Installation view of works by Richard Wyatt Jr., and Lyle Ashton Harris
NEW YORK-BASED SALON 94 gallery is showcasing works by seven artists, including Derrick Adams, Lyle Ashton Harris, Robert Pruitt, and Richard Wyatt Jr. The works are presented in the gallery’s Frieze Viewing Room. Frieze London 2020 was a hybrid event with limited in-person programming and exhibitor presentations in online viewing rooms.
Although Frieze London was officially “open” through Sunday, the art fair viewing rooms remain active through Oct. 16 (free email registration required), and many galleries have parallel viewing rooms on their own websites. The viewing rooms offer an opportunity to see artworks for sale, including detail images and installations views, and learn about the artists. The majority of galleries, including Salon 94 in most cases, also state asking prices.
Two paintings by Adams on view at Salon 94 were featured in a recent exhibition at The Gallery at Baltimore City Hall. The Brooklyn-based artist grew up in Baltimore during the 1980s. “Where I’m From — Derrick Adams” the city hall exhibition, featured 10 paintings, portraits and scenes from his childhood, inspired by photographs from old family albums.
POR | RICHARD WYATT JR., “Wisdom,” 2020 (pencil on paper, 22 x 30 inches / 55.9 x 76.2 cm). | © Richard Wyatt Jr. Courtesy the artist and Salon 94, New York.
New York-based Harris is recognized for his diverse practice of photography, collage, installation, and performance. Through the lens of the personal and political, he explores race and gender, fame and desire, and the dynamic between public and private. In the viewing room, Harris is showing three works from a new body of photographic assemblages grounded with Ghanaian fabric.
Three drawings by Wyatt appear in the viewing room. The Los Angeles-based artist makes pencil drawings, realist portraits he describes as revolving around history and culture. What manifests is drawings that capture in photographic detail the individuality of his subjects—layers of experience and years of lived life. Wyatt was a student of Charles White at the Otis Art Institute (now the Otis College of Art and Design) and his work was featured in “Life Model: Charles White and His Students.”
The exhibition was presented last year by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art at Charles White Elementary, the old campus of Otis where the museum maintains the original exhibition space as a satellite gallery. “Life Model” coincided with “Charles White: A Retrospective” at LACMA.
SOLD | ROBERT PRUITT, “Usher Board President,” 2018 (charcoal and conté on coffee stained paper, 84 x 60 inches / 213.4 x 152.4 cm). | © Robert Pruitt, Courtesy the artist and Salon 94, New York.
Drawn on seven-foot sheets of prepared and coffee-stained paper, two female portraits by Pruitt are featured in the viewing room. The works were on view last year in “Robert Pruitt: Devotion,” the artist’s first major museum exhibition in Los Angeles. Black identity, spiritual traditions, Afro-futurism, and the symbols of Black Power inform Pruitt’s work. The Houston-born, New York-based artist is also influenced by fellow draftsman Charles White and John Biggers.
In a review of the exhibition published in Hyperallergic, Daniel Gerwin concluded with an acute assessment of the artist’s singular practice.
He wrote: “Pruitt occupies a willfully idiosyncratic place in contemporary art. Drawing in charcoal, conte, and pastel, he uses a volumetric realism whose roots lie in the European art academies. It is unusual to see carefully modeled charcoal figures outside life model classes, and it is certainly rare to find it in art galleries. Pruitt unexpectedly makes a discipline that predates modernism feel relevant, and even urgent. It is perhaps this very realism that is essential for Pruitt in representing black Americans, so that they can compete with and subdue the condemnatory images still prevalent on screens of all kinds.” CT
EXPLORE Frieze Viewing Room / Website Viewing Room
FIND MORE on the artists’s websites: Derrick Adams, Lyle Ashton Harris, and Richard Wyatt Jr.
$34,000 ROBERT PRUITT, “Ascension,” 2017 (charcoal and conté on prepared paper, 84 x 60 inches / 213.4 x 152.4 cm). | © Robert Pruitt, Courtesy the artist and Salon 94, New York.
$120,000 | LYLE ASHTON HARRIS, “Migration Times,” 2020 (Ghanaian cloth with sutured selvedge, two dye sublimation prints on aluminum, and ceramic fragment, 62 1/4 x 74 3/4 x 4 inches /158.1 x 189.9 x 10.2 cm). | © Lyle Ashton Harris, Courtesy the artist and Salon 94, New York
$120,000 | LYLE ASHTON HARRIS, “Ombre à l’Ombre,” 2019 (Ghanaian cloth, dye sublimation prints, and ephemera, 62 1/2 x 75 1/2 inches / 158.8 x 191.8 cm). | © Lyle Ashton Harris, Courtesy the artist and Salon 94, New York
$35,000 | LYLE ASHTON HARRIS, “Four Cock,” 2020 (Ghanaian cloth and dye sublimation print on aluminum, 27 x 27 inches / 68.6 x 68.6 cm). | © Lyle Ashton Harris, Courtesy the artist and Salon 94, New York
POR | RICHARD WYATT JR., “Glory Cloud,” 2019 (pencil on paper, 65 x 47 1/2 inches / 165.1 x 120.7 cm). | © Richard Wyatt Jr, Courtesy the artist and Salon 94, New York
SOLD | RICHARD WYATT JR., “Let’s Put Our Stones Down,” 2020 (pencil on paper, 41 x 25 inches / 104.1 x 63.5 cm). | © Richard Wyatt Jr, Courtesy the artist and Salon 94, New York
$100,000 | DERRICK ADAMS, “Family Portrait #2,” 2019 (oil on linen, Framed Dimensions: 84 5/8 x 60 5/8 inches / 214.9 x 154 cm; Image Dimensions: 84 x 60 inches). | © Derrick Adams, Courtesy the artist and Salon 94, New York
$100,000 | DERRICK ADAMS, “Family Portrait #5,” 2019 (oil on linen, Framed Dimensions: 60 5/8 x 84 5/8 inches / 154 x 214.9 cm; Image Dimensions: 60 x 84 inches / 152.4 x 213.4 cm). | © Derrick Adams, Courtesy the artist and Salon 94, New York
BOOKSHELF
“Derrick Adams: Buoyant” was published earlier this year to accompany the artist’s exhibition at the Hudson River Museum. “Lyle Ashton Harris: Excessive Exposure: The Complete Chocolate Portraits” features a foreword by Henry Louis Gates Jr., an essay by Okwui Enwezor, and a conversation with the artist conducted by Chuck Close. “Lyle Ashton Harris: Today I Shall Judge Nothing That Occurs: Selections from the Ektachrome Archive” was published more recently. In addition, “Charles White: A Retrospective” documents the landmark traveling exhibition.
