Expo Chicago 2024

Booth # 405

VIP Preview Day
Thursday, April 11th | 12:00 – 9:00pm

Public Hours
Friday, April 12th | 11:00am – 7:00pm
Saturday, April 13th | 11:00am – 7:00pm
Sunday, April 14th | 11:00am – 6:00pm
Ticket Information

Galerie Myrtis is pleased to announce our forthcoming debut at EXPO Chicago. The booth will showcase contemporary artists who explore the cultural, social, and political landscapes of our world while showcasing the beauty of humanity.

view exhibition catalog

Booth Concept
Galerie Myrtis presents “Intersections of Identity,” featuring the extraordinary works of painters Monica Ikegwu, Megan Lewis and Ronald Jackson, and master printmaker Delita Martin.

The concept explores the rich tapestry of individual and collective identities, highlighting the artists’ unique perspectives and their profound contributions to the contemporary art landscape.

Presented artworks will delve into the complex intersections of race, gender, and culture, showcasing the artists’ distinct artistic approaches and their exploration of personal narratives and societal experiences. Through their respective mediums, Ikegwu, Lewis, Jackson, and Martin bring forth powerful and thought-provoking imagery that challenges traditional notions of identity and celebrates diversity.

Expo Chicago Catalog (click to view)
Presents in Full Bloom, 2024
Oil and glitter on framed wood board, 60 x 48”
by Megan Lewis

Exhibitions

There Within Lies the Gospel

There Within Lies the Gospel: Truth

Opening Reception
September 2, 2023
2:00 – 6:00 pm

This exhibition celebrates the rich history of black religious and spiritual traditions while also challenging the ways in which these practices continue to evolve and adapt in response to contemporary social and cultural realities.

Featured artists: Tawny Chatmon, Wesley Clark, Morel Doucet, Monica Ikegwu,M. Scott Johnson, Delita Martin, and Felandus Thames.

view artwork

Programming includes a book signing for “Shifting Time: African American Artists 2020-2021” on Saturday, September 16th from 5 – 7 pm. The event is in collaboration with the Petrucci Family Foundation (PFF). Claudia Volpe, the Director of PFF, and essayists Klare Scarborough and Berrisford Boothe will join featured artists for the event.

Exhibition Dates
September 2 – October 21, 2023

artwork
Light in the Darkness II, 2023
Oil Paint on Canvas, 24 x 18″
by Monica Ikegwu

Art Fairs

Context Art Miami 2022

1 Herald Plaza, Miami, FL 33132, USA
Booth #A3
TICKETS & INFORMATION

Galerie Myrtis announces our participation in CONTEXT Art Miami featuring new works from Tawny Chatmon, Morel Doucet, Monica Ikegwu, Megan Lewis, Delita Martin, and Felandus Thames at Booth A3.

Tawny Chatmon

Morel Doucet

Monica Ikegwu

Megan Lewis

Delita Martin

Felandus Thames

Fair Hours
(VIP Preview) Tuesday, November 29 — 6:30pm – 10pm
Wednesday, November 30 — 11am – 7pm
Thursday, December 1 — 11am – 7pm
Friday, December 2 — 11am – 7pm
Saturday, December 3 — 11am – 7pm
Sunday, December 4 — 11am – 6pm
TICKETS & INFORMATION

Art Fairs

IFPDA Print Fair 2022

October 27th – 30th
Javits Center, New York, NY
Booth #215

VIP Preview Day
Thursday, October 27th 12 pm – 8 pm

Public Hours
Friday, October 28th 11 am – 7 pm
Saturday, October 29th 11 am – 7 pm
Sunday, October 30th 11 am – 5 pm
Ticket information

Featured are prints by artists

Lavett Ballard

Susan Goldman

Delita Martin

Arvie Smith

Nelson Stevens

Exhibitions

The Afro-Futurist Manifesto: Blackness Reimagined – PRESS

The Afro-Futurist Manifesto: Blackness Reimagined

PRESS

Personal Structures, July 2022
The Beauty and Confidence of Blackness

The Afro-Futurist Manifesto: Blackness Reimagined. With this installation, Galerie Myrtis seeks to provide insight into the socio-political concerns of the African-American community and celebrates black culture by paying tribute to the reliance, creativity, ingenuity, and spirituality that has historically sustained Black people, bringing it into a completely new set of Venetian landscapes. full article

Glasstire, June 2022
10 Works from the Venice Biennale that I Wish the Fort Worth Modern Would Acquire by Colette Copeland

[Tawny] Chatmon’s gold-leafed photographic portraits celebrate the beauty of black childhood. Inspired by 15th century Italian artists and artisans, as well as gold-inscribed historical relics, the artist juxtaposes the portraits onto historical landscape paintings as an act of affirmation. full article

New York Public Library, 2022
Tribute to an Afrofuturist Deity: Schomburg Center Artist & Educator M. Scott Johnson Exhibits at 59th Venice Biennale

…The stone chips were flying as M. Scott Johnson, a sculptor and visual arts instructor at the Center’s Junior Scholars Program, began work on the first sculpture of his triptych, The Metamorphosis of High John the Conqueror: Tribute to an Afrofuturist Deity. full article

Artlyst, April 2022
Eight Of The Best Collateral Events – 59th Venice Biennale by Lee Sharrock

Myrtis Bedolla, founding director of Galerie Myrtis in Baltimore MD, has curated a breathtaking group exhibition at the European Cultural Centre in Palazzo Bembo. Titled ‘The Afro-Futurist Manifesto: Blackness Reimagined’, the exhibition groups together 8 artists who are reclaiming the inequality of white art history from the point of view of a black narrative… full article

Pigmment Magazine, 2022
Venice says “BENVENUTO to Galerie Myrtis in 2022

[Galerie Myrtis] is the first Black-owned gallery to be invited to participate in the Biennale-affiliated “Personal Structures: Time Space and existence.” The gallery was invited to the prestigious show by the European Cultural Centre-Italy. full article

Black art in America, April 2022
Galerie Myrtis: Exhibiting Black Art at The Venice Biennale by Shantay Robinson

By invitation of the European Cultural Centre-Italy, Galerie Myrtis is the first black-owned gallery to be invited to participate in the Biennale-affiliated exhibition Personal Structures: Time, Space, and Existence. This historic moment is predated by the 2020 racial reckoning the world experienced. full article

Culture Type, August, 2021
Latest News in Black Art: Guggenheim Hires Diversity Chief, Galerie Myrtis Presenting Exhibition at Venice Biennale, Kehinde Wiley Redesigns MTV Moonperson & More by Victoria L. Valentine

Galerie Myrtis Fine Art & Advisory of Baltimore, Md., was invited to participate in Personal Structures, an affiliate exhibition at the 2022 Venice Biennale. The Black-owned gallery founded by Myrtis Bedolla will present “The Afro-Futurist Manifesto: Blackness Reimagined,” featuring eight artists—Tawny Chatmon, Larry Cook, Morel Doucet, Monica Ikegwu, M. Scott Johnson, Delita Martin, Arvie Smith, and Felandus Thames. full article

Artist Talk

The Speculative Future of Blackness – Artist Talk –…

Artist Talk: The Speculative Future of Blackness
2022 Venice Biennial Art Exhibition
Sunday, April 24, 2022

Palazzo Michiel
Strada Nova, 4391
30121 Campo Santi Apostoli
Venezia VE, Italy

Myrtis Bedolla, Curator of The Afro-Futurist Manifesto: Blackness Reimagined exhibition, moderates a discussion with artists Tawny Chatmon, M. Scott Johnson, Delita Martin, and Arvie Smith, whose works offer discourse into African Americans’ socio-political concerns and pays tribute to the resiliency, creativity, and spirituality that have historically sustained Black people.

Blackness and the possibilities of its future are the impulses that drive the imaginations of the artists who draw inspiration from Afrofuturism, Black existentialism, spirituality, and futurist thought to construct a Black universe of tomorrow.

Press

Delita Martin – Press

PRESS

Afro News, August, 1, 2023
Reginald F. Lewis Museum Exhibit Highlights Afro-futurism Movement

…The full exhibit that was on display in Venice has been scaled down to feature eight artists, including pieces from talents such as M. Scott Johnson, Tawny Chatmon, Larry Cook, Delita Martin and Felandus Thames. Through their art, guests have been encouraged to think beyond what people have known Black life and culture to be like both historically and currently. full article

Colossal Magazine, May 4, 2023
Invoking the Divine Feminine, Delita Martin’s Mixed-Media Portraits Embrace Self-Empowerment by Grace Ebert

“Duality is the idea that there are two realms within (the) spirit world,” says Delita Martin, “one that is seen and one that is unseen.” This coupling is a grounding force for the artist as she practices an alchemy of spirit and aesthetics, coaxing dynamic figures from a mélange of patterns, materials, and symbols. full article

Christies, September, 2022
Post-War to Present… and Collaboration with Galerie Myrtis: Time, Space, Existence: Afro-futurist Visions

Among the highlights are a groundbreaking group of six artworks in collaboration with Myrtis Bedolla, Time, Space, Existence: Afro-Futurist Visions from Galerie Myrtis. Each of the six artists—Delita Martin, Larry Cook, M. Scott Johnson, Monica Ikegwu, Morel Doucet, and Tawny Chatmon full article

Glasstire, June 2022
Tangible Advancement: An Interview with Delita Martin by Colette Copeland

Based in Huffman, Texas, artist Delita Martin creates work that reconstructs the identity of Black women through the layering of signs, symbols, and language, from historical to modern times. Her powerful, young, female protagonists project strength and confidence rooted firmly in the present, but also remain connected to their spiritual selves. full article

Galerie Myrtis Fine Art & Advisory of Baltimore, Md., was invited to participate in Personal Structures, an affiliate exhibition at the 2022 Venice Biennale. The Black-owned gallery founded by Myrtis Bedolla will present “The Afro-Futurist Manifesto: Blackness Reimagined” featuring eight artists—Tawny Chatmon, Larry Cook, Morel Doucet, Monica Ikegwu, M. Scott Johnson, Delita Martin, Arvie Smith, and Felandus Thames. full article

Luxe Magazine, January, 2021
On A Mission To Change Hearts And Minds Through Art And Activism by April Hardwick

For many creatives, turning a passion into a business seems far-reaching. But for artist Delita Martin, it was only a matter of time. “I had always imagined going out on my own,” she recalls. “And it was my husband who eventually encouraged me to live out my dream.” Propelled by her talent and his support, in 2016 Martin opened Black Box Press Studio outside Houston. full article

Whitewall, October, 2020
Myrtis Bedolla is Deploying Art to Address Political and Social Issues by Katy Donoghue

Galerie Myrtis presents “Women Heal through Rite and Ritual” through the end of the year. The show’s focus was conceived prior to this year’s health crisis, and yet its timing could not be more fitting. Work by artists Lavett Ballard, Tawny Chatmon, Oletha DeVane, Shanequa Gay, Delita Martin, Elsa Muñoz, and Renée Stout look to non-Western traditions of the women’s role as nurturer, both physically and spiritually. full article

BMORE Art, June 22, 2020
Radical and Visionary: NMWA Collects 200+ Works by Women in 2020 by Cara Ober

…the museum also acquired one of Delita Martin’s stunning large-scale portraits that mix printing, drawing, collage, and stitching, from her recent museum solo exhibition after one museum patron established a fund to support the museum’s work with emerging contemporary artists. full article

BMORE Art, February 19, 2020
Leap of Faith: Delita Martin’s Calling Down The Spirits at NMWA by Lyric Prince

Walking through her solo exhibition, Calling Down The Spirits, at the National Museum of Women in the Arts felt like I was flipping through my grandmother’s photo albums, seeing intimate details of people that I could never know… full article

Hyperallergic, February 2020
Images of Black Women as Avatars of Spiritual Agency (featuring Delita Martin) by Angela N. Carroll

Delita Martin’s latest exhibition, Calling Down the Spirits, seeks to visualize the incorporeal and genetic strands that tether generations of Black women to each other and to the spiritual world. full article

Texas Observer, June 2018
Houston Artist Delita Martin Gives Black Women a Seat at the Table in New Exhibit by Roxanna Asgarian

The 300 women whose portraits are drawn on plates in “The Dinner Table” are all friends, family or acquaintances of the artist [Delita Martin]. full article

City Paper, December 14, 2016
ESCAPE TO MIAMI: Baltimore goes to Art Basel

Galerie Myrtis – SPECTRUM ART FAIR: On the mainland, in Wynwood, Galerie Myrtis efficiently uses nearly every inch of its space, located in a breezy, visible spot near the back at Spectrum, showing work by Delita Martin, Morel Doucet, Anna U. Davis, Michael Gross, Ronald Jackson, and Jamea Richmond-Edwards. This is Myrtis’ first time at this fair – full article

International Review of African American Art, 2015
Stayin Alive

…In this show S. Ross Browne, Nina Buxenbaum, Larry Judah Cook, Ronald Jackson, T. Elliott Mansa, Delita Martin and Arvie Smith draw from the familiar and the imagined to reinscribe the notion of blackness within the context of self. full article

Exhibitions

The Afro-Futurist Manifesto Blackness Reimagined – Venice Biennial

The Afro-Futurist Manifesto: Blackness Reimagined

2022 Venice Biennial Art Exhibition
April 23 – November 27, 2022
Palazzo Bembo, Venice, Italy

Photo by Matteo Losurdo

In The Afro-Futurist Manifesto: Blackness Reimagined, artists assert agency over narratives of Black life, offer discourse into the socio-political concerns of African Americans, and pay tribute to the resiliency, creativity, and spirituality that have historically sustained Black people.
● Curated by Myrtis Bedolla, Founding Director, Galerie Myrtis

FEATURED ARTISTS
Tawny Chatmon ● Larry Cook ● Morel Doucet ● Monica Ikegwu ● M. Scott Johnson ● Delita Martin ● Arvie Smith ● Felandus Thames

VENUE
Palazzo Bembo
Riva del Carbon # 4793
30124 Venezia, Italy

Galerie Myrtis thanks the following sponsors

Daniel F Bergsvik and Donald N. Hastler
Reginald and Aliya Browne
Ilona Sochynsky
The Tibbles Family Trust

Members of the European Cultural Centre Italy Team talk about the sixth edition of Personal Structures, how the project started years ago and its main aim and values
(Galerie Myrtis feature at 1:46)

Presenting the 2022 ECC Awards

Like every edition, the European Cultural Centre presents the ECC Awards to commemorate the closing of the exhibition and to honour the participants that haven taken part in it

During the Closing Event on Sunday 27th of November, 2022, ECC Italy announced the winners and special mentions of this year’s ECC Awards, which were carefully selected by the European Cultural Centre curatorial team. The winners received the unique award of the artwork “1 meter” by the Dutch artist René Rietmeyer, initiator of the project Personal Structures and of the European Cultural Centre itself. The nominees were selected for the categories of: painting and mixed media, sculpture and installation, photography, video and digital art, and university research projects and lifetime achievement.

For the category of PAINTING AND MIXED MEDIA, the ECC Award goes to Galerie Myrtis for their installation The Afro-Futurist Manifesto: Blackness Reimagined at Palazzo Mora, awarded for its interdisciplinary and multilayered presentation that meditates on constructing a future focused on African Art and Afrofuturism’s ideology, and expands in depth on the notion of Blackness at the intersection of mixed media. see list of other recipients.

The Afro-Futurist Manifesto: Blackness Reimagined by Galerie Myrtis | Photo credits: Federico Vespignani

Artist

The Afro-Futurist Manifesto Blackness Reimagined Meet the Artist and…

The Afro-Futurist Manifesto: Blackness Reimagined

Pastoral Scenes, Ralisha (detail) by Tawny Chatmon
On The Other Side Of Landscape Series #1 (detail) by Larry Cook
After All That We Still Stand When Black Lives Look Blue no.12 (detail) by Morel Doucet
We Outside (detail) by Monica Ikegwu
Tutnese Incantation, High John the Conquer & Deodate by M. Scott Johnson
Visionary (detail) by Delita Martin
Preach It (detail) by Arvie Smith
Door of the Cosmos by Falandus Thames

Meet the Artist & Curator
artwork | artists & curator | curatorial statement | artist talk | press | installation photos

Tawny Chatmon, Artist
view resume

Tawny Chatmon (b. 1979, Tokyo, Japan) is a self‐taught, award‐winning artist who has been working in the field of photography for more than 17 years. The primary theme that drives Chatmon’s practice is celebrating the beauty of black childhood. She is currently devoted to creating portraits that are inspired by artworks spanning various periods in Western Art with the intent of bringing to the forefront faces that were often under‐celebrated in this style of work.

Museum Collection:
Minneapolis Institute of Art
Microsoft Corporate Collection
Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art
University of Maryland Global Campus

Larry Cook, Artist
view resume

Larry Cook (b. 1986, Laurel, Maryland) is an award-winning photographer and conceptual artist whose work spans installation, video, and photography. Cook’s work explores the cultural aesthetic of “club” photography to examine how urban culture and incarceration systems become entwined through backdrops. The backdrop is central for its relationship to the formal, social, and cultural aspects of photographic history.

Museum Collections:
Baltimore Museum of Art (promised gift)
Museum of Modern Art
Harvard Art Museums

Morel Doucet, Artist
view resume

Morel Doucet (b. 1990, Pilate, Haiti) is a Miami‐based multidisciplinary artist and arts educator that hails from Haiti. He employs ceramics, illustrations, and prints to examine the realities of climate‐gentrification, migration, and displacement within the Black diaspora communities.

Museum Collections (selected):
Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM)
UK Contemporary Art Society, Plymouth Box Museum
Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art

Monica Ikegwu, Artist
view resume

Monica Ikegwu (b.1998, Baltimore, Maryland) is a figurative painter. She presents her ideas of the figure in a way that is not only captivating, but also unconventional in her use of color, texture, and composition.

Museum Collection:
Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African
American Art

M. Scott Johnson, Artist
view resume

M. Scott Johnson (b. 1968, Inkster, Michigan) is a New York City‐based artist and educator, has carved out a legacy as one of the most stimulating and unique artists of his generation. M. Scott has explored, both in his practice and through his 20‐year visual arts teaching residency at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, New York, a rich vision of contemporary Afro‐aesthetics.

Museum Collections:
The Hampton University Museum
The Schomburg Center Research in Black Culture
Embassy of Oslo Norway, Arts in Embassies Program

Delita Martin, Artist
view resume

Delita Martin (b. 1972, Conroe, Texas) is a master printmaker, illustrator, and painter based in Huffman, Texas. Through the weaving of history and storytelling, Martin offers a new narrative on the power of women whose stories are not only layered in textures and techniques but also symbolism.

Museum Collections (selected):
Crystal Bridges Museum
Minneapolis Institute of Art
Minnesota Museum of American Art
National Museum of Women in the Arts
Library of Congress
The Studio Museum in Harlem
Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African-American Art

Arvie Smith, Artist
view resume

Arvie Smith (b.1938, Houston, Texas) transforms the history of oppressed and stereotyped segments of the American experience into lyrical two‐dimensional master works.

Museum Collections (selected):
Delaware Museum of Art
Hallie Ford Museum of Art
Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art
Portland Art Museum
Reginald F. Lewis Museum

Felandus Thames, Artist
view resume

Felandus Thames (b. 1974, Jackson, Mississippi) is a conceptual artist living and practicing in the greater New York area. Thames’ work attempts to transcend didacticisms that are typically associated with anachronistic understandings of representation and instead aligns itself with ideas around the taxonomy of human difference.

Museum Collections (selected):
Aspen Museum of Art
Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art
Smith Robertson Museum
Studio Museum of Harlem

Myrtis Bedolla, Curator
about myrtis

Myrtis Bedolla is the owner and founding director of Galerie Myrtis, an emerging blue-chip gallery and art advisory specializing in twentieth and twenty-first-century American art with a focus on work created by African American artists. Bedolla possesses over 30 years of experience as a curator, gallerist, and art consultant.

Established in 2006, the mission of the gallery is to utilize the visual arts to raise awareness for artists who deserve recognition for their contributions in artistically portraying our cultural, social, historical, and political landscapes; and to recognize art movements that paved the way for freedom of artistic expression.

Artist

Ontology: Communal Expressions of Being About the Artists

Ontology: Communal Expressions of Being – About the Artists

about the exhibition | view artwork

Lavett Ballard is a mixed media artist who describes her work as a re-imagined visual narrative of African descent people. Ballard’s use of imagery reflects social issues affecting primarily Black women.

Wesley Clark is a conceptual artist whose work challenges and draws parallels between historical and contemporary cultural issues. Clark’s primary focus surrounds blacks in America and the African Diaspora. He examines the young black male psyche and the feeling of being a target.

Alfred Conteh is a painter who presents visual explorations of how people from the African Diaspora societies living in the South are fighting social, economic, educational, and psychological wars from within and without to survive.

Susan Goldman is a printmaker whose “Squaring the Flower” series explores geometry and decorative form. Love of pattern and underlying passion for color and beauty informs playful layering and improvisation. The flower gets stripped away, covered up, and over-printed, yet it always finds a way back in, like a melodious refrain or a cherry blossom in springtime.

Michael Gross is a painter and printmaker whose intensely colorful works are frenetic studies of light and movement. For Gross, every piece attempts to capture a moment of equilibrium, a kind of elegant balance in time and space, and record it permanently.

Michael Gross
The Measure of a Man, 2018
Oil and acrylic on canvas, 72 x 48″

M. Scott Johnson is a photographer and sculptor. As a photographer, Johnson navigates and interprets light, space, and soul in his Landscape Astrophotography series, which represents a yearly pilgrimage to the dark sky of New York’s Adirondack Park, where he captures the rising of the planet Venus in the Northern Hemisphere. As a sculptor, Johnson’s aesthetic and philosophical explorations are shaped by the landscape of his atavistic memories.

Megan Lewis is a painter whose work is a visual series built on her curiosities, experiences, memories, and thought processes. Gathering what she has known to be true becomes the foundation and framework of her artistry. Lewis creates work to express and share her joys.

Delita Martin is a printmaker who portrays Black women as magical beings that possess the power to transcend their black skin and exist in a spiritual form. Through the weaving of history and storytelling, Martin’s work offers narratives on the power of women whose stories are not only layered in textures and techniques but also symbolism.

Arvie Smith is a painter who works transforms the history of oppressed and stereotyped segments of the American experience into lyrical two-dimensional masterworks. Smith’s work is commonly of psychological images revealing deep sympathy for the dispossessed and marginalized members of society in an unrelenting search for beauty, meaning, and equality.

Nelson Stevens is a painter and member of AfriCOBRA (African Commune for Bad Relevant Artists) whose aesthetic is rooted in activism and a commitment to create imagery that rails against racism through positive, powerful, and uplifting imagery.

Felandus Thames is a conceptual artist whose work transcends didacticisms that are typically associated with anachronistic understandings of representation and instead aligns itself with ideas around the taxonomy of human difference. Thames is also interested in the interplay between the personal narrative and the imagined, uses humor to allow the viewer to ease into disconcerting motifs.

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