Join us for the closing reception of “The Jeff Show,” an exhibition by UIC MFA candidate Jeff Rivers, curated by UIC PhD Art History student Ayrika Hall. This event is part of the Black Artists Network pop-up gallery project and will take place on Saturday, May 18th, from 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM in our West Town gallery space. Attendees will enjoy an evening of art, complemented by food, refreshments, and music.

About:

Black Artists Network works with creatives, art enthusiasts, intellectuals, art collectors, community builders, and all who are interested in engaging and strengthening networks within Chicago’s contemporary black art sphere. Through exhibitions, artist talks, workshops, lecture series, social hours, receptions, curator tours, and more, BAN’s central aspiration lies in the desire to strengthen Chicago’s creative community, fostering an ethos of collaboration, exchange, and artistic expression.

Jeff Rivers is an African-American, self-taught visual artist, designer, and community advocate from Columbia, SC, who works to empower minority groups through social impact art programs and art education. Jeff Rivers’ practice is a mixed media blend of painting and drawing that combines the figurative with abstract landscapes. Rivers uses fabric in his paintings to ‘dress’ the figure to create life-size representations of people documented from his daily experience. Memory and a sense of place are conjured through these figures. The texture of the fabric invites the viewer to engage with the work in close physical touch and intimacy, however, the anonymity of the figures accentuates a sense of isolation and emotional detachment.

Ayrika Hall is a Chicago based art historian and scholar specializing in African American modern and contemporary art and museum studies. Hall’s scholarship centers re-evaluating the interpretative frameworks applied to African American art, employing a multidisciplinary methodology that examines the intersections of art, culture, and philosophy. Her research and curatorial projects leverage the museum as a site for interrogating the complexities and dynamics of broader socio-political systems, investigating the historical trajectories of curatorial challenges and their implications for future representations of Black art. With a strong objective to preserve and historicize the rich micro-histories within contemporary black counter-publics, Hall’s research engages with the historiography of Black art and its interaction with contemporary realities. Hall critically assesses established methodologies to foreground the multifaceted connections between Black art, society, and politics.

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Tags: Ayrika Hall, Black artists network, Chicago, Jeff Rivers, Jeff Rivers: The Jeff Show: Closing Reception, West Town