Artist Talk at Art + Practice

On December 12th, Kenturah Davis visited Art + Practice for an artist talk . Through a multidisciplinary practice that includes drawings, textiles, sculpture and performances, Davis’ work uses text as a point of departure, exploring the fundamental role that language has in shaping human understanding. At A+P, Davis discussed how her recent work has been influenced by thinking about ways of “seeing in the dark.” manifesting in text based drawings that are intentionally blurry and objects whose qualities are veiled in mystery to highlight an awareness of things at the edge of our perception.

This program is organized on the occasion of A+P’s exhibitions Stephen Towns: Rumination and a Reckoning and Ramsess: The Gathering.

Feature in Angeleno Magazine

Kenturah Davis is featured in Patrons and Players: Four Philanthropic Pairs Making it Happen in LA.

Written by Kelly Badal and Laura Eckstein Jones, Kenturah sits down for an interview with Roc Nation CEO and Co-founder, Jay Brown.

https://mlangeleno.com/four-philanthropic-pairs-making-it-happen-in-los-angeles

Contextual Proportions

“Contextual Proportions”

November 15 - February 3, 2020

Jenkins-Johnson Projects, 207 Ocean Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11225

Kenturah Davis collaborates with Jenkins-Johnson Projects in organizing a group show highlighting artists who work with text as a flexible material that can both amplify and diffuse ideas. “Contextual Proportions” is inspired by An excerpt from Toni Morrison’s essay “Sites of Memory” which states, “If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic.” Each artist leverages the written language to explore dualities including: legibility/illegibility and meaning/mystery.

The show includes a large-scale, multi-panel book and a corresponding video by Davis in which she transcribes an section of the congressional debate passing the 13th amendment across 200 sheets of handmade kozo paper. The loose-leaf stack of pages expands into a 16’ wide wall drawing when completely installed. The looming figure in the image is rendered by layering the text of the document in repetition.

Artists:

Sadie Barnette

Adriana Corral

Kenturah Davis

Johnathan Payne

Esteban Ramon Perez

Kameelah Janan Rasheed

Peter Williams

NXTHVN at Tilton Gallery

“NXTHVN: First Year Fellows”

November 5 - January 18, 2020

Tilton Gallery, 8 East 76th Street, New York City, NY 10021

Tilton Gallery is delighted to present NXTHVN: First Year Fellows, an exhibition of work by the first group of Fellos to complete their year at this innovative and exciting new residency founded by Titus Kaphar, Jonathan Brand and Jason Price. The exhibition showcases works by the seven Studio Fellows: Felipe Baeza, Jaclyn Conley, Kenturah Davis, Merik Goma, Christie Neptune, Alexandria Smith, and Vaughn Spann. It is accompanied with a joint publication produced by the three Curatorial Fellows: Zalika Azim, Rihanna Majeed and Ana Tuazon. The works in this exhibition are by a strong and varied group of artists that provide a cross-section, in both content and medium, of some of the most relevant approaches to making art today.

https://www.nxthvn.com/

https://jacktiltongallery.com/exhibitions/past/NXTHVN/

Afrocosmologies: American Reflections at Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art

Afrocosmologies: American Reflections
October 19, 2019 – January 20, 2020

Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, 600 Main Street Hartford CT, 06103

Black artists explore spirituality and culture in Afrocosmologies: American Reflections. Alongside artists of the late-nineteenth century, contemporary artists define new ideas about spirituality, identity, and the environment in ways that move beyond traditional narratives of Black Christianity. In dialogue, these works acknowledge a continuing body of beliefs—a cosmology—that incorporates the centrality of nature, ritual, and relationships between the human and the divine. Emerging from the rich religious and aesthetic traditions of West Africa and the Americas, these works present a dynamic cosmos of influences that shape Contemporary art. 

The exhibition  brings together the work of an incredible assortment of artists including Kenturah Davis, Romare Bearden, Dawoud Bey, Elizabeth Catlett, Willie Cole, Melvin Edwards, Titus Kaphar, Lois Mailou Jones, Kerry James Marshall, Alison Saar, Hale Woodruff, Shinique Smith, and Kehinde Wiley along with many additional artists of note. It will be accompanied by a 156-page, fully illustrated catalogue with essays by Frank Mitchell, Berrisford Boothe, Claudia Highbaugh, and Kristin Hass—released in October 2019.

Osei-Duro Artist Residency

“Cloth as Currency”

In March 2018, Kenturah returned to Accra, Ghana as one of Osei-Duro’s inaugural artist in residence where she worked with the surplus, hand-dyed fabric from the brand’s garment production. The results were one of a kind handmade art pieces made in collaboration with Fati, a seamstress we’ve worked with for many years. Together they cut and pieced our off-cut fabrics to create a new textile that resembles Kente cloth in its proportions and narrow strip structure. They sewed a number of large pieces that refer to finished Kente, and then another master tailor, Bawah, sewed two of these into a stunning coat. Kenturah also created a loom-like framework with miscellaneous textile materials woven into it as a wall piece. Of these items, Osei-Duro has made two large textile pieces available for sale. The coat has gone to a private collector and the wall loom will stay in Osei-Duro’s permanent collection. Read the full story here.

New work at Luce Gallery

“As long as we’re flying’ all this world ain’t got no end”

July 16 - August 3, 2019

Luce Gallery, Largo Montebellow 40, 10124, Turin, Italy

Group show with works by:

Amaoko Boafo, Dominic Chambers, Kenturah Davis, Amaryllis De Jesus Moleski, Clotilde Jimenez, Kambui Olujimi, Vaughn Spann, Didier William

PUNCH at Jeffrey Deitch

PUNCH CURATED BY NINA CHANEL ABNEY

JUNE 29 - AUGUST 17, 2019

JEFFREY DEITCH LOS ANGELES, 925 NORTH ORANGE DRIVE, LOS ANGELES

Punch, curated by artist Nina Chanel Abney, will be the summer exhibition at Jeffrey Deitch Los Angeles. Punch expands the acclaimed exhibition presented at Deitch’s New York gallery last fall, with an increased focus on Los Angeles artists. Punch features thirty-three artists who examine contemporary culture and society through the lens of figuration. The exhibition focuses on artists in Abney’s circle whose work embraces the hybridity of the contemporary art discourse, exploring connections and disconnections between culture and subculture, figuration and abstraction and the physical and the digital. Many of these artists grew up in the digital age, seeing firsthand how multiple streams of information from different media can penetrate consciousness. These image streams create a common language for artists to examine and digest how developments in society and culture have altered our perception of contemporary life. The visual energy in these works is palpable—the rhythm and bold forms create a dynamic dialogue between art and popular culture. The works in the exhibition reference art historical precedents such as Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art as well as street art. The integration of design, graffiti, cartoons and satire expands the language of representation when presented with visual punch. Using painting, sculpture, and performance as acts of defiance, these artists explore how they can create a hybrid practice without adhering to historical labels while portraying a society immersed in new media and pop culture. Punch presents diverse approaches to contemporary figuration that defy traditional expectations. Nina Chanel Abney was born in Chicago and currently lives and works in New York. Combining representation and abstraction, Abney’s paintings capture the frenetic pace of contemporary culture. Broaching subjects as diverse as race, celebrity, religion, politics, sex, and art history, her work eschews linear storytelling in lieu of disjointed narratives. Abney’s distinctively bold style harnesses the flux and simultaneity that has come to define life in the 21st century.

The artists participating in Punch are:

Nina Chanel Abney

Trevor Andrew aka GucciGhost

Greg Breda

Amoako Boafo

Jordan Casteel

Jonathan Lyndon Chase

Caitlin Cherry

Jeffrey Cheung

Theresa Chromati

Kenturah Davis

Danny Fox

Monica Kim Garza

Georgina Gatrix

Lauren Halsey

Lucia Hierro

February (Crystal) James

Khari Johnson-Ricks

Cheyenne Julien

Austin Lee

Jaime Munoz

Narcissister

Robert Nava

Arcmanoro Niles

Matthew Palladino

Pat Phillips

Umar Rashid

Gabriella Sanchez

Koichi Sato

Tschabalala Self

Alake Shilling

Devan Shimoyama

David Shrobe

Henry Taylor

Plumb Line at California African American Museum

“A Surreal Presence for Every Possible State” 2018

“All Water Has a Perfect Memory” 2018

Plumb Line: Charles White and the Contemporary

March 8 - August 25, 2019

Curated by: Essence Harden, independent curator, and Leigh Raiford, Associate Professor of African American Studies at the University of California at Berkeley

A prolific painter, printmaker, muralist, draftsman, and photographer whose career spanned more than half a century, Charles White’s artistic portrayals of black subjects, life, and history were extensive and far-reaching. Plumb Line features contemporary artists whose work in the realm of black individual and collective life resonates with White’s profound and continuing influence.

From abstraction to figuration, the artists of Plumb Line (listed below) find conversation with White through the largesse of their canvases, expansive renderings of black skin and black community, and in the treatment of black past and presence in ways that are both epic and intimate.

The plumb line, an architectural tool used to determine verticality, is a featured element in White’s Birmingham Totem, suggesting the work of black artists as architects of change. White himself can also be considered an artistic plumb line: a builder of black artistic opportunities and a compass directing us toward new aesthetic, liberatory possibilities.

Plumb Line is curated by Essence Harden, independent curator, and Leigh Raiford, Associate Professor of African American Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, for the California African American Museum. The exhibition is presented as a companion to the LACMA exhibitions Charles White: A Retrospective and Life Model: Charles White and his Students.

Complete list of artists: Derrick Adams, Sadie Barnette, Dawoud Bey, Diedrick Brackens, Greg Breda, Bisa Butler, Alfred Conteh, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Ariel Dannielle, Kenturah Davis, Torkwase Dyson, Kohshin Finley, Derek Fordjour, Ficre Ghebreyesus, EJ Hill, Yashua Klos, Nate Lewis, Michelangelo Lovelace, Christopher Myers, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Deborah Roberts, Lava Thomas, Charles White, and Deborah Willis

Blur in the Interest of Precision

MATTHEW BROWN LOS ANGELES

Inaugural Exhibition

Kenturah Davis

Blur in the Interest of Precision 

January 26—March 3 2019

Opening Reception

Saturday January 26th, 6—9pm

Blur in the Interest of Precision is a search for parallel conditions between the poetics of our visual experience and the strangeness of our relationship to language. We often use language to carve out distinctions between one thing and another. Davis' objective—to complicate ideas about meaning, representation and perception—have found refuge in blur and doubling. The artist's new drawings are rendered with arrangements of text, but the words are virtually illegible. Many of the portraits pursue ideas the artist is working through via the writings of Fred Moten and Toni Morrison’s essay, Sites of Memory.

MATTHEW BROWN LOS ANGELES
633 North La Brea
Los Angeles 90036 

matthewbrowngallery.com

info@matthewbrowngallery.com

[detail] All Water has Perfect Memory..., 2018

Oil paint applied with rubber stamp letters and graphite grid on embossed Mohachi paper

2 panels, 29 x 45 inches each

58 x 45 overall

23-Year-Old Matthew Brown Opens LA’s newest gallery

-OBSERVER

Matthew Brown Los Angeles Set to Open in Hollywood

-ARTNEWS