Thank you and goodbye!

After three years of exhibitions and events we have closed our doors.

It has been our pleasure to work with the amazing artists and curators that have organized, exhibited, and performed in our space. Each of our events felt like deeply fulfilling collaborations and labors of loving creativity.

We also want to thank everyone who supported our space by getting the word out, coming to our exhibitions, and lending us their talents and resources. It is a community that makes alternative projects like this possible, and we would have been nothing without that support. Baltimore is a great town with a strong and growing art community, and we're excited to see what the future holds!

Our blog and Facebook page will stay up with documentation as our exhibitions and events.

Big sincere thank you from Allison, Adam, and Talk Radio!
<3

Review of our space and Boyang Hou's "FIN"

BmoreArt published a review by Terence Hannum of the run of our space and Boyang Hou's exhibition FIN. 

http://bmoreart.com/2015/08/a-fitting-end.html

Documentation of "FIN"

Boyang Hou - FIN

Closing Reception: Saturday, August 1, 5-8pm
July 11 - August 1, 2015

[left] Skywriting (FIN) (acrylic on canvas) 2015

[right] Skywriting (RIOT) (acrylic on canvas) 2015

Thirst (Neon White #7328) (lenticular photograph mounted to acrylic) 2015

 Crown (cast aluminum) 2013

Thirst (Neon Green #9093) (lenticular photograph mounted to acrylic) 2015

[foreground] Untitled (Warp) (Goalrilla backboard frame, steel rims, Color Cast acrylic (yellow transparent #2208), gold leaf, 120 gram all-weather nylon basketball net, various hardware) 2015

[background] Skywriting (QUIET) (acrylic on canvas) 2015

Skywriting (QUIET) (acrylic on canvas) 2015

Wedge (ft. Kate Conlon) (cast aluminum) 2013

Void (Lifetime backboard, gold leaf, steel, various hardware) 2015

Thirst (Neon Orange #9096) (lenticular photograph mounted to acrylic) 2015

Boyang Hou: FIN

FIN
Boyang Hou

Reception: Saturday, July 11, 6-10pm
July 11 – August 2, 2015

Lease Agreement
3718 Ellerslie Ave
Baltimore, MD 21218
leaseagreementbaltimore.blogspot.com
leaseagreementbaltimore@gmail.com

Hours: Wednesdays 4-8pm and by appointment

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Opening at the end of a socially and politically tumultuous spring, Boyang Hou’s FIN explores the space of uncertainty that exists when power balances become tenuous. Through sculpture, painting, and photography, Hou attempts to convey the atmosphere of uneasy titillation that precedes revolution - the eerie excitement that comes when it seems that change is fast approaching. Hou employs tropes of the cinematic to enact this drama that is at once ominous and hopeful: destruction with an eye to a brighter future.

Boyang Hou’s exhibition, FIN, is the final exhibition at Lease Agreement before it permanently closes.

Boyang Hou is an East Coast artist currently residing in Chicago. He serves as Director of Exhibitions at Fernwey Gallery and is a founding member of Dry Storage Collective. Hou received his MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his BFA from New York University. Hou’s work often investigates the relationship between popular culture and ideas of aura, nostalgia, and the sublime. Employing devices such as lowbrow knowledge, play, humor, and cliché, he is interested in the ways in which culture and society can act as a conduit for liminal experiences. Using thematics such as fandom, cinema, and fetishized consumption he explores the possibilities of the contemporary.

Lease Agreement is a collaborative curatorial project by artists Adam Farcus and Allison Yasukawa. Set in the living room of the couple’s rental house, Lease Agreement continues in the tradition of apartment gallery exhibition spaces by exhibiting conceptually rigorous, engaging work within the context of a home.

This exhibition is hosted by Lease Agreement as a partnership with the artist residency, ACRE. ACRE (Artists’ Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions) is a volunteer-run non-profit based in Chicago devoted to employing various systems of support for emerging artists and to creating a generative community of cultural producers. ACRE investigates and institutes models designed to help artists develop, present, and discuss their practices by providing forums for idea exchange, interdisciplinary collaboration, and experimental projects. More information about ACRE can be found at www.acreresidency.org.

Video Documentation of Vin Caponigro's "Settle Down"

Documentation of "Settle Down"

Vin Caponigro - Settle Down

June 13 - July 5, 2015

Vin Caponigro - Untitled (Home) (AstroTurf, wire, quartz, slate) 2015

Vin Caponigro - Untitled (Home) (AstroTurf, wire, quartz, slate) 2015 

Vin Caponigro - Untitled (Home) (AstroTurf, wire, quartz, slate) 2015

Vin Caponigro - Untitled (Captured Moss) (moss, acrylic resin on panel) 2015

Vin Caponigro - Untitled (Captured Moss) (moss, acrylic resin on panel) 2015

Vin Caponigro - Untitled (Mantle Grass) (potting soil, grass seed) 2015

Vin Caponigro - Untitled (Mantle Grass) (potting soil, grass seed) 2015

Vin Caponigro - Untitled (Lease Agreement) (screenprint) 2015

Vin Caponigro - Untitled (Molding Planks) (wood, glycerin soap, fluorite) 2015

Vin Caponigro - Untitled (Molding Planks) (wood, glycerin soap, fluorite) 2015

Vin Caponigro's "Settle Down"

Settle Down
Vin Caponigro

Reception: Saturday, June 13, 6-9pm
June 13 – July 5, 2015

Lease Agreement
3718 Ellerslie Ave
Baltimore, MD 21218
leaseagreementbaltimore.blogspot.com
leaseagreementbaltimore@gmail.com

Hours: Wednesdays 4-8pm and by appointment

<><><><> 

“Of course, thanks to the house, a great many of our memories are housed, and if the house is a bit elaborate, if it has a cellar and a garret, nooks and corridors, our memories have refuges that are all the more clearly delineated. All our lives we come back to them in our daydreams.”
- Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

Settle Down is a solo exhibition of installation and sculptural works by Chicago-based artist Vin Caponigro. Their work for Lease Agreement is site-specific: through pattern, as is found in her hand-printed wallpaper installation, it physically references the formal elements found in the house while in essence it locates the psychological tensions found in a well-lived space. Caponigro’s minimal installations containing fluorite crystals, moss, astroturf, and rocks function as domestic signs that have been denied their normal role in order to expose the presences and absences found therein. Just as Bachelard defines Topoanalysis as the “systematic psychological study of the sites of our intimate lives” through lyrical philosophy in The Poetics of Space, Caponigro finds their analytic voice in the poetry of the physical object and geometry of living.

Before receiving their MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Vin Caponigro attended Bryn Mawr College where they earned their BA in the History of Art. In their work, Caponigro explores ideas of restriction through repetition, reproduction, and translation. They have taught classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Olive Harvey College, and currently teaches studio and academic classes at Harold Washington College. They have exhibited work at the DePaul Art Museum, Chicago Cultural Center, and the Highland Park Art Center. Their work is in the permanent collections at California State Long Beach and the Joan Flasch Artists’ Books Collection. They are a member of the feminist art collective Tracers, and frequently participates in workshops, most recently at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and NYU Florence. More of their work can be seen at www.jessicacaponigro.com.

Lease Agreement is a collaborative curatorial project by artists Adam Farcus and Allison Yasukawa. Set in the living room of the couple’s rental house, Lease Agreement continues in the tradition of apartment gallery exhibition spaces by exhibiting conceptually rigorous, engaging work within the context of a home.

This exhibition is hosted by Lease Agreement as a partnership with the artist residency, ACRE. ACRE (Artists’ Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions) is a volunteer-run non-profit based in Chicago devoted to employing various systems of support for emerging artists and to creating a generative community of cultural producers. ACRE investigates and institutes models designed to help artists develop, present, and discuss their practices by providing forums for idea exchange, interdisciplinary collaboration, and experimental projects. More information about ACRE can be found at www.acreresidency.org.