Bret Payne has a lot on his plate – and on his walls.
As the owner of the newly opened Transmission
Gallery and a senior VCU sculpture student, Payne
is quite busy.
“It ain’t easy,” he said. “I’m taking on a lot more
than the typical senior. It’s really difficult running
something as economically unpromising as a gallery
and having to pay for school, the lease and bills.”
So far so good – Payne said at the gallery’s first
opening in September, people were “packed like
sardines” in the gallery all night. October’s show proved
almost as popular.
“Having a gallery, you have to do something really
unique. The stuff I pick is pretty new and challenging,”
Payne said.
Payne is attempting to fill in the gaps in the city art
scene. He said there are types of
art and artists he thinks other
Richmond galleries have been
missing.
“It’s contemporary stuff
that’s pushing the boundaries
and busting genres. It doesn’t
come with a label,” he said.
“People come in and want to put
a label on it, but a lot of times
you just can’t. That would be
doing the art a disservice.”
For each of his gallery openings,
Payne aims to display the
work of one local artist and
one out-of-town artist. He said he finds the artists
through friends and art he’s seen in person or on the
Internet.
He usually has the out-of-town artist stay at his home,
which he said makes their interaction real and warm.
Payne hopes he is also creating a dialogue between
the two artists he’s picked for the shows.
“I want to create a residual effect, so they don’t
forget they were here,” Payne said. “They can keep in
contact with the person they were in the show with,
making connections so they can get their work shown
out of town.”
Amze Emmons is the artist whose work is currently
on display at the gallery. He is based in Allentown,
Pa., and Philadelphia.
His show, “Vague Terrain,” is a portfolio of pieces
he’s been working on for two years. The works have
precise lines and angles in graphite, overlaid with
brightly colored paint or pencil. Emmons said each
piece started with a clipping from the Sunday paper.
“My work has been described as cheerfully dys-
topic,” Emmons said. “I am examining
the relationship, the contrast,
between a businessman with 12 cell
phones and a stateless refugee.”
Emmons said he has a specific
motivation behind the creation of
his pieces but doesn’t have
something in particular he wants
his audience to take away from the
show.
“My work poses more questions
than answers: ‘Is this really how we
live?’ ‘How did it come to be this
way?’ I want the audience to generate
their own answers,” Emmons said.
“I want them to wrestle between the
dark content of the work and the joy
of admiring the image.”