Vaughn Terrell Davis Jr. pours richly pigmented acrylic paint onto raw canvas, soaking it with layer upon layer of vibrant, saturated color. To achieve intensity, he also paints with fabric dyes. On the floor in his studio, paint pools and colors bleed, suffusing the fabric with a sense of energy, gravity, and depth. Once these canvases dry, Davis returns to them, using blades to incise, shred, and unravel the fabric’s warp and weft. Holes, flaps, and fringes open up the painted surfaces, blurring the lines between creation and destruction before reaching resolution. Challenging painting’s traditional two-dimensionality, Davis’s paintings establish an architecture of their own: orchestrating configurations that drape and sag, soften the hard angles between walls and floors, and reach into the air. For this exhibition, Davis will present a selection of new and existing paintings, taking advantage of the double-height ceilings of CAM’s gallery space to surround viewers in color and dynamic movement.

In many of Lauren dela Roche’s recent large-scale paintings, female figures lounge together in highly stylized architectural spaces animated by dynamic patterns and color. The vintage feed sacks she quilts together and paints on are full of patinas of use. Dela Roche incorporates these holes, logos, patches, and mends into her compositions, creating depth, and suggesting renewal. This exhibition sees dela Roche experimenting with new forms and mediums. In one new series, linear drawings of figures appear alongside cutout tissue paper shapes, pressed leaves and flowers, and treasured collage elements collected by the artist that she sandwiches between layers of encaustic wax; their rippling surfaces suggest layers of history accumulating or peeling away. Alongside these paintings, dela Roche debuts new figurative sculptures in cast bronze, presented alongside sculptures fabricated from vintage dollhouses.

Vincent Stemmler uses common building materials like concrete and rebar to create sculptures within an installation that simultaneously suggests construction and ruin. Dried stalks of mullein—a plant that pops up where soil has been disturbed—populate an installation of multimedia works that the artist has imagined for this exhibition. Stemmler asked friends and community members to sit for life casting sessions, using the resulting molds to create figurative sculptures in cast concrete. His incorporation of digital animations into the sculptures offers a material counterpoint to weathered construction materials. By adapting a Victorian-era parlor trick called “Pepper’s Ghost,” Stemmler incorporates clear acrylic sheets and hidden video projections into these sculptures, with reflecting images appearing to hover in mid-air like ghosts or specters. Stemmler’s accompanying live video feed extends this narrative of regeneration by creating an infinite field of dried mullein stalks that signal growth and decay, drawing visitors into his imagined world.