7/11: FIN // new work by BOYANG HOU

FIN
new work by BOYANG HOU
July 11-August 2, 2015

Opening Reception: Saturday, July 11, 6-9pm

Lease Agreement
3718 Ellerslie Ave
Baltimore, MD 21218

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.