours offered for the center’s spring exhibitions on Feb. 13 and March 13.

Visiting the galleries

Located at 190 Alumni Mall, the Moss Arts Center’s galleries are open on Tuesday-Friday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m., and Saturday, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Parking is available in the North End Parking Garage on Turner Street. When not staffed for a special event, visitors may park in the garage by taking a ticket at entry and paying with Visa or Mastercard upon exit. Find more parking details online.

If you are an individual with a disability and desire an accommodation, please contact Jamie Wiggert at least 10 days prior to the event at 540-231-5300 or email wiggertj@vt.edu during regular business hours.