A plastic vase painted silver: part one

A plastic vase painted silver consists of three discrete installations, and runs through February 10, 2026. The exhibition, and each of its installations, includes works by Jared Buckhiester, Walker Evans, Robert Gober, and Nancy Shaver—four artists who began their adult lives using a camera, all from the United States, with this country foregrounded in nearly all of the subjects they chose. Shaver’s direct and personal relationship with the other three artists in this show is the initial tether for the group.

Years before developing a friendship with Evans, Shaver purchased a copy of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men from the MoMA bookstore. The Evans photograph of Floyd Burroughs’s bedroom fireplace, as decorated by his wife, Allie Mae, printed inside the book, affirmed what Shaver was coming to understand in her early life as an artist.

In an artist talk given at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2012, Shaver revealed, “This interior and this photograph taught me that I could look for art in the least important of materials.”

This statement serves as a guide for the selection of works in this exhibition. The three installations are loosely grouped into themes that connect the four practices—both disparate and intertwined. These themes include, but are not limited to, beauty, honesty, respect or objectivity, literature, complexity, and love. This installation is the first iteration of the three, and like the other two that follow, represents 98 years of continued making.

Following the exhibition, a catalogue will be published featuring texts by the four contributing artists, alongside images of the artworks, installation views, and research materials related to the exhibition.