Elemental Currents – Material, Memory, and Myth
Featuring Christopher Blay, Laddie John Dill, and Virginia L. Montgomery
Opening Celebrations
Friday, March 7, 2025, 5–8 PM
Ballroom Marfa is proud to present Elemental Currents — Material, Memory, and Myth, a group exhibition featuring the work of Christopher Blay, Laddie John Dill, and Virginia L. Montgomery. Through a diverse range of media—including sand, foam, neon and photography—the exhibition offers immersive expressions of the convergence of human relationships, technology, the landscape, and imagined futures.
Christopher Blay (b. 1967) is an artist, curator, and writer. He is currently the Director of Public Programs at the National Juneteenth Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, and formerly Chief Curator of the Houston Museum of African American Culture [2021 – 2024]. His work is in dialogue with the African Diasporic experience historically, presently, and a platform for radical imagination in building black futures. As he states, “I build sculptures that combine the past and the future, create cyanotypes, both as a way to mark the present with the light of the living sun, and as a metaphor for blueprints towards black futures.” For Ballroom, Blay has constructed a multi-media, three-dimensional SpLaVCe Ship that stems from his question: “What would result if you merged a space ship with a slave ship? Where would it go? What would happen when it gets there, and who are the inhabitants?” He will also be exhibiting cyanotypes from his Diaspronauts series that are a part of his investigations of the intersection of Afro-futurism, space exploration, and legacies of the African Diaspora in contemporary imagining.
Laddie John Dill (b. 1943), a Los Angeles artist, is one of the leading light and space artists in the country. Dill had his first solo exhibition in New York City with Illeanna Sonnabend Gallery in 1971 and was one of the first Los Angeles artists to exhibit “light and space” work in New York. Dill has been crafting light and earthly materials like concrete, glass, sand, and metal into luminous sculptures, wall pieces, and installations since the 1970s. Dill’s fascination with luminosity has persisted over this fifty-year career, and he continues to experiment with the material and immaterial properties of light in paintings, sculptures, architectural installations and outdoor laser light shows. It is the artist’s ever-curious outlook with the medium itself that has enabled him to create a uniquely beautiful and profound body of work.
At Ballroom, Dill will combine Texas desert sand with elements of neon light as part of his Silica Lightscape Series. The work is inspired by the site, as Dill uses local sand with embedded light structures to create immersive installations that respond to the desert landscape, connote geological time and foreground the energy transfer through light.
Virginia L. Montgomery (VLM) (b. 1986) is an award-winning experimental filmmaker and metaphysical multimedia artist working across video, performance, sound design, and sculpture. VLM is known for her surreal, synthesia-esque artworks which unite elements from mysticism, science, and her own neurodivergent world. Her artworks are sensorial and symbolic. VLM’s artistic efforts are characterized by material experimentation, somatic sensitivity, and her unusual studio practice of hand-raising the moths and butterflies appearing in her works. Her works shift in subject matter between moths to stones and machines, as VLM deploys an idiosyncratic visual vocabulary of repeating gestures and recursive symbols like circles, holes, and spheres. VLM’s diverse artistic movements interrogate the complex relationship between physical and psychic structures via narratives of destruction, rebirth, and metamorphosis.
At the heart of Elemental Currents is the intersection of art and science, engagement with the natural world, and an emphasis on the role of technology and industrial materials within the experience of environmental phenomena. The artists employ the physical properties of materials like sand, foam, and light to examine natural and cultural forces, including historical atrocities, to fantasize about change, renewal, and imagined futures. This aspirational exhibition considers the future as a place for positive change while keeping a watchful eye on the past and present.
Artist Profiles
Christopher Blay
Christopher Blay is a Liberian-born American artist, curator, and writer. He is currently the Director of Public Programs at the National Juneteenth Museum in Fort Worth, and formerly Chief Curator of the Houston Museum of African American Culture [2021 – 2024]. Blay was the News Editor at Glasstire from 2019 – 2021 and served as curator for the Art Corridor Galleries at Tarrant County College in Fort Worth for the ten years prior to Glasstire. Blay is also a contributing writer for Art in America magazine, with his most recent essay on artist David-Jeremiah appearing in the September, 2024 edition of the magazine.
Now an independent curator, Blay is working on David Jeremiah: The Fire This Time, an exhibition of works by artist David-Jeremiah at the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas (August, 2025). He is also the guest curator of the Citywide African American Artist Exhibition in Houston for the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, opening in December, 2024. Blay’s work as a visual artist has been the subject of numerous group and solo exhibitions, and works of public art. Among his most recent works are the East Rosedale Monument Project, commissioned by the Fort Worth Public Art Commission, to be unveiled December, 2024, a solo exhibition titled Ritual SpLaVCe at the Galveston Art Center, (January, 2024), Artprize Featured Artist award (2023), The Ion Artist Residency award (2023), and Christopher Blay: The SpLaVCe Ship, Barry Whistler Gallery (2022). In 2025 Blay’s work will be in a group exhibition at Ballroom, Marfa, and on view for a public art commission in New Harmony, Indiana.
Blay is a 2003 graduate of Texas Christian University with a BFA in studio art and art history.
Laddie John Dill
Laddie John Dill was born in Long Beach, CA in 1943. Dill studied painting and sculpture at the Chouinard Art Institute, moving toward unconventional materials such as light, glass and sand after receiving his BFA in 1968. Dill had his first solo exhibition in New York City with Illeanna Sonnabend Gallery in 1971, and was one of the first Los Angeles artists to exhibit “light and space” work in New York cementing Dill as one of the leading light and space artists. Dill’s fascination with luminosity has persisted over this fifty-year career, and he continues to experiment with the material and immaterial properties of light in paintings, sculptures, architectural installations and outdoor laser light shows. It is the artist’s ever-curious outlook with the medium itself that has enabled him to create a uniquely beautiful and profound body of work.
Dill has enjoyed solo exhibitions at Sonnabend Gallery (NY); James Corcoran Gallery (LA); Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art (CA); Long Beach Museum of Art (CA); Pasadena Art Museum (CA); Sun Gallery (Seoul); Di Donato (Naples); Whitestone Gallery (Taipei); Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, (Naples); and Wiesbaden Gallery (Germany). He has participated in group exhibitions at institutions including Contemporary Copenhagen (Denmark), Walker Art Center (MN); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (CA); Otis Art Institute (CA); Seattle Art Museum (CA); Buffalo AKG Art Museum (NY); Museum of Contemporary Art (Sao Paulo); Museum of Contemporary Art (CA); Pace Gallery (NY); David Zwirner Gallery (NY); Hammer Museum (CA) and Hauser & Wirth Gallery (CA). His work is in the permanent collections of national and international institutions such as Museum of Modern Art (NY); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (CA); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (CA); High Museum (GA); Philips Collection (DC); Chicago Art Institute (IL); Smithsonian (DC); Museum of Contemporary Art – San Diego (CA); Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Denmark); and the Museo Jumex (Mexico).
Virginia L. Montgomery
Virginia L. Montgomery (VLM) is an award-winning experimental filmmaker and metaphysical multimedia artist working across video, performance, sound design, and sculpture. She received her MFA from Yale University and her BFA from The University of Texas at Austin. VLM is known for her surreal, synthesia-esque artworks which unite elements from mysticism, science, and her own neurodivergent world. Her artworks are sensorial and symbolic. VLM’s artistic efforts are characterized by material experimentation, somatic sensitivity, and her unusual studio practice of hand-raising the moths and butterflies appearing in her works. Her works shift in subject matter between moths to stones and machines, as VLM deploys an idiosyncratic visual vocabulary of repeating gestures and recursive symbols like circles, holes, and spheres. VLM’s diverse artistic movements interrogate the complex relationship between physical and psychic structures via narratives of destruction, rebirth, and metamorphosis. Virginia L. Montgomery has had solo presentations with New Museum (NY), Midnight Moment at Times Square Arts (NY), Tate Film at Tate Modern (United Kingdom), Museum Folkwang (Germany), Wright Lab at Yale University (CT), Women & Their Work (TX), George Eastman Museum (NY), and The Lawndale Art Center (TX). She has been in group exhibitions at SculptureCenter (NY), Blanton Museum of Art (TX), Contemporary Austin (TX), Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University (CA), Banff Center (Canada), Kunsthall Charlottenberg (Denmark), and La Panacée (France), among others.
Acknowledgments
Ballroom Marfa extends special thanks to the McDonald Observatory, as well as the artists and collaborators who made this project possible.
