David Winton Bell Gallery
List Art Center, Brown University
The Brown Arts Institute presents an exclusive preview of Spiz, a documentary about the life and work of artist Dean Gillispie. Gillispie’s sculptures are currently on view at the Bell Gallery in Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration.
Following the screening, Gillispie will discuss his practice with curator Dr. Nicole R. Fleetwood. This event is free and open to the public.
Dean Gillispie grew up in southwest Ohio. As a child, he enjoyed building miniatures and train sets, what he calls tinkering. When he was 24, he was convicted and sentenced for crimes he did not commit.
He spent 20 years in prison before being released through the advocacy of his parents and the Ohio Innocence Project. While incarcerated, he created dozens of elaborate miniatures using materials he scavenged inside. He is now on the board of the Ohio Innocence Project and volunteers to help other formerly incarcerated people re-enter communities.
Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration explores the impact of the US prison system on contemporary visual art.
This exhibition highlights artists who are or have been incarcerated alongside artists who have not been incarcerated but whose practices interrogate the carceral state. Seen together, their works reveal how punitive governance, predatory policing, surveillance, and mass imprisonment impact everyday life for many millions of people.
Art made in prisons is crucial to contemporary culture, though it has been largely excluded from established art institutions and public discourse.
Marking Time aims to shift aesthetic currents, offering new ways to envision art and to understand the reach and devastation of the US carceral state.
Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration is organized by Dr. Nicole R. Fleetwood, NYU Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, with exhibition coordinator Steven G. Fullwood and the assistance of graduate researchers Anisa Jackson and Xavier Hadley.
The exhibition is presented across the Bell and Cohen Galleries at the Brown Arts Institute in collaboration with the Department of Africana Studies / Rites and Reason Theatre, and will be accompanied by a dynamic series of public programs.
Image credit: Still from Spiz, directed by Barry Rowen. Dean Gillispie, Spiz’s Dinette, 1998. Tablet backs, stick pins, popsicle sticks, cigarette foil. Courtesy of the artist.
Major support for Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration is provided by the Mellon Foundation and the Art for Justice Fund, a sponsored project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. Additional funding is provided by NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development; NYU’s Department of Media, Culture and Communication; and Brown University.
Special thanks to MoMA PS1; American Friends Service Committee’s Prison Watch Program; Center for Transformative Action, Cornell University; Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles; Independent Curators International (ICI); JTT, New York; Justice Arts Coalition; Malin Gallery, New York; Ohio Justice and Policy Center; Prisoner Express; William James Association; Women on the Rise!; and The Fleetwood Family.