MARCH 25 - MAY 28, 2026

Exhibition Opening with the Artist
Wednesday, March 25th, 5 - 7 PM

SOCO Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Angels, Ghosts, & Twins, a solo exhibition of new oil on panel works by artist Damian Stamer. The exhibition coincides with a solo exhibition of his work at Middlebury College, titled Angels & Ghosts, curated by Dexter Wimberly which is on view through April 19th, 2026. The gallery will host an opening reception with the artist on March 25th, 2026 from 5-7 pm. 

Angels, Ghosts, & Twins stems from an ongoing collaboration between the artist and artificial intelligence. To start his process, Stamer collaborates with Dall-E 2, an AI image generator, where he writes memories from his childhood as a prompt, and then lets AI create its own visual rendering from the story. He then uses the rendering as his subject–depicting it in oil paint and titling the work after the exact prompt.

Stamer both embraces the technology and approaches it with trepidation. By nature of AI, the software sometimes hallucinates, inputting random figures that add depth and ambiguity to remembered moments. While  grounded in contemporary issues, Stamer’s body of work echoes spirit photography from the post–Civil War era. Spirit photographers would often utilize double exposure to create hallucinations or “ghosts” of loved ones who had passed. Created during a time of significant social upheaval at the dawn of photography as a medium, Stamer stands at a modern crossroads—employing technology to explore social unrest and to probe questions about the future.

The paintings in Angels, Ghosts, & Twins show Stamer’s focus on creating depth of space. He not only paints AI’s hallucinations, but also the intuitive mark-making Stamer is widely known for. The resulting compositions feel both fragmented and fully realized–offering a glimpse into an uncanny memory that is no longer entirely his own. Often set within intimate interior spaces, the paintings assert Stamer’s mastery of oil, positioning his compositions alongside Old Masters such as Vermeer, Degas, and Velázquez, while his abstraction echoes modernists like Willem de Kooning and contemporaries such as Cecily Brown.

In Angels, Ghosts, & Twins, Stamer applies his painter's intuition to confront dramatic technological changes with optimism. The result is compositions of shared memory: Stamer’s own mixed with AI’s input. While carefully constructed, the paintings reveal memory’s layered complexity and illustrate how individual experience can be shaped by technological advances.

Damian Stamer (b. 1982, Durham, NC)

Damian Stamer (b. 1982, Durham, NC) received his BFA from Arizona State University (2007) as a National Merit scholar and his MFA from UNC Chapel Hill (2013) as a Jacob K. Javitz fellow. He studied at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design (2006) as a Rotary Ambassadorial scholar and at the University of Fine Arts Budapest as a Fulbright grantee (2008).  Solo and two-person museum shows of his work have been organized by the Middlebury College Museum of Art (2026); Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC (2023); and the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC (2016).

Selected group exhibitions include State of the Art 2020, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the Momentary, Bentonville, AR (2020); The Coffins of Paa Joe and the Pursuit of Happiness, Jack Shainman Gallery, The School, Kinderhook, NY (2017); The Things We Carry: Contemporary Art in the South, Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC (2016); Area 919: Artists in the Triangle, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC (2015); Art on Paper Biennial, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC (2014). Stamer's work is in the permanent collections of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC; Kunstwerk Sammlung Klein, Eberdingen, Germany; Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC; Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC and North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC.