While museums and galleries are temporarily closed due to the COVID-19 virus, On View will continue to showcase images from noteworthy exhibitions
REPRESENTING THE BODY as flexible and free, contorted and constricted, intertwined and engaged, the work of Christina Quarles reflects the pressures and pleasures of life and the complexities of identity. The images stem from her personal experience as a biracial, queer, cisgender woman and resonate universally. How does one’s inner life square with presumptions based on our physical appearance? Her fascinating and imaginative scenes foreground a dance of heads, torsos, and limbs against a backdrop of architectural planes of vivid color and pattern.
“Christina Quarles” was scheduled to open April 4 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The show is the largest presentation of the artist’s work to date. About 35 paintings and drawings made since 2017 are featured, along with a new installation that “explores illusions and histories of painting.”
The exhibition is organized by Grace Deveney. In the exhibition catalog, she introduces the Los Angeles-based artist’s work. Deveney writes: “Christina Quarles paints one of the most traditional subjects in art: bodies in familiar settings. Her handling of this subject, however, is anything but traditional. Deliberately disorienting, her works invite a reconsideration of genre painting and, in turn, the real-world conditions that lead to an understanding of what it means to exist within a body and the environments we inhabit. Historically, those conditions have been shaped by the long-standing modernist fantasy of the universal body—one that is decidely white, masculine, and heterosexual. Against this paradigm, Quarles sets forth an alternative vision, one realized by her virtuosic painting as well as attention to the specificity of her own identity and lived experience.”
“Christina Quarles” is on view at MCA Chicago, April 4–Aug. 23, 2020. In order to contain the spread of COVID-19, MCA Chicago is temporarily closed. Check directly with the museum for scheduling updates
UPDATE (08/19/20): Postponed one year, Christina Quarles’s MCA Chicago exhibition has been rescheduled for April 17-Aug. 29, 2021
FIND MORE about the exhibition
CHRISTINA QUARLES, “Change Comin’ Round Tha Bend (Right Round, Right Round),” 2019 (acrylic on canvas, 68 x 54 x 1 1/4 inches / 172.7 x 137.2 x 3.2 cm). | © Christina Quarles Courtesy of the artist, Regen Projects, Los Angeles, and Pilar Corrias Gallery, London
CHRISTINA QUARLES, “Laid Down Beside Yew,” 2019 (acrylic on canvas, 84 × 96 × 2 inches / 213.4 × 243.8 × 5.1 cm). | Courtesy of the artist, Regen Projects, Los Angeles, and Pilar Corrias Gallery, London
CHRISTINA QUARLES, “Pour Over,” 2019 (acrylic on canvas, 60 × 48 × 1 ½ inches / 152.4 × 121.9 × 3.8 cm). | © Christina Quarles, Courtesy of the artist, Regen Projects, Los Angeles, and Pilar Corrias Gallery, London
CHRISTINA QUARLES, “Yew’ve Got Yer Gud Things, n’ I’ve Got Mine (Split),” 2018 (acrylic on canvas, 62 x 55 inches / 157.5 x 139.7 cm). | © Christina Quarles Courtesy of the artist, Regen Projects, Los Angeles, and Pilar Corrias Gallery, London
Peer Amid (Peered Amidst), 2019. Acrylic on canvas. 55 × 86 × 2 in. (139.7 × 218.4 × 5.1 cm)
CHRISTINA QUARLES, “Peer Amid (Peered Amidst),” 2019 (acrylic on canvas, 55 × 86 × 2 inches / 139.7 × 218.4 × 5.1 cm). | © Christina Quarles, Courtesy of the artist, Regen Projects, Los Angeles, and Pilar Corrias Gallery, London
CHRISTINA QUARLES, “Underneath It All,” 2019 (acrylic on canvas, 72 x 60 x 2 inches / 182.9 x 152.4 x 5.1 cm). | © Christina Quarles Courtesy of the artist, Regen Projects, Los Angeles, and Pilar Corrias Gallery, London
CHRISTINA QUARLES, “When It’ll Dawn on Us, Then Will It Dawn on Us,” 2018 (acrylic on canvas, 77 ¼ x 96 × 2 inches / 196.2 × 243.8 × 5.1 cm). | © Christina Quarles, Courtesy of the artist, Regen Projects, Los Angeles, and Pilar Corrias Gallery, London
IMAGE: Top of page, CHRISTINA QUARLES, “Tha Color of Tha Sky (Magic Hour),” 2017 (acrylic on canvas, 55 x 88 inches /139.7 x 223.5 cm). | © Christina Quarles Courtesy of the artist, Regen Projects, Los Angeles, and Pilar Corrias Gallery, London
FIND MORE about Christina Quarles on her website
BOOKSHELF
Authored by Grace Deveney, “Christina Quarles” accompanies the artists solo exhibition at MCA Chicago, the largest presentation of her work to date. Also titled “Christina Quarles,” with contributions by Andrew Bonacina and David J. Getsy, the first volume to document the work of Christina Quarles was published in 2019, in conjunction with a solo exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield in West Yorkshire, UK.
