Kerry James Marshall at Jack Shainman Gallery
Recent paintings by Art21 artist Kerry James Marshall (Season 1) are on view May 22 through July 3, 2008 at Jack Shainman Gallery in New York. The exhibition, titled Black Romantic, is the artist’s first solo show at the gallery in many years.
According to the website ArtCal, Marshall takes his show title from the 2002 exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem, curated by Thelma Golden. Using Golden’s Black Romantic as a point of departure, Marshall continues his exploration of the black figure represented in pictorial space. Whereas Golden “explored populist notions of ‘Black Art’ and the uncritical realm of image making,” Marshall “investigates the critical pretensions of the fine art establishment in which he participates.” In these new works, the artist employs genres of painting, ranging from seascapes to classical artist self-portraits. Marshall will also present a mixed media sculptural installation.
Jack Shainman Gallery is located at 513 West 20th Street. An opening reception takes place tomorrow from 6-8pm.
Watch the Art:21 video “A Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of his Former Self,” to hear Marshall discuss the first painting in which he used his signature black figure.
Catherine Sullivan in BOMB Magazine
In a BOMB Magazine web exclusive, Season 4 artist Catherine Sullivan (pictured top right) and choreographer Meg Stuart discuss mining the history of the avant-garde tradition and emotional overflow in ensemble-based work. BOMB’s Summer 2008 print issue will include the full-length conversation.
The magazine’s online art section, which currently archives 1,206 articles and interviews, features numerous Art21 artists such as Kerry James Marshall, Andrea Zittel (both Season 1), Gabriel Orozco, Paul Pfeiffer, Kara Walker (all Season 2), Arturo Herrera (Season 3), and Pierre Huyghe (Season 4).
Walker, Puryear, and Marshall featured in Corcoran show
Those in the Washington D.C. area should take a moment to check out The American Evolution, an expansive show at the Corcoran Gallery of Art on view through July 27. Works by three Art21 artists: Kara Walker, Martin Puryear (both Season 2), and Kerry James Marshall (Season 1) have all have been included in the Corcoran’s reexamination of the history of American art. The exhibition focuses on the evolution of five frequent themes in American art: money, land, politics, cultural exchange, and the modern world. The Corcoran has dug into their large collection of American artwork to illustrate how the definition of these concepts has shifted throughout the history of our country. Other artists in this show include Andy Warhol, Richard Diebenkorn, and Gilbert Stuart.
You can find more information about this show and a full list of the artists involved here.
Whitney Biennial Model Tees
The Whitney Museum has collaborated with the Gap on a series of t-shirts designed by past Whitney Biennial artists, including Art21 artists Cai Guo-Qiang, Barbara Kruger (her design is pictured above), Kerry James Marshall, and Kiki Smith. There are thirteen in all, and the prominent remainder includes Ashley Bickerton, Chuck Close, Jeff Koons, Hanna Liden, Glenn Ligon, Marilyn Minter, Kenny Scharf, Sarah Sze, and Rirkrit Tiravanija.
The t-shirts will be available at select Gap stores and online beginning May 15. In the meantime, with the opening of the 2008 Whitney Biennial last week, they can also be found in advance at the museum gift store.
Kerry James Marshall: Every Beat of My Heart exhibitions/performances at Wexner Center
Every Beat of My Heart is the culmination of Season 1 artist Kerry James Marshall’s Wexner Center Residency Award. The work grows out of his Rythm Mastr series, an expansive sequence of narrative works that tells a tale of urban life featuring superheroes inspired by African archetypes and African-American culture (view Marshall talking about the series on his Art:21 webpage here).
Marshall’s Wexner residency began last summer with a trip to Japan to study the traditional art form of Bunraku puppetry. He then convened a group of 23 Columbus teenagers to train as puppeteers in order to present Every Beat of My Heart as a live performance with musical accompaniment by jazz drummer Kahil El‚ÄôZabar.
The performances take place this weekend: Saturday, February 2, at 4pm and 7pm, and Sunday, February 3 at 2pm and 4pm in the Wexner Center Galleries.
After the performances, the puppets and sets will be on view as part of the exhibition Kerry James Marshall: Every Beat of My Heart, through April 13. A video of the complete performance will be on view in the lower lobby during this time as well.
Tickets are extremely limited and are available only in person, first-come, first-served at the Wexner Center Ticket Office/Patron Services Desk on the day of the performance (two tickets per patron maximum). Overflow seating with a live video feed will be available in the Film/Video Theater during all performances. (The ticket office opens at 10 am on Saturday and 11 am on Sunday.)
Read more about the project here and here.
2007: a brief recap
2007 was a landmark year for many Art21 artists. Apart from the accolades and prizes bestowed upon such artists as Kara Walker, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Jessica Stockholder, Kerry James Marshall, and Cai Guo-Qiang, the multitude of exhibitions featuring Art21 artists reflect the pinnacle stages in many of their careers. While this is an achievement in its own right, we wanted to mention some of the other critical kudos recently published in print and online.
For Robert Ayers of ArtInfo.com, the two sculpture retrospectives organized by MoMA last year, Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years and Martin Puryear (on view through January 14), are the fourth and fifth best shows of 2007. “Having already visited [Serra’s] show several times, I actually cancelled all of my plans for its final day so that I could see it one last time,” writes Ayers. About Puryear he notes that the artist, “proves himself here a magician of forms that sit happily at the intersection of abstraction and representation and a poet of implied and suggested appearances and meanings.”
As previously cited in December, the top ten exhibitions of 2007 for Time’s Richard Lacayo include those of artists Richard Serra (#1), Vija Celmins (#3), Martin Puryear (#5), and Kara Walker (#6). For Howard Halle of Time Out New York, Serra’s show at MoMA is one of 2007’s best. “Serra put the me in heavy-metal postminimalism, but in this retro of curving labyrinthine slabs, he put you and I and just about everyone else in there, too.” remarks Halle.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the writers from 24 Hour Museum (to be renamed Culture24 this Spring) have their own opinions. Jon Pratty, 24 Hour Museum’s Editor and Head of Content, selected the Louise Bourgeois exhibition at Tate Modern as his top pick. For Pratty, this show (on display through January 20) “was the first in a long time I have seen bringing to life the peculiar talent, skill and craft of a true artist. Everything in her show had been chosen by her, crafted by her, formed by her. It was really inspiring.”
On a more somber note, 2007 sadly marked the death of Season 2 artist Elizabeth Murray, who passed away on August 12. But as Verlyn Klinkenborg writes in the New York Times, “her paintings will be with us for years and years to come.”
Kerry James Marshall lands Wexner Residency
The Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus OH, just announced their 2007-08 Residency Awards, and Season 1 featured artist Kerry James Marshall is the recipient of the visual arts prize.
For his Residency Award project, Marshall will engage a group of local teens this fall and winter to help bring his vision—which involves performance, sculpture, puppetry, and more—to fruition.
The focus of the work is Marshall’s expansive narrative, Rythm Mastr (preliminary drawings of which were featured in his Season 1 segment), a story of love, vengeance, and redemption in the inner city, featuring African-American superheroes based on traditional African sculpture and stories, and realized in comic strip form. For his Wexner project, he will bring Rythm Mastr to life.
To achieve this, Marshall is currently creating large-scale puppets in the Japanese tradition of Bunraku, and he visits Japan this summer to observe and learn the ancient craft. In late September, Marshall will select 20 teenagers from the Columbus community to be trained as puppeteers and to rehearse and perform Rythm Mastr, which will be staged at the Wexner in February. Students can check out the application and details here. From February 2 through April 13, the puppets will be displayed in the Wexner Center gallery as sculpture, alongside drawings and video documentation of the live performance, in the exhibition Kerry James Marshall: Every Beat of My Heart.
A recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, Marshall currently has work on view at Documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany. He lives and works in Chicago.
On a related note, the Wexner will be hosting a sneak preview screening of Art in the Twenty-First Century Season 4 episode Ecology on October 9, from 7-9 p.m. Ecology features former Wexner Residence Award winner, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Mark Dion (another friend of the Wexner Center), Robert Adams and Ursula von Rydingsvard. The screening will be followed by informal small-group discussions of the program, led by Wexner Education staff members.
