NATE LEWIS exhibits in “Plumb Line: Charles White and the Contemporary” at California African American Museum

 

exhibitions

current

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

Exhibitions. Programs. Workshops. Events. Conversations.

CAAM is not just a museum. We are a living, breathing experience, a thriving center for dialogue and discourse about art, culture, history, and identity. We promise you’ll find something to love and to take part in here — so visit, and visit often! Located in the heart of LA’s Exposition Park, we are also surrounded by some of the city’s most vibrant institutions, including the Natural History Museum, the California Science Center and the forthcoming Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. The Museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm, Sunday from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm, and is closed on Monday (except MLK Day!).

Admission is always free.

Driving and Parking

If you are driving, CAAM is at the corner of Figueroa Street and Exposition Boulevard, just west of the 110 Freeway. Please note that our parking lot entrance is at 39th and Figueroa. Please put that cross section into your maps search or GPS device.

 

 

Available artwork by NATE LEWIS

 

MAYA FREELON ASANTE in Artforum

“Material Girls: Contemporary Black Women Artists”

SPELMAN COLLEGE MUSEUM OF FINE ART
350 Spelman Lane SW,
September 6–December 1

Sonya Clark, Seven Layer Tangle, 2005,plastic combs, glue, 7 x 30 x 30”.

Maren Hassinger’s Love, 2005–12, in the far corner of the gallery, displays inflated hot pink plastic shopping bags gathered in the shape of an obtuse triangle rising up to the ceiling. It is impossible to see Love and not think of the collective progress made by the gay rights movement that has used this symbol of a pink triangle since the 1970s, as well the individual acts that went into shaping the movement. The allegorical use of materials continues in Sonya Clark’sPlain Weave, 2008—a simple, elegant grid of gold-colored thread and black plastic combs held together in the royal kente cloth pattern––elevating throwaway objects by using them to represent this coveted textile.

Such are two instances of the ways in which Chakaia Booker, Maya Freelon Asante, Martha Jackson Jarvis, Joyce J. Scott, and Renée Stout, in addition to Hassinger and Clark—challenge the social and cultural identities of objects, blurring the boundary between natural and industrial materials. Take, for instance, Booker’s contribution: masses of recycled rubber tires––some sliced into strandlike lengths, others cut to sharp, pointed, staccato shapes––elegantly manipulated into long sculptural tableaux or smaller, compact works that allude to organic material and figuration. Whereas irrefutable power, speed, and performance dominate the commercially driven affect of automobile tires, Booker’s use of these discarded, visibly worn wheels––in tandem with her subsequent manipulation in composing her sculptures––speaks to a range of experience by showing the tangible effects of the environment on the objects. It is in this way that “Material Girls” spurs a consideration of the desire for newness in commodity objects and stakes a claim for finding value in the materiality that marks our experience, in spite of its monetary equivalent.

— Amanda Parmer

“Material Girls” Exhibition at The Lewis in Baltimore

“Material Girls” – a wonderful group exhibition of Contemporary Black Women Artists – is currently on view at the  Reginald F. Lewis Museum in Baltimore, MD. The exciting show runs  through October 16, 2011 and is most definitely worth a trip!  The 8 participating artists use materials as varied as wood, metal, glass, manufactured and re-purposed materials including plastic bags, tissue paper, rubber tires, combs and human hair. As the museum notes, “The materials they prod, ply and piece together play on a range of cultural meanings, personal memories, and social agendas.”

Featured contemporary artists include:

• Chakaia Booker
• Sonya Clark
• Torkwase Dyson
• Maya Freelon Asante (soon to be shown in MFA’s ‘Stories that Breathe’ which opens next week at MFA in DC)
• Maren Hassinger
• Martha Jackson Jarvis
• Joyce J. Scott
• Renee Stout

Additional details:

“Material Girls”, Contemporary Black Women Artists, Curated by Michelle Joan Wilkinson, PhD

Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American Culture & History, 830 E. Pratt St., Baltimore, MD 21202

Hours: Wednesday – Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Sunday, Noon to 5 p.m.
Thursday (June to August), open until 8 p.m.
Sunday Noon to 5 p.m.