BGuthrie Photos: DC -- American University -- Katzen Arts Center -- 2015E Late Fall Exhibit: Titus Kaphar: The Vesper Project

DC -- American University -- Katzen Arts Center -- 2015E Late Fall Exhibit: Titus Kaphar: The Vesper Project:

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Description of Pictures: Titus Kaphar: The Vesper Project
November 7 through December 13, 2015
This installation is a massive sculptural statement which weaves the artist's own work into the walls of a 19th century American house. Kaphar's most ambitious expression to date, The Vesper Project is a culmination of an intense five-year engagement with the lost storylines of the Vesper family. In the artist's musings, the members of the Vesper family and their histories are intertwined with Kaphar's autobiographical details and layered with widely accepted cultural triggers of identity. Period architecture, gilt frames, a vintage typewriter, a neglected wardrobe and old photographs act as seemingly recognizable elements, but by employing every tool of his trade, Kaphar insinuates doubt and transports the viewer into a disrupted mental state. As the house fractures, so does the viewer's experience. This exhibition is presented as part of the AU Department of Art's Visiting Artists Program and is sponsored by the Burger Collection.

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[1] KATVES_151108_001.JPG	[2] KATVES_151108_006.JPG
[3] KATVES_151108_009.JPG	[4] KATVES_151108_013.JPG
[5] KATVES_151108_019.JPG	[6] KATVES_151108_025.JPG
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[23] KATVES_151108_083.JPG	[24] KATVES_151108_097.JPG
[25] KATVES_151108_100.JPG	[26] KATVES_151108_104.JPG
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[37] KATVES_151108_142.JPG	[38] KATVES_151108_144.JPG
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[41] KATVES_151108_155.JPG	[42] KATVES_151108_158.JPG
[43] KATVES_151108_165.JPG	[44] KATVES_151108_168.JPG

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. KATVES_151108_001.JPG: Watching Tides Rise, 2012
2. KATVES_151108_006.JPG: Titus Kaphar The Vesper Project Selected Works
3. KATVES_151108_009.JPG: The Vesper Project While staring at a painting by artist Titus Kaphar at the Yale Art Gallery, a man named Benjamin Vesper experienced a psychotic break and attacked one of the figures in the painting. Vesper was arrested and subsequently admitted to the Connecticut Valley Hospital. During his sessions with a psychologist, Vesper began to reveal details about himself and his family's troubled history. Vesper sent secret letters and documents to Kaphar. In 2008, Vesper wandered off the hospital grounds, and was found squatting in a 19th century house that he insisted belonged to his family. The original Vesper home had burned down in the early 1900s. It seems Mr. Vesper needed such a space to return to, in order to engage with his own memory. It was this event that inspired "The Vesper Project". This exhibition includes art works inspired by the patient's frequent correspondence with Kaphar. From this verbal and pictorial dialogue emerges the story of a 19th century family who are able to "pass" as a white family in New England although their mixed heritage makes them "Negro" in the eyes of the law. The father, Captain Abram Vesper, is a former Brazilian slave whose entrepreneurial spirit brings him increasing success in Europe and Reconstruction-era America as a navigator, merchant, and eventual owner of a small shipping company. Having lost his only son under tragic wartime circumstances, Vesper's hope of establishing any kind of legacy lies in his three fair-skinned daughters, the youngest of whom has come of age just in time to marry the son of a prominent shipping magnate. But before their engagement is finalized, Vesper's daughter becomes pregnant, extinguishing any hope of a financial merger. As their public image unravels, the Vesper family's racial secret is also made public. What follows is a predictable downward spiral of violence that destroys everything Vesper had accomplished in hopes of immortalizing his family name. Sponsored by the Burger Collection, Hong Kong
4. KATVES_151108_025.JPG: Titus Kaphar The Vesper Project is a massive sculptural statement -- an encompassing installation, in which Kaphar's work is seamlessly woven into the walls of a 19th-century American house. It is the culmination of an intense 5-year engagement with the lost storylines of the Vesper family, the project was "birthed in a state of extended disbelief," according to Kaphar. As the artist's muses, the members of the Vesper family and their histories are intertwined with Kaphar's autobiographical details, and layered with wide-based cultural triggers of identity and truth in the context of historical accounting. In 'The Vesper Project', period architecture, gilt frames, a vintage typewriter, a neglected wardrobe, and old photographs act as seemingly recognizable elements, but by employing every tool of his trade, Kaphar insinuates doubt and transports the viewer into a disrupted mental state. As the house fractures, so does the viewer's experience. In so doing, Kaphar compresses times, conflates the continuum of history and postulates new powerful realities. With many of Kaphar's interventions present in the installation including slashing, silhouetting, and whitewashing, this singular work is a complex map of overlapping timetables and collective genealogies. By obliterating the distance between the viewer and the work, 'The Vesper Project' is comprehensive, experiential, and it is the artist's most ambitious expression to date.
5. KATVES_151108_104.JPG: Font Page, 2012
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