Black: Color, Material, Concept
Groupshow Studio Museum Harlem
Until March 6, 2016.
Black Wall Street, 2008.
About:
As an element of art and design, “black” is both a seemingly basic part of visual experience and an amazingly rich gradation of tones and depths. As a word, it is a one-syllable locus for meanings that can fill columns in a dictionary. As a social construction, it is one of the most highly charged and proudly asserted realities in American life. The exhibition Black delves into the ways that modern and contemporary artists of African descent have considered the possibilities of “black” through their choice of media, their imagery and the ideas they bring to their work. The exhibition includes more than two dozen paintings, sculptures and prints, drawn primarily from the Studio Museum’s incomparable permanent collection.
Kerry James Marshall, Lost Boys.
Ayana V Jackson, Wild as the Wind, 2015.
Leonardo Drew, Number 12 S, 2011.
The list of twenty-two artists represented in the exhibition ranges from modernist elders such as Sam Gilliam (b. 1933) and Jack Whitten (b. 1939), to a midcentury generation that includes, Kerry James Marshall (b. 1955), Glenn Ligon (b. 1960), Leonardo Drew (b. 1961), and Nari Ward (b. 1963), to artists who came of age in the post-Civil Rights era, such as Kara Walker (b. 1969), Noah Davis (1983-2015) and Kameelah Janan Rasheed (b. 1985). Black is organized by Lauren Haynes, Associate Curator, Permanent Collection.