AN AMAZING PAINTER who juggles a variety of projects and collaborations, Nina Chanel Abney has been channeling her talents as a curator. Last fall, Abney organized “Punch” at Jeffrey Deitch in New York. The show focused on 19 artists in her circle whose work, similar to her own, examines contemporary life through the lens...
SINCE 2014, Njideka Akunyili Crosby has been using her signature collage technique to make a series of portraits focused on Nigerian children, including her siblings in their youth. Recent works from the ongoing series The Beautyful Ones are featured at Victoria Miro Venice. Closing soon, the exhibition is on view through July 13....
THE SEATTLE ART MUSEUM is presenting an ongoing series of self-portraits by South African photographer Zanele Muholi. Opening July 10, “Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness” features 76 black-and-white portraits and large-scale photographic wall papers. The series reimagines so-called classic portraiture and re-articulates notions of race, representation, and identity. Muholi’s own face and body...
THE NEW MUSEUM is presenting the first-ever U.S. solo museum show of British artist Lubaina Himid next week. The 2017 Turner Prize-winner, who describes herself as a painter and a social activist, is debuting an all-new body of work at the New York City museum. Opening June 26, “Lubain Himid: Work from Underneath” features...
Installation view of “Get Up, Stand Up Now.” Shown, From left, Works by Yinka Shonibare and Sanford Biggers (in background). | Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Somerset House On View presents images from noteworthy exhibitions A STUNNING ARRAY of works by more than 100 artists from Britain, the United States, and beyond, is on view at...
A STRIKING PORTRAIT of a black woman was awarded first prize at the National Portrait Gallery in London. “Imara in Her Winter Coat” by Charlie Schaffer won the BP Portrait Award 2019. The winning portrait and 43 other top entries will be on view in an exhibition that opens June 13 at the National...
Artist Leonardo Drew in his Brooklyn studio. WORKING IN HIS UNIQUE STUDIO SPACE in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, artist Leonardo Drew simultaneously produced work for two projects. He fabricated “City in the Grass,” which features a trio of towers rising from an abstracted cityscape grounded by a massive surface resembling a topographically patterned carpet. His...
From left, Artists Sable Elyse Smith, Allison Janae Hamilton, and Tschabalala Self THE STUDIO MUSEUM IN HARLEM Artists-in-Residence exhibition opened Sunday at MoMA PS1 in Long Island City. Titled “MOOD,” the exhibition features 2018-19 artists Allison Janae Hamilton, Tschabalala Self, and Sable Elyse Smith. Here is how the museum describes the show: MOOD explores...
Curator Zoé Whitley THE BRITISH PAVILION at the 58th Venice Biennale features a new body of work by Irish artist Cathy Wilkes. Conceptual and figurative sculptures, a spare selection of household objects, and abstracted landscape paintings are installed in a series of six pristine galleries flooded with natural light. She’s created narrative moments and...
FROM ONE DECADE TO THE NEXT, one can never guess where Frank Bowling will take his painting. Where ever he goes, somehow it always looks like Bowling. Whether he is sewing silkscreen images of his mother’s house to canvases, stenciling silhouettes of Africa and South America against fields of color, or relying on...
EMPLOYING CARPETS left behind by the previous occupant of his Harlem studio, Nari Ward made an angel. He reinvented the carpets, cutting them down and forming tightly rolled segments, combining them with found plastic bags, plastic bottles, springs, wood screws, and rope, to create an airy, open-weave structure. He named the work “Carpet Angel.”...
INSTALLED ON THE EIGHTH FLOOR of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, a group exhibition celebrates color. “Spilling Over: Painting Color in the 1960s” considers the technical, formal, and substantive possibilities of painting with bold, neon, and saturated hues. Drawing exclusively on the Whitney Museum’s collection, the show brings together 18...
On View presents images from noteworthy exhibitions THE PULSATING RHYTHMS and dynamic energy of London’s reggae and dub nightclub scene in the early 1980s are palpable in the work of Denzil Forrester. His large-scale paintings are characterized by “vivid color, gestural brushstrokes, and frenetic compositions.” Spanning the four decades (1978-2019), new and historic works...
THE TITLE OF A FORTHCOMING exhibition at The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., is derived from Isabel Wilkerson’s critically acclaimed book “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration.” The volume documents the migration of African Americans in the United States from the Jim Crow South to the industrial North...
On View presents images from noteworthy exhibitions DC MOORE GALLERY is presenting a nearly four-decade survey of David Driskell, the renowned artist, curator, art historian, and educator. The paintings, large and small, reflect the expanse of his interests, travels, and experiences. Driskell, 87, draws on a range of styles and techniques, from figuration and...
“Seven Deadly Sins” (c. 1968) by Vivian Browne WHEN AFRICAN AMERICAN ARTISTS were weighing issues of race and representation in the 1960s, Vivian Browne (1929-1993) went in a unique direction. She began making drawings and paintings of white men in various states of rant, rage, and rebellion. Their white dress shirts and neckties indicate...
FOR HIS FIRST EXHIBITION at Hemphill Fine Arts in Washington, D.C., Rushern Baker IV is presenting new paintings made between 2017 and 2019. Drawing on the current political climate, the works are fraught with urgency and anxiety. The unease is unrelenting. Baker’s energetic and frenetic abstractions invoke a range of concerns, from the perils...
Deborah Roberts is presenting “Native Sons: Many thousands gone” at Vielmetter Los Angeles VIELMETTER LOS ANGELES announced its representation of Deborah Roberts in late February and her first exhibition with the gallery opened last week. Roberts is known primarily for her collage on paper works. The Austin, Texas-based artist makes abstracted representations of black...
TITUS KAPHAR and REGINALD DWAYNE BETTS, “Untitled (from the Redaction project),” 2019 (etching and silkscreen on paper, 22 x 30 inches). | Image courtesy Titus Kaphar Studio, Photo by Merik Goma On View presents images from noteworthy exhibitions REDACTION is a collaboration between artist Titus Kaphar and attorney Reginald Dwayne Betts, who have...
“Untitled (Broken Men)” (2018) by Rashid Johnson On View presents images from noteworthy exhibitions NEW WORKS by Rashid Johnson are on view in St. Moritz, Switzerland. Featured at Hauser & Wirth, the paintings, sculptures, and drawings build on themes Johnson has explored previously. Broken Men is a series of mosaic tile paintings that...