17 May – 5 July, 2025
Exhibition
Shane Darwent
The Molting
May 17 - July 5, 2025
Opening Saturday, May 17th, 6-8pm
Spencer Brownstone Gallery is pleased to present The Molting, Shane Darwent’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. This new body of work continues Darwent’s exploration of storefront awnings as specific forms and as symbols of the evolving American urban landscape. A layer of sound, in collaboration with sound artist Robbie Wing, creates an auditory counterpart to the visual dialogue—an evolving soundscape that further immerses viewers in the theme of urban transformation.
We look for signs along the road, not road signs, or signs from God but signs of the micro economies we are slicing through. In a single sweeping view we are confronted with the new business coming soon, the old one that once was, the one that continues to cling on, the one that has taken over the old and made it new again. Collecting on the sides the things washed up, from the ever churning combinations of humanity.
The exhibition starts closed. A large mounted photograph blocks the line of sight into the gallery, standing a few feet from its narrow entrance. A bollard stands in front of a red wall and a window covered with butcher paper. Past the visual obstruction, the space opens up to a number of surfaces stretched onto shiny frames.
For the Molting, Darwent returns to discarded awning vinyl from familiar storefronts such as auto body shops, nail salons, and the Family Dollar store, reassembling them over newly fabricated aluminum armatures. Cropped, illegible store logos—once in signage—become graphic fields, language reduced to shape and color. Some awnings feature fresh vinyl in combination with the used and sunfaded, resulting in a visual oscillation between real and pictorial space. The surface is the thing, and vice versa. The collection of works are remnants, multifaceted, brilliant, and brittle—left behind the moment of metamorphosis.
Darwent’s structures, some front and back, some inside and outside—echo the transient nature of the spaces they reference. They operate as chrysali, signaling the end of one cycle and the beginning of another. As sign-making signals its own transformation, the works invite reflection on how physical and economic landscapes continually shift, leaving behind traces—visual, material, and emotional—that speak to resilience, obsolescence, and renewal.
Artist Bio
Shane Darwent (b. 1983, Austin, TX) is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice mines the commercial vernacular that lines American roadways to inform experimental photographic works, large-scale sculpture, and site-responsive installations. Exhibiting internationally, Darwent has been an artist-in-residence at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Ragdale, the Ucross Foundation and the Jentel Artist Residency Program, as well as a Core Fellow at Penland School of Crafts. He holds an MFA from the University of Michigan (2017) and a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (2005). He is a 2022 Joan Mitchell Fellow and was an Artist-in-Residence at the Tulsa Artist Fellowship from 2018-2024. In 2022, he embarked on an expansive collaboration with the fashion house Saint Laurent to create site-specific sculptures for their flagship storefronts in over fourteen, international locations. In 2024, Darwent completed a large-scale, permanent installation for the Tulsa International Airport consisting of thirty-four, motor driven resin panels whose choreographed motion spans 120’ across the airport’s main hall. He currently lives and works in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Robbie Wing is an artist and musician from Tulsa, Oklahoma. A citizen of the Cherokee Nation, his practice encompasses composition, sonic sculpture, and performance. His installation, Cross Ties Song (2024), is currently on view at Tinworks Art in Bozeman, Montana. Robbie is pursuing an MFA in Music/Sound at Bard College and holds a master's degree in Urban Design from the University of Oklahoma. He has presented his work and performed at numerous venues, including the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, the Tulsa Artist Fellowship Flagship Gallery, the Philbrook Museum, the University of Kent in Chatham, UK, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Kőszeg, Hungary, the Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater, and the Center for Arts, Research & Alliances.