Ava DuVernay - Smithsonian Portrait of a Nation

The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery presented “Portrait of a Nation: 2022 Honorees” Nov. 10, featuring the seven recipients of the museum’s 2022 Portrait of a Nation Awards. Included in the exhibition are newly acquired portraits of honorees José Andrés, Clive Davis, Ava DuVernay, Marian Wright Edelman, Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., Serena Williams and Venus Williams. The exhibition premieres six newly commissioned works and one never-before-shown photograph, each by a highly acclaimed contemporary artist. “Portrait of a Nation: 2022 Honorees” will be on view on the museum’s first floor through Oct. 22, 2023. Admission is free. “Portrait of a Nation: 2022 Honorees” is generously supported by NIKE Inc.

“Since 2001, the museum has collected portraits of living sitters and continues to expand its work with contemporary artists,” said Rhea L. Combs, director of curatorial affairs. “We are incredibly fortunate that these artists have agreed to work with the museum to contribute to the visual history of our nation while celebrating this year’s Portrait of a Nation honorees.” 

… A new work on paper by the California-based artist Kenturah Davis (b. 1980) features an intricate depiction of filmmaker DuVernay, whose interest in moving images and writing is highlighted through the artist’s stamping technique. 

The newly acquired works contribute to the National Portrait Gallery’s collection of more than 23,000 objects and its history of collaborating with contemporary artists. The “Portrait of a Nation: 2022 Honorees” exhibition is curated by Combs in collaboration with Taína Caragol, curator of painting, sculpture and Latinx art and history, and Leslie Ureña, curator of photographs.

Established in 2015, the Portrait of a Nation Awards honor extraordinary individuals who have made transformative contributions to the United States and its people across all fields of endeavor. The 2022 honorees were presented with their awards at the ticketed Portrait of a Nation Gala Nov. 12.

Solo Booth at Frieze London 2022

Matthew Brown is pleased to present a solo booth of new works by Kenturah Davis for Frieze London 2022.

Booth H10

Regent's Park
October 12–16, 2022

Preview
Wednesday, October 12: 11am–7pm
Thursday, October 13: 11am–7pm

Public Hours
Friday, October 14: 11am–7pm
Saturday, October 15: 11am–7pm
Sunday, October 16: 11am–6pm

Install View

Old and New Dreams: Recent Acquisitions in a Collection

planar vessel I has been acquired by MOCA and is on view in Old and New Dreams: Recent Acquisitions in a Collection at MOCA Grand through September 11.

Kenturah Davis, planar vessel I, 2021 fugitive ink photogram, hand debosssed text, carbon pencil rubbing on Igarashi kozo paper, artist frame, each (of 5 panels): 59 x 39.25 inches.

From @moca on instagram:

Over the past decade, Los Angeles artist Kenturah Davis has garnered increasing attention for works that explore a hybrid space where language and the figure intersect. Incorporating aspects of drawing, photography, printing, and writing - often in an overlay of processes - her work is as much involved with material craft, including traditional paper-making and weaving, as it is with philosophical meditations on identity and perception.

planar vessel I has a two-dimensional surface that seems to open up and contain a metaphorical volume as one looks into it. The primary motif consists of a pencil-rubbed image of a young Black woman, seen in three different views, fluttering or dancing across the work’s five sheets of paper, which have been mounted side-by-side. The paper has been treated with photosensitive inks and left outside to accumulate ghostly traces of time and weather - stains of pink, pale yellow, and lavender. An overlay of barely-visible cursive handwriting has been dry-pressed across the surface of the entire work, making its rumination on physics and daily experience legible. The overall work conveys a hazy portrayal of a person appearing to flow through time, words, and light. planar vessel I has the musical qualities of a free-jazz improvisation in visual form.

Old and New Dreams: Recent Acquisitions in a Collection highlights acquisitions made over the past two years, situating them in relation to hallmark historical examples from MOCA’s renowned collection. Recently added works by Camille Henrot, Ian Cheng, Essie Bendolph Pettway, and Trulee Hall, among many others, share space with canonical works across four distinct galleries, each oriented towards themes that have been present in MOCA’s Collection from its earliest days. These include figuration, as artist’s have pursued it in various media; representations of technological sentience; the intersection of geometric modernism and self-taught or vernacular art; and occultism in California art. Neither a full picture of MOCA’s recent collecting, nor a survey of its collection as a whole, the groupings are meant as case-studies from a history caught mid-stream.

Old and New Dreams: Recent Acquisitions in a Collection is organized by Bennett Simpson, Senior Curator, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Exhibitions at MOCA are supported by the MOCA Fund for Exhibitions with generous funding provided by Earl and Shirley Greif Foundation and Nathalie Marciano and Julie Miyoshi.

From Near and Far: Collage and Figuration in the Contemporary Age

From Near and Far: Collage and Figuration in the Contemporary Age

Curated by Katy Hessel and Deborah Roberts

Stephen Friedman Gallery

9 June – 23 July 2022

Artists:

Sarah Ball, Jordan Casteel, Kenturah Davis, M. Florine Démosthène, Genevieve Gaignard, Lubaina Himid, Kudzanai-Violet Hwami, Chantal Joffe, Aubrey Levinthal, Deborah Roberts, Martha Rosler, Anne Rothenstein, Betye Saar, Amy Sherald, Mickalene Thomas and Caroline Walker.

Gallery hours: Tuesday–Friday, 10am–6pm Saturday 11am–5pm

11 & 30 Old Burlington Street, Mayfair, London

Stephen Friedman Gallery presents ‘From Near and Far’, an exhibition exploring the notion of collage. Bringing together 16 contemporary female artists, the exhibition focuses on collage as a concept and an art form; from the traditional method of splicing together imagery to amalgamating figures, forms, gestures and viewpoints. The artists are united by a shared interest in figuration.

Juror for Los Angeles Printmaking Society (LAPS)

Jurying The 22nd National Print Exhibition
October 15—November 12, 2022

Will take place at Mixografia
1419 E Adams Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90011

Honorees include Betye and Alison Saar and the theme will be Excellence.

The Phoenix Project at the Korean Cultural Center

Korean Cultural Center Los Angeles

The Korean Cultural Center Los Angeles (KCCLA), in partnership with Black Artists in Los Angeles (BAILA), and the Korean Artists Association of Southern California (KAASC),

April 22 - May 20, 2022

Moses X. Ball / April Banks / Chelle Barbour / Sharon Barnes / Lili Bernard / Mark Broyard / Steven J. Brooks / Yrneh Gabon / Lavialle Campbell / Jane Chang / Jason Sahan Chang / Hyunsook Cho / Min Cho / Yun J. Choi / Kenturah Davis / Adrienne DeVine / Ingrid Elburg / Isaiah Ferguson / Mark Steven Greenfield / Okka Han / Zeal Harris / Han Na Hong (H.RED) / Marlon Ivory / David B. Jang / Miyoung Jeon / Eunsil Jeoung / In-ok Jeong / Buena Johnson / Sunhee Joo / Jessi Jumanji / Jongmoo Jun / Jinsil Kim / Somoon Kim / Sungil Kim /Yoonchung Park Kim / Yong Sik Kim / Chungmee Lee / Nakyung Lee / Robert Lee / Sam Sanghoon Lee / Talita Long / Michael Massenburg / Rosalind McGary / Rosalyn Myles / Dominique Moody / Kyoung Namkung / Ji Oh / Michelle Oh / Hairan Paik / Heysook Park / Swan Park / Duane Paul / Amber Perry / Alison Saar / Toni Scott / Esther Shim / Lisa Diane Wedgeworth / Wendell Wiggins / Stanley C. Wilson / Vincent Minsook Yang

This is an exhibition commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of the uprising in Los Angeles in 1992. The exhibition will be in the spirit of the Collaborations exhibition organized by Roland Charles, founding director of the Black Gallery in 1996, and will feature the work of fifteen African American artist, as well as fifteen Korean American artists.

The Institute of Black Imagination podcast

a deep dive into my work on the Institute of Black Imagination podcast — april 10th!

what an honor to talk to dario about diminishing value of mfa’s, urban planning and design to Tony Morrison’s essay “The Site of Memory”.

available on your favorite podcast service and check out amazing other interviews at Black Imagination

Prada x Theaster Gates Experimental Design Lab

ARTIST THEASTER GATES AND PRADA GROUP ANNOUNCE INAUGURAL COHORT OF DORCHESTER INDUSTRIES EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN LAB AWARDEES

Theaster Gates and Prada Group announce inaugural cohort of the Dorchester Industries Experimental Design Lab. The Design Lab, a partnership between Theaster Gates Studio, Dorchester Industries, Rebuild Foundation and Prada Group, is a three-year program curated to support and amplify the work of designers of color working across the creative industries. Fourteen designers and artists from around the world have been selected by a committee of design industry leaders to form the program’s first-ever cohort.:

Tolu Coker (fashion design), Germane Barnes (architecture), Norman Teague (product design), Kyle Abraham (dance), Mariam Issoufou Kamara (architecture), Kendall Reynolds (footwear), Yemi Amu (agriculture), Kenturah Davis (visual art), Salome Asega (art, technology, and design), Damarr Brown (culinary arts), Maya Bird-Murphy (architecture), Brandon Breaux (fine art and design), Summer Coleman (graphic design), and Catherine Sarr (fine jewelry design).

Nominated by luminaries across the creative industries including Prada S.p.A. Co-CEO and Prada Co-Creative Director Miuccia Prada, writer and director Ava DuVernay, the late designer Virgil Abloh, architect Sir David Adjaye, and other dignitaries, the awardees were selected through an extensive review process, having demonstrated extraordinary creative potential in their respective practices.

Also featured in Vogue & WWD

Printmaking: Intentions and Aspirations

Printmaking: Intentions and Aspirations

The idea for this Critics Page has been to have a younger group of printmakers to consider the importance of printmaking in today’s artistic world. Artists and curators of generations younger than my own have been consulted to offer inspired suggestions of who might address the following prompt:

There is a distinctive nature to making prints; and working in these processes contributes to artists’ work in other media.

- Ruth Fine, Guest Critic

Ruth Fine, the former and distinguished curator of modern art and special projects at The National Gallery of Art, called upon several artists/writers to share their thoughts about the influence of printmaking for the February issue of Brooklyn Rail. I briefly muse over proto-printmaking forms in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. It was fun connecting the dots between my obsessions with the rosetta stone, Jason Moran’s works on paper and the lessons of teaching printmaking virtually at Occidental College.

The Artist as Poet: Selections from PAMM's Collection

The Artist as Poet: Selections from PAMM's Collection

Curated by André Breton

With a nod to Surrealism and its use of everyday materials, subversion of common objects, and incorporation of poetic language, this exhibition celebrates how the characteristics of the poème-objet (poem-object) are present in contemporary art. André Breton, the principle theorist of literary Surrealism, often discussed the ways in which text and object could work together, each having their own function within a work. The works in The Artist as Poet span 10 decades between 1917 and 2020 and represent how language—specifically poetry—is used in contemporary art, while shedding light on Surrealism’s influence. The exhibition includes works by Guillaume Apollinaire, André Breton, Joseph Cornell, Aimée García Marrero, Glenda León, Maria Martinez-Cañas, Gordon Matta-Clark, Shirin Neshat, Michael Richards, Purvis Young, and Tim Rollins + K.O.S. (Kids of Survival).