LONDON: Thomas J Price

Worship

April 1 - May 21, 2016

HALES GALLERY

Tea Building

7 Bethnal Green Road

London, UK

From halesgallery.com:

Hales Gallery is pleased to announce Worship, a solo exhibition of new works by Thomas J Price. This will be the artist's third solo exhibition with the gallery.

Price's work across media, encompassing sculpture, film and photography, is engaged with issues of representation and perception, in society and in art. Since 2005, he has been creating figurative sculptures which function as psychological portraits of his imagined subjects– usually male, usually black – whose features are in fact an amalgamation of sources: observed individuals, 'types' represented in the media, and ancient, classical and neo-classical sculptures. Whether full-length bodies or depicted from the neck up, scaled down or up, sculpted or filmed, Price's figures invite the viewer into their minds and into an appreciation of their formal beauty, thereby confronting conventional cultural associations, assumptions and archetypes.  

In Worship, Price continues his exploration of a new mythology in which the ancient Greek, Roman and Egyptian traditions of monumental sculpture are deployed in the depiction of the twenty-first century social subject. In an exciting departure from his previous use of cast Bronze, for this exhibition Price has created three large cast aluminium heads raised to eye-level on marble columns. They immediately announce themselves as archetypal objects of worship in a modern age, fashioned from the same fabric as MacBooks, coke cans, cars and planes – a whole array of thoroughly untraditional and un-museumlike objects. Yet, in their emotional depth and arresting monumentality these anonymous portraits assert the value of the depicted subject, powerfully subverting traditional social and aesthetic hierarchies.

In these new sculptures, as well as across Price's work, the artist's careful attention to the minutiae of physical appearance and presentation invites the viewer to become more aware of the subconscious processes by which we recognise, interpret and respond to other people, all the while fashioning our own social identities via outward presentation. Moving between the large sculpted heads in this exhibition, there is a sense of familiarity or recognition, while the physical differences between subjects are rarely overt, mostly limited to external features such as facial hair or a less tangible projected attitude. We are led to wonder whether the individual's 'true' identity really exists, amidst or beneath the layers of our own culturally formed perception and their carefully, reverentially constructed outward presentation.

In this exhibition, Price's deconstruction of the object of worship that is our social image is developed further in a multi-screen film installation entitled From the Ground Up, which turns from imagined sculptural portraits to an unconventional filmed portrait of the artist himself– although only his forearms and hands are visible as he polishes, scrubs and ties up the laces of a series of his own trainers and formal leather shoes, framed by a plain white background. The emphasis this film places on the seemingly mundane ritual of cleaning shoes transforms the artist's own footwear into another contemporary object of worship deserving of meticulous attention and care, the modern equivalent to the traditional artistic 'attribute' (an object conventionally associated with a particular figure from classical mythology or Christian hagiography): the social signifier. However, in From the Ground Up, this multi-faceted self-portrait directs the viewer's attention to the conscious, careful processes through which the artist constructs and presents various versions of himself through social signification. The familiar adage that you can 'tell a man by his shoes' is invoked, but also provocatively brought into question.

The new works in this exhibition represent an important development in Price's ongoing explorations of the politics of identity, as he turns to new subjects, materials and modes of display while continuing to surprise and absorb his viewers.

Exhibit Link

NEW YORK: Ifeoma Anyaeji

Owu (Threading)   

September 24 - November 17, 2015

SKOTO GALLERY  

529 West 20th Street, 5th Floor   

New York, NY

Skoto Gallery is pleased to present Owu (Threading), an exhibition of recent mixed media sculpture by the Nigerian-born artist Ifeoma Anyaeji.

Ifeoma Anyaeji’s recent work continues her exploration of discarded materials, its quality and physical nature, by placing emphasis on process to activate a meaningful engagement and creative openness that strives to reinvigorate newly acquired techniques and ideas. Her work centers on the idea of up-cycling or concept of material re-use such as the ubiquitous non-biodegradable plastic bags and bottles into something of greater value and unorthodox, eliciting unique elements of ripeness and continuous growth. Using traditional hair plaiting techniques from her homeland, she threads and braids discarded plastic bags into plasto-yarns combined with a strong compositional ability into complex yet lyrical visual narratives filtered through cultural memories and contemporary realities that reflect subtle understanding of context and an awareness of the relationship between function and experimentation.

Click here for exhibit info and images.

LONDON: Senga Nengudi

Senga Nengudi, R.S.V.P.Reverie "Scribe" (detail), 2014, Nylon mesh, sand and found metals. 94 x 54 x 67 inches. Image via whitecube.com. 

Alt

November 26, 2014 – January 18, 2015

WHITE CUBE BERMONDSEY

144 – 152 Bermondsey Street

London, UK

From whitecube.com:

White Cube is pleased to present an exhibition of works by Senga Nengudi. Nengudi’s pioneering art, developed over a 40-year long career, seamlessly traverses the disciplines of visual arts, dance, and spirituality while at the same time, eloquently dealing with such powerful themes as race, gender and culture. This exhibition, Nengudi’s first ever solo presentation in the UK, will include a selection ranging from the mid-1970s to newly produced ‘Reverie’ works.

Nengudi first came to prominence in the 1970s when she was a Los Angeles-based artist affiliated with Studio Z. This radical group of African-American artists were distinguished by their experimental and improvisational practice, and included amongst them David Hammons and Maren Hassinger, with whom Nengudi frequently collaborated.

Nengudi’s output has always been wide-ranging, although she is perhaps best known for her sculptures and choreographed performances – sometimes merging the two together – which encouraged an active involvement on the part of the viewer. Her free-form, abstract and biomorphic ‘soft’ sculptures incorporated a variety of found materials (such as nylon mesh tights or ‘pantyhose’, everyday objects or masking tape) as well as natural materials like sand or rock. As part of this practice, in the mid-1970s she produced the ‘R.S.V.P.’ series; works that used nylon tights – a material associated with a gendered, female body – stretched, twisted and knotted and then filled with sand. Hung on the wall but stretching out three-dimensionally into the gallery space, the materiality of these sculptures suggests skin, breasts, or bodily organs and places an emphasis on the performative body through its palpable sense of tactility.

Nengudi’s performances, which incorporate sculptural objects with real bodies – either her own or those of others – are powerfully engaging. In R.S.V.P., performed with Maren Hassinger, Nengudi utilised movement to explore ‘feminist issues … a sense of body, how body issues related to self-esteem and self-acceptance … also entanglements – being entangled by my stuff and stretching oneself beyond your limits.’ While it can clearly be positioned in relation to both Minimalism and Feminism, Nengudi’s work resists any defined political or ethnic content, but rather, evokes the fragility and resilience of both mind and body.

Senga Nengudi was born in 1943 in Chicago. She studied in both Los Angeles and Japan, and currently lives and works in Colorado. Her work has been included in solo and group exhibitions internationally. Solo exhibitions include Senga Nengudi: The Material Body, MCA Denver and Senga Nengudi: The Performing Body, Redline Gallery, Denver (both 2014). Recent important group exhibitions include Blues for Smoke, Whitney Museum and MoCA, Los Angeles (2012-13); Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art, Contemporary Art Museum, Houston (2012); Now Dig This – Art & Black Los Angeles 1960-1980, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles and MoMA PS1, New York (2011-12) and ‘Wack!: Art and the Feminist Revolution’, MoCA, Los Angeles (2007).

Exhibit Link

NEW YORK: Nnenna Okore

Nnenna Okore, Aja Nsukka, 2014, Burlap, handmade paper, dye and acrylic, 30 x 59 inches. Image courtesy David Krut Projects.

Twist and Turns

November 20, 2014 – January 17, 2015

Opening reception: Thursday, November 20, 2014, 6 – 8pm

DAVID KRUT PROJECTS

526 West 26^th Street, Suite 816

New York, NY

From David Krut Projects press release: 

David Krut Projects is pleased to present Twist and Turns, Nnenna Okore’s second solo exhibition at the gallery. The title of the exhibition draws attention to the sense of dynamism and movement in this selection of Okore’s most recent sculptures - continuing her exploration of material through a laborious hands-on creative process gleaned from the traditions of West African art making.

Raised in Nigeria, Okore’s affinity for tactile and gristly elements from the semi-urban environs of Nsukka in south-eastern Nigeria, have inspired a body of works that broadly focus on transformation and regeneration of mundane ecological and man-made objects. Through visual subtleties, she is able to present the fluid and delicate attributes of the physical world, triggered by aging, death and decay. She embraces biodegradable materials laced with memories and histories of her past; and submits to the use of several organic forms delicately articulated in an interwoven manner to reflect the quintessence and mystery of life cycles. The familiar yet abstract sculptural forms rely heavily on materials including newspapers, cloth, plaster and hessian, which were acquired mostly in her Fulbright year abroad. These materials metaphorically reference social, historical and environmental interconnectedness of our collective experiences as mortals.

By default, Okore responds to the movement and malleability of her mediums and processes, allowing them to lead her.  Her drawn-out processes of threading, fraying, tearing, teasing, twisting, rolling, layering and dying are derivative of domestic Nigerian tasks that she mastered while living in the country. Through her work, she reveals impermanent earthy attributes of organic and twisted forms. Her intuitive approach to process begets intricate and unhindered layers of the process and materials. The undulated nature of Okore’s work further accentuates the extraordinary panoramic dance between the art and the gallery’s unique ambience. The result is an intriguing display of spellbinding ethereal forms.

Nnenna Okore is an Associate Professor of Art at North Park University, Chicago, where she teaches Sculpture. She has received numerous international awards and been exhibited in many prestigious venues, including October Gallery, London; Museum of Art and Design, New York; Sao Paulo Biennale, Brazil; and Art Twenty One, Nigeria. She received the prestigious Fulbright Scholar Award in 2012, which resulted in a year-long project in Nigeria. Her works and interview were recently featured in the July/August 2013 issue of Sculpture Magazine.

In February 2015, Elmhurst Art Museum will present a solo exhibition of new sculpture by Okore.

Exhibit Link

NEW YORK: Barbara Chase-Riboud

Barbara Chase-Riboud, La Musica Red #4, 2003, Bronze with red patina and silk, 30 x 15 x 32 inches, signed. Image via michaelrosenfeldart.com.

One Million Kilometers of Silk

October 31, 2014 – January 10, 2015

MICHAEL ROSENFELD GALLERY

100 Eleventh Avenue at 19^th Street

New York, NY

From michaelrosenfeldart.com:

“I love silk, and it's one of the strongest materials in the world and lasts as long as the bronze.  So it's not a weak material vs. a strong material so the transformation that happens in the steles is not between two unequal things but two equal things that interact and transform each other."

—Barbara Chase-Riboud

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery proudly announces its representation of Barbara Chase-Riboud, the American-born, European-based author, poet, and artist whose work in all genres engages with the processes of transformation. To mark this occasion, the gallery has mounted Barbara Chase-Riboud: One Million Kilometers of Silk an exhibition of sculptures and drawings.

Born in 1939 in Philadelphia, Barbara Chase-Riboud began taking art classes at the Philadelphia Art Museum at an early age. When she was in elementary school, her talent for poetry was so strong that a teacher accused her of plagiarizing a poem, “Autumn Leaves.” In response to the accusation, her mother, who had watched her compose the poem, pulled Chase-Riboud out of school, and had her tutored at home before enrolling her in the Philadelphia High School for Girls in 1948. Four years later, Chase-Riboud graduated from high school and began studying at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art. The Museum of Modern Art purchased her woodcut Reba in 1955. The following year, she graduated from Temple, and in 1957, she won a John Hay Whitney Fellowship to study in Rome. She returned to the United States in September of 1958 with a fellowship to pursue her MFA at Yale. Soon after, she had a sculpture, Bull-Fighter, included in the 1958 Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture at the Carnegie Mellon Institute. In 1960, the twenty-one-year-old artist completed her first commissioned public work, the Wheaton Plaza Fountain, in Maryland (destroyed) and received her MFA from Yale.

In the mid-1960s, Chase-Riboud moved to Europe, settling in France. She would make Europe her permanent home, dividing her time between France and Italy. She began creating thin sheets of wax that she could bend, fold, meld, or sever in order to create unique models, which she would then bring to a local foundry for casting. This new approach to the lost-wax casting process enabled her to produce large-scale sculptures comprised of ribbons of bronze and aluminum. In 1969, she added fiber to these metal elements, devising the seemingly paradoxical works for which she became famous—tall, sturdy sculptures of cast metal resting on supports hidden by cascading skeins of silk or wool so that the fibers seem to support the metal. Of these works were a group of steles memorializing Malcolm X and his transformation “from a convict to a world leader.” Known collectively as the Malcolm X Steles, these works were recently exhibited to acclaim at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Berkeley Art Museum (University of California Berkeley). In 2007, Chase-Riboud returned to the subject of Malcolm X, producing another series of tall metal-and-fiber sculptures that bore his name. Several of these works will be on view as part of the exhibition at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery.

By the 1970s, Barbara Chase-Riboud was celebrated for her sculpture and well known to Europeans as a gifted visual artist. However, despite the fact that her work was exhibited at prominent modern art museums on the East and West Coasts in the 1970s, she was better known for her literary talents in the United States. In 1974, Chase-Riboud published her first book of poetry. Five years later, her first novel, Sally Hemings (Viking Press, 1979), won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Best Novel by an American Woman. The book, about the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings, became an international bestseller. Its sequel, The President’s Daughter, was published by Ballentine Books in 1994. Other literary works include Echo of Lions (1989, William Morrow), about the Amistad revolt, and Hottentot Venus (Doubleday, 2003), about Sarah Baartman. This year, Barbara Chase-Riboud’s papers and manuscripts will join those of other celebrated authors at Emory University’s Manuscript and Rare Book Library. The acquisition will be announced at The Callaloo Conference, where Chase-Riboud will also be the closing keynote speaker.

Exhibit Link

ARTIST TALK: Nnenna Okore / Brooklyn, NY / May 25, 2014

Nnenna Okore. Photo by Ellie Hawkins. Image via bam.org.

Moderated by Holly Shen Chaves

Sunday, May 25, 2014, 3:30pm

Part of DanceAfrica 2014

BAM | BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC

BAM Fisher Hillman Studio

321 Ashland Place

Brooklyn, NY

From bam.org:

Acclaimed visual artist Nnenna Okore—commissioned as part of the 2014 DanceAfrica Festival—discusses and demonstrates her sculptural process in this unique talk. The discussion between Okore and BAM Visual Art curator Holly Shen Cheaves in the BAM Fisher Hillman Studio will be followed by a complimentary rooftop reception in the Stutz Garden.

Admission is free and on a first-come, first-served basis. Wristbands will be distributed in the BAM Fisher lobby starting at 2pm.

Event Link

NEW YORK: Lonnie Holley

Lonnie Holley, The Catholic Lady's Pictures, Mixed media, 52 x 22 x 27 inches. Image via jamesfuentes.com.

Keeping You Out of Harm’s Way

September 11 – October 6, 2013

Musical performance by Lonnie Holley: Monday, October 7, 2013, 8PM

JAMES FUENTES

55 Delancy Street

New York, NY

James Fuentes is pleased to present a solo exhibition featuring important sculptural works by Lonnie Holley. Like parables, the works on view tell a story which seems to suggest a way of living in the world.

“I teach the children, it’s not trash, it’s not garbage, it’s not debris… It’s material. Once we see it as material our minds can digest it a lot easier… material is the whole containment of mother universe and what we use, as humans, within her.” -- Lonnie Holley, May 30, 2013.

Holley’s work is included in the collections of the Smithsonian American Museum of Art, Washington, DC; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA; New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Milwaukee Museum of Art, Milwaukee, WI; Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, Atlanta, GA; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL; and the American Folk Museum, New York, NY.

Exhibit link

COLLEGE PARK: Alison Saar

Alison Saar, En Pointe, 2010, Wood, bronze, graphite, rope, 87 x 52 x 30 inches. Photo by Chris Warner.

Still…

September 12 – December 13, 2013

Opening reception featuring a gallery talk by Alison Saar: Thursday, September 12, 2013, 5 – 7 pm.

THE DAVID C. DRISKELL CENTER

University of Maryland

1214 Cole Student Activities Building

College Park, MD

From the David C. Driskell Center Fall 2013 Newsletter:

Alison Saar’s work is deeply tied to her multiracial heritage, and it is through this lens which she so strikingly captures the human spirit. Through her sculptures, she displays the primal intensity of people underlying the civility of everyday life.  Saar scrutinizes bigotry and historical burdens and portrays these concepts through a visual and kinesthetic tension, common in many of her pieces.  Saar’s use of commonplace and specialized materials in her works make them highly unique.

Combining African art and ritual, Greek mythology, and German aspects of expressionism, Saar challenges stereotypes and offers an indictment of human discrimination. This exhibition, organized by the Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design, will travel to Bakalar & Paine Galleries, MassArt in Massachusetts.

Exhibit Press Release

PHILADELPHIA: Barbara Chase-Riboud

The Malcolm X Steles

September 14, 2013 - January 20, 2014

PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART

2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway

Philadelphia, PA

From the Philadelphia Museum of Art website:

Bringing together more than forty works from the United States and Europe, this exhibition examines Barbara Chase-Riboud’s artistic career, focusing primarily on her important Malcolm X sculptures. Five works from that series—among them the Museum’s Malcolm X #3 of 1969—and five closely related sculptures are included. A group of drawings from the late 1960s and early 1970s made during the development of the Malcolm X series and roughly twenty of the artist’s Monument Drawings from 1996–97 are also on view.

Chase-Riboud conceived the first Malcolm X in early 1969 while in Paris, where she moved in late 1960 after completing a graduate degree in architecture at Yale University. Abstract sculptures that combine cast bronze with wrapped skeins of silk and wool, these wholly unique, over life-size works capture a single moment in an endless cycle of transformation. Harmonizing various contradictory associations, they combine the vertical and horizontal, mineral and organic, male and female, heavy and light, rigid and supple.

Chase-Riboud has gracefully fused the elements of armor and textiles in her abstract steles created in homage to Malcolm X, breaking from the traditional depiction of the figure in post-World War II European art. Through their complex materiality, the sculptures also allude to her artistic, cultural, and political experiences in North Africa and China, while in the context of the American Civil Rights Movement they stand as powerful beacons to the possibility of cultural integration that modern art represents. Her exquisite charcoal drawings show an equally sensitive union of diverse references, textures, and forms.

Born in Philadelphia and educated at the Philadelphia High School for Girls and the Tyler School of Art at Temple University, Chase-Riboud now lives in Paris and Rome. She is both an internationally acclaimed visual artist and an award-winning writer and poet, best known for her 1979 historical novel Sally Hemings. Currently she is preparing two anthologies of her poetry and collected letters for publication.

Sponsors

The exhibition is generously supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Curators

Carlos Basualdo, The Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Curator of Contemporary Art, and John Vick, Exhibition Assistant in Modern and Contemporary Art

Location

Gallery 172 and Alter Gallery 176, first floor

Exhibit Link

IN PRINT: Nnenna Okore / Sculpture / July-August 2013

Nnenna Okore, Echi Di Ime (The Unkinown), 2011. Clay and burlap, 36 x 36 x 2 inches.

Political by Nature: A Conversation with Nnenna Okore

Text | Robert Preece

Excerpt:

Sometimes an artist’s use of materials is in itself political, as in the case of Nnenna Okore. Born in Australia and raised in Nsukka, a town in southwestern Nigeria, she explores a range of artistic materials and influences, creating installations and sculptures made of clay and found as well as handmade paper. Her striking forms emphasize the art-making process and craftsmanship, while her reuse of materials subtly pits extravagant wealth (and waste) against creative adaptation of available materials by the less fortunate.

After studying painting at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka, Okore pursued advanced studies in sculpture at the University of Iowa. Over the past decade, she has had a number of solo exhibitions in Nigeria, at the October Gallery in London, and at a variety of university galleries across the United States. Her works have also appeared in a wide range of group exhibitions, including the 2006 Dakar Biennale in Senegal, the Joburg Art Fair in South Africa, and the São Paulo Biennial in Brazil in 2010, as well as a variety of art spaces in France, India, Mexico, and Taiwan.

Robert Preece: After living in the U.S. for 10 years now, how do you see your work changing? Do any of your pieces reveal a bi-national identity through the selection of materials or forms?

Nnenna Okore: That’s a very good question. Before I moved to the U.S., my artistic approach and concepts were grounded in a cultural, political, and socioeconomic focus. I paid attention to issues and questions about cultural norms and idiosyncrasies associated with consumption and inventive recycling in Nigeria. Living in the West has allowed me to sever myself culturally, and perhaps emotionally, from my earlier perceptions and convictions. Increasingly, I have expanded in interest to include ideas interested in understanding the role of materials and forms in shaping and defining our ecological landscape.

I can’t easily claim to have developed a bi-national identity since relocating to America, though I should point out that the experience of living in tow completely distinct worlds has broadened my visual sensitivity and aesthetic interests, steering me toward creating art with a more universal appeal.

Pick up a copy of the July/August 2013 issue of Sculpture magazine to read complete story.

A solo show of works by Nnenna Okore will be on view at David Krut Projects in early 2014. 

Check back with BlackArtistNews for official announcement.

CAPTURED: Daniel Noah Rose with Dred and Harriet Scott

BlackArtistNews photo. All rights reserved. 

BlackArtistNews | June 9, 2012

Daniel Noah Rose proudly poses in front of the newly erected Dred and Harriet Scott statue outside the old courthouse in downtown St. Louis, MO. The Dred Scott Heritage Foundation raised the money for the statue which was created  by Harry Weber. 

The Dred Scott Heritage Foundation is $100,000 short of being completely paid for. Click here to contribute.

Statue Honoring Dred and Harriet Scott unveiled 

(Fox2Now.com)

Dred Scott Statue is ready for its debut in St. Louis

(The Joplin Globe)

Dred Scott Statue to be unveiled in St. Louis 

(The Grio)

NEW YORK: Martin Puryear / McKee Gallery

Martin Puryear, Hominid, 2012, pine, 73 × 60 × 77 1/2 inches. Image via artcat.com.

Martin Puryear: New Sculpture

May 3 - June 29, 2012

MCKEE GALLERY

745 Fifth Avenue, 4th Floor

New York, NY

The MCKEE GALLERY is pleased to present new sculptures by MARTIN PURYEAR in an exhibition opening on Thursday, May 3, and continuing through Friday, June 29, 2012.

Martin Puryear has always worked with wood. Occasionally he explores the possibilities offered by such diverse materials as wire, tar, steel and bronze but, inevitably, his hands and his instincts lead him to the saw and the plane, to assemble parts to make a whole, whether in the making of sculpture, furniture or canoes.

The beauty of a Puryear sculpture is in its fnished form, but the art is in the making. He brings vast experience to the craft of carpentry and considerable knowledge of cultural history to his understanding of sculptural form. His works evoke the archaic, the organic, the primitive or the minimal abstract and have a unique way of combining an external appearance of weight and mass with enigmatic suggestions of complex internal structure. This dichotomy is to be found in his new sculptures which might also pose questions about meaning within the work.

Most are supported on wheels which obviously connects them to man. Two sculptures ‘The Load’ and ‘Cart’ are heavy with meaning, going way beyond the power of formal invention. What are they? They remind us, like relics, of human struggle, endless toil and our migratory past. ‘The Load’ has an ‘inner’ eye surveying a journey traveled, watchful of unseen danger as man struggles towards the future. Are they related to personal sagas or beliefs? They have a monolithic presence which traverses the history of time. The earthbound bronze sculpture ‘Heaven Three Ways/Exquisite Corpse’ seems to spiral upwards towards unknown mysteries.

This is the frst exhibition of Martin Puryear’s sculpture since his retrospective exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, in 2007-8, which traveled to the Museum of Modern Art, Fort Worth, TX, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Martin Puryear was recently awarded the National Medal for the Arts in a ceremony at the White House.

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