RJ Calabrese was born and raised in the suburbs of Trenton, NJ. Similar to the phrasal template word game Mad Libs, RJ creates works that rely on playful manipulation and distortion; he acts and reacts while negotiating between attraction and repulsion. In his works Calabrese likes to portray the perversion of context that starts to reveal the basic need for the absurd. Perhaps this is the mental space that relieves us from the heaviness of the world. He often includes figures engaged in a mixture of activities at various points of defeat, often with humorous, eroticized, or foreboding undercurrents. Animals become fixtures, trophies, and other artifacts marked by domination. The use of playful colors and shapes attract the viewer while dismembered bodies and other displays of violence repulse them.

 

Education

Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University, Master of Fine Arts, 2007-09

Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, Bachelor of Fine Arts, 1997-2002

Solo Exhibitions

Timely, Timeless, Rosebud Contemporary, New York, NY, 2024 

Subversive Forms, Good Question Gallery, Milford, PA, 2009

 

Group Exhibitions (selected )

Vision of the Invisible – Exhibition of Drawings, Rosebud Contemporary, New York, 2024

Process: Friends and Family, Group Exhibition, The Gowanus Studio Space, Brooklyn NY, 2010

dis-place-ment, Group Exhibition, The Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, Grand Rapids, MA, 2010

Group Exhibition, Main Gallery, The Art Institute of Boston, Boston, MA, 2009

Perspectives in Drawing, Group Exhibition, Hostetter Art Center, The Pingry School, Martinsville, NJ, 2008

Regional Art Educators, Group Exhibition, Grossman Gallery, Lafayette College, Easton, PA, 2007

Wunderkind , Group Exhibition, Civic Square Gallery, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, 2002

 

Awards & Residencies 

Art Fellow, Residency Program, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY- 2010

Dodge Scholar, Artist-in- Residence, Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA- 2005