CHICAGO: McArthur Binion

McArthur Binion, Self Portrait: XVI, 2014, Ink, laser print collage, oil paint stick and Staonal crayon on panel, 18 x 18 inches.
Image via kavigupta.com. 

DNA Study

May 24 – August 2, 2014

Opening reception: Saturday, May 24, 2014, 5 – 8pm

KAVI GUPTA CHICAGO

219 N Elizabeth Street

Chicago, IL

From kavigupta.com: 

Kavi Gupta is proud to present a solo exhibition of recent works by McArthur Binion entitled DNA Study.

DNA Study brings together two interrelated strands of McArthur Binion’s practice, his DNA studies and his self-portraits, furthering the dialogue stimulated by his works over the last 40 years. Born in 1946, Binion has maintained an engaging practice that draws on autobiographical experience, African American narrative and the visual elements of Modernism.

Underpinning Binion’s DNA Study are notions of self-awareness and self-discovery–a conscious reflection on himself and the historical discourses to which he’s contributed. In his self-portraits, Binion layers photocopies from his address book from the 1970s into collaged tiles, creating geometric fields of abstract color.  On close inspection these rhythmic panels divulge the names “James Baldwin,” “Basquiat,” “Mary Boone” and “Meryl Streep” amongst a host of others: all friends, lovers or casual acquaintances.  This document of artists, art-dealers and actresses, a who’s who of the golden age of creative high society in New York, similarly uncovers Binion’s personal history as a disregarded black artist in an overwhelmingly white majority.

Binion’s DNA studies appear as grids, bearing the graphic style of modernist paintings. His crosshatches resemble painted brushstrokes yet arise from a far more physical process of mark making with crayon on panel. The romance of labor has a deeper resonance in its reference to Binion’s childhood of picking cotton. This highly charged and distinctly African American narrative transcends modernism, which is conventionally devoid of expression. Binion channels this personal and simultaneously historic narrative through the idea of DNA–the most basic starting point for human existence that exemplifies our shared uniqueness. Binion elucidates on this metaphor as a platform for discourse, playing with this acronym: “[it could stand for] … Distinct Neurological Advancement, or Detroit Negro Artist…”

This layered memoir has been visited before in Binion’s Birth of Colored series. Here Binion juxtaposed photocopies of his birth certificate, in which he is classified as “colored.’’ This text from 1946 reveals itself as one buried in layers, echoing a lived moment. His works provide a platform on which to re-stage these moments, exposing the multi-layered presence of racist imagery today through mining his own past. Like the Birth of Colored series, the works in DNA Study displace and reposition the coldness of modernism through these individual stories, countering meaningless abstraction with extraction, and imbuing a subtle warmth.

McArthur Binion lives and works in Chicago. He was the first African American to graduate from Cranbrook Academy of Art with an MFA and is associate professor at Columbia College. He will exhibit at Prospect.3 in New Orleans in October 2014. Recent group shows include Above and Below the Surface: Eight Artists, Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, When the Stars Begin to Fall: Imagination in the American South, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York and Black and the Abstract, Part 2: Soft Curves/Hard Edges, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, (all 2014). Recent solo exhibitions include Ghost: Rhythms, Kavi Gupta Chicago (2013), Perspectives 177: McArthur Binion, Contemporary Art Museum, Houston (2012) and Color Exploration: Simplicity in the Art of McArthur Binion, University of Maryland, University College Gallery (2010). Binion’s works are held in numerous private and public collections including the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Cranbook Museum of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and the Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit, Michigan.

Exhibit Link

CHICAGO: McArthur Binion

Image via kavigupta.com.

Ghost: Rhythms

April 6 – June 22, 2013

KAVI GUPTA CHICAGO

835 West Washington Boulevard

Chicago, IL

Kavi Gupta CHICAGO | BERLIN is proud to present its first exhibition with McArthur Binion entitled Ghost: Rhythms. Ghost: Rhythms  focuses on the artist's early career in 1970s New York City. Like many of his peers, Binion was influenced by the Abstract Expressionists and had developed a deep interest in visual communication and Modernism. As Minimalism was well underway within the visual culture of the time, Binion developed his idiosyncratic style of "action painting," which is composed of pressing wax crayon on to the surface of aluminum and canvas, creating textured yet minimal surfaces and compositions. Though Minimalism was a movement that was mostly associated with and would historically become dominated by white artists, Binion's contribution to the movement as an African American artist can be traced through both his professional and personal relationships developed as he actively participated in the scene as well as his unique approach to Minimalism as a vehicle for story and memory.



A large part of this exhibition focuses on large tarp-like works composed of un-stretched canvas which simulate aerial views of rural landscapes, abstracted and made of repetitive and diligent mark making. Titles such as Circuit Landscape give hints to a geographical genesis of the work, taking into consideration Binion's roots in Mississippi where his family lived and worked on a cotton farm to their migration to Detroit and his father's work within the automotive industry, autobiography was and is clearly a conscious influence on Binion's artistic practice. McArthur Binion would eventually be the first African American to graduate from Cranbrook University with an MFA after which he would move to New York City and eventually to Chicago, where he has lived and worked for the last thirty years. The labor experienced as a child picking cotton can additionally be attributed as an influence on Binion's practice in particular to his labor process of mark making.

While Binion was interested in the formal qualities of medium, shape, and color like his peers, he found a powerful voice in the language of modernism to share personal and African American narratives within the visual language of Minimalism. The title Ghost:Rhythms itself is an homage to the stories and tales Binion's mother and aunts would tell in his childhood of ghosts and family history, a tradition that stuck with the artist and influenced his desire to use visual language to continue to share narrative. This work was originally curated into an exhibition at the famous Artist Space during its inaugural year by Carl Andre, Sol Lewitt and Ronald Bladen. A further testament to the work's engagement with formal critique of the era, such as the grid and use of repetition.


McArthur Binion (b. 1946) lives and works in Chicago, IL. Recent exhibitions include Perspectives 177: McArthur Binion, at Contemporary Art Musem Houston; Color Exploration: Simplicity in the Art of McArthur Binion, University of Maryland University College of Arts Program Gallery; House: Work, Center Galleries, College for Creative Studies Detroit; Simplicism II: The Goaches, Audible Gallery, Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago, IL. McArthur Binion is in numerous private and public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, NY; Cranbrook Museum of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI; and the Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit, MI.

Exhibit Link

Works

Press