About this Event
VIP Opening Celebration of Velvet Faith
Friday, 28 February 2025
7.00 pm - 9.00 pm
Free Admission, Complimentary Drinks (21+)
161 Glass St. Dallas, TX
Join us on Friday, 28 February from 7.00 - 9.00pm for the opening of Velvet Faith and a special opportunity to meet the artists.
Dallas Contemporary is pleased to present Velvet Faith, curated by Emily Edwards, features artists EJ Hill and Martin Gonzales and will include works created on-site during their month-long residency, alongside new sculptures and paintings.
Velvet Faith explores the dynamics of community, emphasizing trust and faith as foundational elements. The show serves as a trust fall for both artists, who come together onsite to create new work in a collaborative process, embracing the unknown of what will emerge. In this exploration, they investigate how creating large-scale works can help assert and reclaim space typically denied to certain groups and individuals, highlighting the crucial importance of feeling worthy in a world that often refuses to see them fully. Their practices reflect a deep need to engage with the world. Despite their differing backgrounds—Hill’s rooted in durational performance and Gonzales in sculpture—their practices converge in a shared desire to honor improvisation as a tool within survival and liberation frameworks.
This exhibition invites viewers to come home—whatever or wherever that might be. Together, Hill and Gonzales celebrate the hard work of being soft, the power of living one’s truth, and the journey towards self-determination. Through Velvet Faith, Hill and Gonzales embrace the freedom of returning to themselves, embody an example of expansiveness, and ask viewers to take part in witnessing the value of their shared experience.
About EJ Hill
EJ Hill is an artist born, raised, and based in South Central, Los Angeles. Hill’s practice focuses largely on challenging the social aspects and systems that construct a body. He is not only interested in how bodies and subjectivities are formed, understood, and valued within different social and cultural contexts, but also how they redefine the parameters that govern which of them are allowed to exist freely.
His work has been exhibited at the Hammer Museum; the Studio Museum in Harlem; the Whitney Museum of American Art; MASS MoCA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Aspen Art Museum; PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv, Ukraine; and Institut d’art contemporain, Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes, France. Hill received an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2013 and a BFA from Columbia College Chicago in 2011.
About Martin Gonzales
Martin Gonzales is an artist whose practice incorporates drawing, sculpture, installation, video, and performance as means for creating space in the cramped corridors of hegemonic space. This multidisciplinary approach, most recently, has taken form in large scale installation and sculpture whose presence challenges the space through occupation and collision with its confines.
His work has been shown at the Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Walker, Minnesota Museum of American Art, and Plains Art Museum. He received his MFA from The University of Maryland in 2022 and his BFA from the University of Minnesota in 2017.
We look forward to welcoming you for this special preview.
Learn more about the exhibition .
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MUSEUM POLICIES
- No food or drink, please | No se permite comida ni bebida
- Photography permitted, but no flash | Solo fotografía sin flash
- Please refrain from touching the art | No tocar el arte
- This is a weapon-free zone | Zona libre de armas
With this registered admission, I give permission for the Dallas Contemporary to use my photograph and other media such as film and quotations, on Dallas Contemporary promotional material and publications, for which it may be suitable.
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EJ Hill, Brake Run Helix, 2022. Courtesy of the artist and MASS MoCA. Photo by Kaelan Burkett. Image courtesy of the artist.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Dallas Contemporary, 161 Glass Street, Dallas, United States
USD 0.00
