PERSPECTIVES: FIGURATION AND ABSTRACTION IN CONTEMPORARY BLACK ART
@ ARC Gallery
1463 W Chicago Ave, Chicago, IL 60622
Opening Friday, October 28th, from 5PM - 9PM
On view through Saturday, November 19th
PERSPECTIVES: FIGURATION AND ABSTRACTION IN CONTEMPORARY BLACK ART
Juror: Spencer Hutchinson
For nearly the entire history of Black Artists’ existence in the U.S., black art has been largely segregated from the concerns of mainstream Modern, Postmodern, and Contemporary Art, and usually focused on the human figure. Even visual artists as unconventional as Jean Michel Basquiat still frame the representation of the black body as the center of their Art making. Recently, this trend has been undergoing a change. Artists such as Julie Mehrutu and Mark Bradford have crossed the rubicon into Abstraction and into a frame of discourse that long excluded Black Artists while much older Black artists working in Abstraction going back decades such as Macarthur Binion are experiencing a renaissance and having their art being given the credibility that evaded them in years past. At the heart of this show are the questions what respectively drive Black Represenational and Black Abstract Art? How are these motivations distinct from “Mainstream” representational and abstract art that the general public are more familiar with? How do representation and abstraction inform and contextualize each other in the discourse surrounding Black art and are there implications within this realm of discourse that can help shed light on the ontology of figuration and abstraction more broadly. This show attempts to equally represent Black figurative and abstract artists working in the mediums of Painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, and sculpture across a broad range of the African diaspora. We seek to include artists at all levels of their careers regardless of age, gender, ability, or sexual orientation to help drive the conversation and engender broader understanding of these two major themes in Contemporary Black Art.
Exhibiting Artists:
Krystal Boney, Austen Brantley, Summer Brooks, Amel Dockery, Zahra Edwards, Angela Davis Fegan, Erol Harris II, Jennifer Hodges, Lindsay Johnson, George Jones, Rhian Kempadoo-Millar, Anika Kowalik, MISU, Marcela Adeze Okeke, Turtel Onli, Angie Redmond, Michele Stutts, Narvell Taylor, Darlene Tyree, Cheryl Toles, Nia Wilson
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Tags: Amel Dockery, Angela Davis Fegan, Angie Redmond, Anika Kowalik, ARC Gallery, Austen Brantley, Cheryl Toles, Chicago, Darlene Tyree, Erol Harris II, George Jones, Jennifer Hodges, Krystal Boney, Lindsay Johnson, Marcela Adeze Okeke, Michele Stutts, MISU, Narvell Taylor, Nia Wilson, PERSPECTIVES: FIGURATION AND ABSTRACTION IN CONTEMPORARY BLACK ART, Rhian Kempadoo-Millar, Spencer Hutchinson, Summer Brooks, Turtel Onli, West Town, Zahra Edwards
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