Current Exhibition

Emerging from Where?

Fri, Jul 11, 2025 → Sat, Aug 16, 2025

• Opening reception: Fri, Jul 11, 6:00 - 8:00 pm

David Shelton Gallery is pleased to announce Emerging from Where?, a group exhibition curated by interdisciplinary artist Robert Leroy Hodge. This curatorial project assembles eleven young artists whose visionary practices have not only captivated Hodge’s attention but also signal the shifting contours of contemporary art and the broader cultural landscape.

The exhibition title takes inspiration from the late and revered artist Jesse Lott, who often questioned the term “emerging artist” with his incisive response: “Emerging from where?” In sharing this provocation with Hodge, Lott underscored a critical truth—that an artist’s legitimacy is not bestowed by institutional validation but is rooted in lifelong dedication, lived experience, and creative resilience. The title serves as both a tribute and a pointed interrogation of how artistic visibility is framed and who defines its relevance.

Featuring the works of Saj Baldwin, Crystal Coulter, Xavier Gilmore, Morgan Grigsby, Noah Hanney, Anne Herrera, J Lū, Charles Louis Middleton III, Morgan Newton, Jake Otto, and Anthony Rundblade, the exhibition reflects a dynamic spectrum of artistic insights and techniques. From emotive portraiture and expansive landscapes to evocative abstraction, these artists engage diverse methodologies and material vocabularies that speak to both personal and collective narratives. Their works traverse aesthetic traditions and experimental gestures, offering viewers an exhibition that is as formally compelling as it is conceptually charged.

In the spirit of Hodge’s prior curatorial project at the gallery in 2019, Everything’s Gonna Be Alright NOW—which introduced audiences to now-recognized talents such as Tyler Deauvea, Amanda Claire Miller, Kate Mulholland, Alexis Pye, and Brandon Thompson—Emerging from Where? extends his commitment to amplifying compelling new voices. Hodge continues to shape an evolving artistic dialogue that foregrounds experimentation, authenticity, and cultural nuance.

Emerging from Where? is not merely an introduction—it is an assertion of presence, a meditation on process, and a celebration of artists whose time is not arriving but is already here.