Carlye Packer is pleased to present Black Velvet if you please, the first Los Angeles solo exhibition of paintings by Tony Shore, opening Saturday, November 19th, 1-5pm, curated by Michael Sherman. 

Shore’s paintings on black velvet are the result of his long anthropological study of community and environment. Using the kitsch-laden material of black velvet and working class characters and scenes from his youth, Shore creates theatrical vignettes of moments frozen in time. 

Growing up in Baltimore, paintings on black velvet were relatively common, in bulk, mass-produced and sold cheaply at corners of gas stations. Shore recalls driving by these corners, and the magical way the sunlight would hit the black velvet, how there was richness to the darkness that recalled a connection to Baroque paintings, Caravaggio, Goya, despite being known at the time as the poor man’s fine art. In Black Velvet if you please, Shore depicts timeless scenes of working class people, on a pier, on the street, in hotel rooms, in front of a psychic’s doorway - where scenes from Los Angeles, Baltimore, and Beijing painted on black velvet all have a particular familiarity and connectivity between the subjects presented. 

For Shore, works on black velvet capture the sincerity, dignity and honesty of the world he grew up in, and despite this material being looked down upon as kitsch, the worlds in which it represents and the subjects represented are worthy of history and of remembrance. 

Shore (b. 1971, Baltimore, MD) is a Baltimore-based artist and former Chair of the Painting Department at the Maryland Institute College of Art. He received a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, MFA from Yale University School of Art, and studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. His Awards include The Walter and Janet Sondheim Prize, The Bethesda Painting Prize, a Baltimore Artist Rubys Grant, several Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Awards, and a Franz and Virginia Bader Grant. Shore has exhibited his work at the Baltimore Museum of Art, The Delaware Art Museum, The Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, The Noyes Museum, the Kunstalle Beacon, George Adams gallery, C. Grimadis Gallery, Ethan Cohen Fine Arts and numerous other galleries throughout the U.S. He has also shown internationally in France and numerous museums throughout China. 

For inquires contact office@carlyepacker.xyz.