Doug Stapleton
False Augury: New Collages and Objects
July 13 – September 14, 2024
Bert Green Fine Art
8 S Michigan Ave Suite 620
Chicago IL 60603
USA
Phone and text 312-434-7544
Email inquiry@bgfa.us
Gallery Hours: Fridays from 12-4 pm
All other days by appointment only
Save a day this summer to come visit the show. Details about a reception and gallery talk to follow. Contact the gallery or myself with any questions.

False Augury:
These new images combine hands, eyes, plants, birds, fossils, and meteors; an ongoing vocabulary that I return to again and again. They become entities—augurs—nature’s messengers of change and transformation, invoked as a union between the natural world and human experience. This intersection is a source of mystery and profound delight for me. Not because of any firsthand encounter. This inquiry is born from desire—a desire to be something other than human alone. They appear monstrous to me, and I welcome that appearance. Monsters are augurs, beautiful, strange, and unsettling. They are a hint at something else that could be.
But as augurs of what is to come, they are unreliable; prophets with only an occasional garbled message. That is not their shortcoming. It is mine. My limited capacity. Nonetheless, I pursue them in their silent trajectory.
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False Augurs take flight through thought or wings. Mystery left in the wake of their departure. Did they ever intend to tell us anything?
Yet we read the skies in the flight of birds, hoping that feathers whisper truth.
Eyes open in everything, we have no monopoly on sight. Hands and flowers have better vision. Eyes watch, fingers feel, blooms reveal. In the union of flesh and flower lies the real mystery. In the rustle of wings, secrets of the coming year.
In the curve of your hand, the cup of your shoulder I find rest, abide, and while away.

Doug Stapleton
June 2024

my collage Ordinary Time, 2023, is on view in the traveling exhibition of Birds in Art, organized by the Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, WI.

Two collages from 2017, Bulls Eye & Oracle #12 Tryclops are printed in the Winter/Spring 2022 Issue #3 of the Anarchist Review of Books.

www.anarchistreviewofbooks.org/store/

Since the Center on Halsted Show back in February....

Poseidon. Chris Boicos Fine Art, Paxos, Greece. July 2014. Group Exhibition.

21st Salon du Collage Contemporain. Les Hauts de Belleville, Paris France. March/April 2014.Group exhibition.

A short feature in Kolaj Magazine, Issue #10, Fall-Winter 2014, The Face in Collage: An Exhibition in Print

A solo exhibition of new works! At the Center on Halsted on the Northside of Chicago. Reception on Friday, February 28th, 7-9 pm. Show runs through April 6th.

5 collages featured in the online journal Fatboy Review.

www.fatboyreview.net/dstapleton01.html

Another fine year. In May, I took part in a two person show at Jennifer Norback Gallery in Chicago. I was paired with Vivian Van Blerk, a great photographer from Paris. Back in June, I took part in a wonderful exhibition, Chicago in Paris, at Galerie Beckel Odile Boicos in Paris. The exhibition was organized by Jennifer Norback.

I had two pieces juried into the annual *Galesburg Civic Arts Center exhibition (GALEX 47) in Galesburg IL. Also had a piece in"Love* an exhibition in conjunction with the Beethoven Festival here in Chicago, and I had three pieces in the 3 x 33 exhibition at the Mary Rezny Studio/Gallery in Lexington KY.

I have a collage Admiration published in the South Loop Review, Vol 15, published by Columbia College Chicago

2012 has been a great year for exhibitions. I had a solo exhibition, The Grand Spectacle, at the Loyola University Museum of Art in Chicago back in the spring. I was invited to take part in a group exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, entitled The End of Photography, curated by Rod Slemmons.
Finally, I had a solo exhibition at the Chicago Cultural Center, %Optimistic Reconstructions,' in the Fall through the end of the year.

Juxtaposed in its Essence:
Collages by Alexis Mackenzie and Doug Stapleton
February 8 - March 5, 2011

Safety-Kleen Gallery One
Arts Center
Elgin Community College
1700 Spartan Dr.,
Elgin, Il 60123

Reception: Tuesday, February 8, 2011, 5:00 - 7:30 pm.

I'm delighted to be part of an upcoming collage exhibition at Eyeporium Gallery. This is a three person show of mine work with two other extraordinary artists - Kass Copeland and Michael Pajon.

Friday, August 6th through Tuesday, August 31st. Reception will be Friday the 6th from 6 to 9pm.

Eyeporium Gallery, 1431 N Milwaukee Ave, Chicago IL.

I'm showing a new group of collages entitled "Michael and Angelo."

ROMP: an exhibition of recent collages
Beverly Shores Depot Museum and Art Gallery

June 18th through July 11th, 2010

Gallery hours:
Friday, Saturday and Sunday
11:00 am to 3:00 pm

Opening reception
Friday, June 18th, 2010
5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

525 Broadway (by the South Shore tracks)
Just off of the W. Dunes Hwy, Route 12
Beverly Shores, IN 46301

Review: Paul Clark and Doug Stapleton/Las Manos Gallery
December 28, 2009
NewCity

Review: Paul Clark and Doug Stapleton/Las Manos Gallery

RECOMMENDED
The stark contrast between photographic postmodernism and modernism could not be demonstrated better than in Doug Stapleton’s photo-collages—rife with exuberant cultural play—and Paul Clark’s straight abstractions of tomato cages and fencing that captivate with their complex and dynamic forms disturbed by disorder. Postmodern globalized mélange reaches its limits in Stapleton’s “The International Style,” which is a collage of statuary heads from various civilizations cut out from appropriated photos and arranged in a jumble that juxtaposes Jesus and a fakir, along with other improbable combinations. Turn to Clark and you will find an old-school photographic fundamentalist whose black-and-white images are exquisitely balanced in terms of the values of light, tone and composition; and result from a meditative and concentrated practice at the antipodes from Stapleton’s unbridled romp through history. Yet Clark’s stills are alive with the dance of rebellion against rational order, as the tomato cages twist in the snow and the fences buckle, warp and split. (Michael Weinstein)

Through February 28 at Las Manos Gallery, 5220 N. Clark

art.newcity.com/2009/12/28/review-paul-…