DAYTON, OH.- The Contemporary Dayton, presents artists who perpetually confront subjects surrounding current events encompassing political resistance and protests. This new exhibition features Indiana-based and internationally renowned painter, Samuel Levi Jones, Dayton’s most prolific artist, activist, and elder statesman, Willis “Bing” Davis, and Vietnamese film and visual artist, Tuan Andrew Nguyen. The three exhibitions are on view through January 16, 2022.

“The Co is committed to presenting artists whose practices speak to prominent issues of our time,” states The Co’s Executive Director, Eva Buttacavoli. “These three exhibitions will challenge the way brutality is embedded in institutional systems and the beauty in consistently seeking out the truth.”

Samuel Levi Jones: The Empire is Falling
The Dr. Robert L. Brandt, Jr. Gallery
The Co is presenting Samuel Levi Jones: The Empire is Falling, featuring recent large-scale paintings by internationally renowned artist Samuel Levi Jones. Jones’ works are comprised of the rended covers of books whose purpose is to influence, educate, and inform. In his effort to investigate omissions and falsehoods deeply embedded within these volumes, Jones sews the book covers back together to create uncannily beautiful abstract paintings, often at a large scale. Upon closer inspection, the striking vistas of these works give way to a reckoning with the misinformation that the source material embodies, particularly as it pertains to race and equity. Jones seeks to move the viewer closer to the “truths” of encyclopedias, law volumes, medical texts, and art books. In this practice, Jones deals with multiple histories at once: the history rooted in the reconstructed volumes, the history of abstract painting, the history of quilting and repurposing, and the history of protest and resistance.

Jones’s work has been featured in exhibitions at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, IN; The Brooklyn Museum, NY; The Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, IL; and The Studio Museum, Harlem, NY. His work can be found in public and private collections including The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; The Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin – Madison, WI; The Rubell Family Collection, Miami, FL; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; The Studio Museum, Harlem, NY; and The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY.




In 2014, Jones was the recipient of the prestigious Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize, an annual award presented by The Studio Museum in Harlem, whose past recipients include some of the most prominent artists working today, including Leslie Hewitt, Glenn Ligon, and Lorna Simpson.

Willis “Bing” Davis: Kneel
The Co is presenting Willis “Bing” Davis: Kneel, featuring a newly commissioned body of work by Dayton’s most prolific artist, activist, and elder statesman, Willis “Bing” Davis. The exhibition explores recent issues of police brutality and features Colin Kaepernick, George Floyd Knee Cushion, 2020, an installation of what Davis refers to as “kneelers.” In this work, Davis adorned an antique wooden machine part mold from Dayton’s now evaporated industrial manufacturing culture, with carpenter nails, decorative upholstery studs, and paint. Cradled in this ornate-yet-earthy object is a muddied and used, red, white, and blue football meant to accept the knee of someone kneeling in solemnity and protest. It also represents the other end of this harrowing cultural spectrum: the knee held on George Floyd’s neck for over 9 minutes resulting in his death.

Davis is known internationally for his large-scale, boldly colored and patterned African Spirit Dance paintings, contemporary African masks and ceramics, as well as being an activist, educator, and mentor. He founded the Willis Bing Davis Art Studio & EbonNia Gallery in Dayton, OH and works locally, nationally, and internationally, which include projects in Russia, Bermuda, China, and Ghana, among others. He co-founded Ohio’s The African American Visual Artists Guild (AAVAG), and is currently the President of the Board of Directors of the National Conference of Artists.

Tuan Andrew Nguyen: The Boat People
The Jack W. and Sally D. Eichelberger Foundation Video Gallery
The Co presents Tuan Andrew Nguyen: The Boat People. Vietnamese artist, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, explores strategies of political resistance enacted through counter-memory and post-memory narratives. Extracting and re-working stories via history and supernaturalism is an essential part of Nguyen’s video works and sculptures where fact and fiction are both held accountable. Set in an unspecified future at the precarious edge of humanity’s possible extinction, The Boat People follows a group of children led by a strong-willed and resourceful little girl who travel the seas and collect stories of a world they never knew through objects that survived through time.

Nguyen received a BFA from the University of California, Irvine in 1999 and an MFA from The California Institute of the Arts in 2004. Nguyen has received several awards in both film and visual arts, including an Art Matters grant in 2010 and Best Feature Film at VietFilmFest in 2018 for his film, The Island. His work has been included in several international exhibitions including the Asia Pacific Triennial (2006), the Whitney Biennial (2017), and the Sharjah Biennial (2019).