Exhibitions

The Afro-Futurist Manifesto: Blackness Reimagined – PRESS

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

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

artwork | artists & curator | curatorial statement | artist talk | press | installation photos


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)

YouTube player



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.


see list of other recipients.

Artist

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

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
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Meet the Artist & Curator


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.

Exhibitions

Somethin To Say – About the Artists


Isiah (The Boxer, The Bouncer), acrylic and atomized, bronze dust on canvas, 60 x 60 x 2.5 in., 2021, by Alfred Conteh

About the Artists
view artwork | read curatorial statement

Alfred Conteh

Alfred Conteh (b. 1975, Warner Robins, Georgia) is a classically trained artist, who has practiced his craft for more than 20 years. After earning a Bachelor Degree in Fine Arts from Hampton University, Conteh continued his formal education at Georgia Southern University; earning a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts. As an African American artist, Conteh sheds light on the current realities of African American people; by bringing their stories and experiences to the forefront. Conteh’s creative techniques range from paintings to drawings and sculptures to assemblage works. His artwork can be found in public and private collections throughout the world.

In 2018, Conteh was commissioned by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) to create a portrait of film director, producer, and screenwriter Ryan Coogler. The portrait titled Home Team is featured in the traveling exhibit Men of Change: Power. Triumph. Truth. The exhibit pays tribute to African American changemakers for their outstanding legacy and contributions.

Conteh’s work in the permanent collections of the Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AR; Bajeel Art Foundation, Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN; Museum of Arts and Sciences Permanent Collection, Macon, GA; Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art, Ashbury, NJ; Tubman Museum Permanent Collection, Macon, GA; Georgia Southern University Permanent Collection, Statesboro, GA; Georgia Southwestern University Permanent Collection, Swainsboro, GA; Hammonds House Museum Permanent Collection, Atlanta, GA; United Talent Agency, Beverly Hills, CA; and United Way Corporate Collection, Atlanta, GA

Larry Cook

Cook has exhibited his work nationally at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery (2019), National Gallery of Art (2017), and the Baltimore Museum of Art (2016), and internationally during the 13th Havana Biennial. Among Cook’s recent prestigious awards is the Trawick Prize (2020). He was a finalist for the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C. (2019), and a two-time Janet and Walter Sondheim finalist in (2013 and 2016).

Cook’s photography was featured as a large-scale public installation Ceremonies of Dark Men, part of the 5 X 5 Project, organized by the D.C. Commission on the Arts curated by AM Weaver (2014). As the recipient of several artist-in-residency and fellowship programs, Cook has participated in the Nicholson Project Artist-in-Residency, (2020) Savage-Lewis Residency, Art on the Vine in Martha’s Vineyard (2018), and Washington Project for the Arts Residency (2017). He completed a fellowship at the Hamiltonian Gallery (2013-2015). Cook is currently an Assistant Professor of Photography at Howard University.

T.J. Dedeaux-Norris

T.J. Dedeaux-Norris fka Tameka Jenean Norris was born in Guam and received their undergraduate degree at the University of California, Los Angeles before graduating with an MFA from Yale University School of Art. Dedeaux-Norris has recently participated in numerous exhibitions and festivals including at Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC; Yerba Buena Museum, San Francisco, CA; Prospect.3 Biennial, New Orleans, LA; The Walker Museum, Minneapolis, MN; Performa 13; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Houston, TX; The Studio Museum, Harlem, NY; Rotterdam Film Festival, Rotterdam, Netherlands; Sundance Film Festival, New York, NY; Mission Creek Festival, Iowa City, IA among many others. Dedeaux-Norris has participated in residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Fountainhead Residency, Grant Wood Colony Fellowship, The MacDowell Colony, Vermont Studio Center, and Yaddo. They are the 2017 recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a 2018 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a 2019-2020 Pollock-Krasner Foundation grantee, and is currently tenure track Assistant Professor at the University of Iowa.

Nathaniel Donnett

Nathaniel Donnett is a cultural practitioner who lives and works in Houston, Texas. Donnett received his BA in Fine Arts from Texas Southern University and his MFA from Yale University School of Art. Donnett is a recipient of a 2020 Dean’s Critical Practice Research Grant, 2020 Art and Social Justice Initiative Grant, and the 2020-2021 Helen Frankenthaler Scholarship. Donnett has been awarded a 2017 Houston Arts Alliance Individual Artist Grant, a 2014 Harpo Foundation Grant, a 2015 Idea Fund/Andy Warhol Foundation Grant, and a 2010 Artadia Award. His work has been shown at The Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, VA, The Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Virginia Beach, VA, The Mennello Museum, Orlando FL, The Ulrich Museum, Wichita, KS, The McColl Center, Charlotte, NC, The American Museum, Washington, DC, The Kemper Contemporary Arts Museum, Kansas City, MO, Harvey B Gantt Art Center for African American Arts and Culture, Charlotte, NC, The Community Artist’s Collective, Houston, TX, The Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury CT, The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Houston, TX, Project Row Houses, Houston, TX, The University Museum, Houston, TX, and The New Museum, New York, NY.

Yashua Klos

Yashua Klos (b.1977, Chicago) is an artist best known for his large-scale collage works which address issues of identity, race, memory and community.

Influenced by his upbringing in Chicago’s South Side, Klos challenges the construction and conventions of African-American identity. Notions of marginalization, masculinity, and urban mythology are unpacked through examining behaviors within communities. He uses portraiture to highlight narratives of suppression, denial, and pain associated with the vulnerability experienced in black communities; and pins this against stoic performances of adaptation and thriving.

Klos finished his Master of Fine Arts at Hunter College in New York in 2009, after studying  his undergraduate degree at Northern Illinois University.  He has been awarded residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan; The Vermont Studio Center, Johnson and Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha. He is the recipient of a 2014 Joan Mitchell Fellowship and a 2015 NYFA Grant.

Michi Meko

In the summer of 2015, I almost drowned. Inviting this life-changing event’s influence into my studio practice, my recent paintings and sculptures focus on the African American experience of navigating public spaces while remaining buoyant within them. This work contributes to an important conversation, as African Americans in public space are consistently threatened, now more visibly and openly with the evidence and sharing offered by social media. This barrage of images simulates an experience of drowning under the heavyweight of ten thousand pounds of pressure while being held to the ocean’s floor.

The work incorporates the visual language of naval flags and nautical wayfinding, combined with romanticized objects of the American South as a means to communicate the psychological and the physical. These references signal the warning of a threat or the possibility of safe passage. Working beyond the physical image of the body, objects of buoyancy and navigation become metaphors for selfhood, resilience, and the sanity required in the turbulent oceans of contemporary America.

The use of navigation is one of the skills required for any journey. At a youthful age, this knowledge is taught through oral history and becomes the framework for understanding past and a present mobility. It is the necessary visual device for future expeditions and one’s survival.

Lester Julian Merriweather

Lester Julian Merriweather (b.1978) is a Memphis-based visual artist. He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. He holds an MFA from Memphis College of Art and a BA from Jackson State University. Merriweather has exhibited extensively throughout the U.S. at various venues such as the Studio Museum in Harlem, NYC, TOPS Gallery, CrosstownArts and Powerhouse Memphis, Diverseworks in Houston, Stella Jones Gallery in New Orleans, and the Atlanta Contemporary. He has also exhibited abroad at the Zacheta National Gallery in Warsaw, Poland. Merriweather served as the first Curatorial Director of the Jones Gallery & the Martha & Robert Fogelman Galleries of Contemporary Art at the University of Memphis from 2010-2015. He worked on the Board of Directors for Number, Inc. independent journal where he created the Art of the South Exhibition Series. He is a founding member of the ArtsMemphis Artist Advisory Council and the artsAccelerator Grant Panel.

Merriweather is currently Emeritus for the Advisory Panel of TONE Memphis. He served as the first Curatorial Consultant for the PPF Contemporary Art Collection in Memphis, Tennessee.

Vitus Shell

Vitus Shell (b. 1978, Monroe, LA) is a mixed-media collage painter born in Monroe, LA, where he lives and works. His work is geared toward the black experience, giving agency to people from this community through powerful images deconstructing, sampling, and remixing identity, civil rights, and contemporary black culture. He received a BFA from Memphis College of Art, 2000 and an MFA from the University of Mississippi, 2008.

Slim Crow
My current works are geared toward the black experience, giving agency to people from this community through powerful images deconstructing, sampling, and remixing identity, civil rights, and contemporary black culture. In my work, I strive to bridge the gap between the older and younger generations by exploring and uncovering factors that contributed to the unfortunate relationship breakdown between the two. Moreover, my layered, mixed media paintings examine parallels between present-day behaviors and attitudes that date back to African roots. With this work, I continue experimenting with portraiture, acrylic paint, oversized photocopies of early 20th-century vintage advertisements, and the incorporation of a foam-cut printing technique. My artistic goal is to exude the hip-hop lifestyle with a southern vernacular.

Through the use of the vintage, advertisements allow me to create narrative-based environments, which comment on stereotyping, bigotry, and oppression. The foam cut printing method provides me with the added layers to include text and icons, such as the minstrel images. Having spent much time researching graffiti art, I incorporate a variety of its characteristics, techniques, and unique aesthetics into my work such as paste-ups, stamps, and stencils. Using graffiti techniques allows me to challenge the viewer’s perceptions of what is considered low art or high art, which also addresses classism.

Felandus Thames

Felandus Thames (b. 1974, Jackson, Mississippi) is a conceptual artist living and practicing in the greater New York area.  Thames attended the graduate program in Painting and Printmaking at Yale University where he received his MFA in 2010. Thames’s work has been featured in exhibitions at the African American Museum of Philadelphia, Columbia University, Delaware Art Museum, Charles H. Wright Museum, International Center for Printmaking New York, USF Contemporary Art Museum,  Mississippi Museum of Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Wesleyan University, Texas Contemporary, and Yale University.

Gallery exhibitions and art fair participation include Galerie Myrtis, Kravets Wehby Gallery, Jenkins Johnson Gallery, Tilton Gallery, Heather James Gallery, UTA Artist Space, and Art Hamptons, Art LA, and Art Basel Miami Beach. 

Cullen Washington Jr

Cullen Washington Jr. is a native of Louisiana and received his BA from Louisiana State University and his MFA from Tufts University/School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Washington has exhibited his work in group and solo shows nationally and internationally including: The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; The Studio Museum in Harlem; The deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Massachusetts;  The University of Michigan Museum of Art and the Saatchi Gallery, London. In addition, Washington has been an artist in residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Yaddo, and Amherst College. He was the recipient of a Joan Mitchell Foundation Award and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Residency in New Orleans. Reviews and critical essays of his work appear in Nka, The New York Times, The International Review of African American Art, and The Boston Globe. Cullen’s work can be found in the collections of the Studio Museum in Harlem,  the Joyner / Giuffrida Collection, the Charles Saatchi Gallery, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Cullen is currently a Professor at Pratt Institute and Parsons the New School.

Artist

UTA Artist Space – Literary Muse

UTA Artist Space in collaboration with Galerie Myrtis presents
Literary Muse curated by Myrtis Bedolla

Opening Reception: Saturday, September 4, 2-5PM
UTA Artist Space
403 Foothill Rd. Beverly Hills, CA 90210

utaartistspace.com


UTA Artist Space presents Literary Muse, a new group exhibition inspired by Black literary novelists, poets, and scholars, curated by Baltimore-based Myrtis Bedolla of Galerie Myrtis. On view from September 4 through September 25, 2021, the powerful presentation brings together paintings, photographs, prints, and sculptures by twelve contemporary artists working across the United States: Lavett Ballard, Tawny Chatmon, Wesley Clark, Alfred Conteh, Larry Cook, Morel Doucet, Monica Ikegwu, Ronald Jackson, M. Scott Johnson, Delita Martin, Arvie Smith, and Felandus Thames.

The incisive writings of Black scholars, poets, and authors of fiction bear the weight of a complicated history, at times celebrated and at others, bemoaned. In Literary Muse, their words are the interpretive impulse for imagery that defines the architecture of the Black ethos. The result is a visual vernacular constructed in paintings, photographs, prints, sculptures, and conceptual works composed in hair beads and wood that interrogates the inherent complexities of race.

Steeped in the writings of authors such as Ta-Nahisi Coates, bell hooks, Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum, Charles Sowell, Alice Walker, and Isabel Wilkerson, these artists draw from a lexicon of Black narratives. They create visual illustrations that probe the connection between the past and present, challenge the inequalities of structural racism, honor the traditions of the Black family’s devoted fathers and mothers, encourage Black economic empowerment and selfhood, and give symbolic meaning to poetry and fiction through visual tropes that explore Black plight.

Looking for inspiration beyond the prose of philosophers, economists, theorists, psychologists, sociologists, and historians, artists turn to the lyrics of Black composers and vocalists elucidating a truth—a gospel truth—bound-up in ancestry and spirituality rooted in the polyrhythms of Africa. Here, they find their muse in rhythms first laid down in African American spirituals which influenced the gospel, jazz, R&B, hip-hop, and rap music of today. These are the sounds that permeate the artists’ studios, consciously and subconsciously inspiring works that touch the depths of our souls.

Through the confluence of literature and artistry, Literary Muse contextualizes the Black experience through a non-Western lens. The notion of Blackness, its history, ancestry, and culture are presented as written and interpreted by its people. Scholars and composers who might otherwise remain obscure are placed at the forefront, as their words influence profound works that offer critical discourse on that which affirms and defines what it means to be Black.

— Myrtis Bedolla

“Myrtis Bedolla has a sharp eye for extraordinary artists. To wield their art and animate the words of these great Black authors and poets—to bring their narratives to life visually—is a phenomenal talent,” says Arthur Lewis, UTA Fine Arts, and UTA Artist Space Creative Director.

image
Oluma x Chimdi x Anwi by Monica Ikegwu, Oil on Canvas, 36″ in x 48″ in, 2021,
Literary Muse: Beverly Daniel Tatum, Why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?
Image courtesy of the artist and Galerie Myrtis

Exhibitions

Something to Say

September 11 – October 16, 2021

FEATURED ARTISTS
Alfred Conteh
Larry Cook
T.J. Dedeaux-Norris
Nathaniel Donnett
Yashua Klos
Michi Meko
Lester Julian Merriweather
Vitus Shell
Felandus Thames
Cullen Washington

about the artists

view artwork

Felandus Thames, Curator – Key Jo Lee, Co-curator and Catalogue Essayist
read curatorial statement




Isiah (The Boxer, The Bouncer)
acrylic and atomized, bronze dust on canvas, 60 x 60 x 2.5 in., 2021
by Alfred

Renaissance: Noir at UTA Artist Space, Beverly Hills, CA…

UTA Artist Space is pleased to present Renaissance: Noir, a virtual exhibition featuring works by 12 emerging Black artists, live on UTAArtistSpace.com from June 9 – July 3, 2020. Curated by Myrtis Bedolla, Baltimore-based owner of Galerie Myrtis, Renaissance: Noir investigates Blackness on the continuum of the historiographies of Black artists’ narratives that assert, individually and collectively, their state-of-mind and state-of-being Black. The timeliness of the exhibition is particularly significant, as its launch comes amidst a heightened awareness of racial injustice against the Black community, with protests occurring around the world. The show marks UTA Artist Space’s first full virtual exhibition.

view the exhibition

The artists highlighted in Renaissance: Noir are Tawny Chatmon, Wesley Clark, Alfred Conteh, Larry Cook, Morel Doucet, Monica Ikegwu, Ronald Jackson, M. Scott Johnson, Delita Martin, Arvie Smith, Nelson Stevens, and Felandus Thames. Their work collectively captures the existence of “double consciousness,” as coined by W.E.B. DuBois, where one is constantly combating the “isms” —racism, colorism, sexism, capitalism, colonialism, escapism, and criticism through the act of artistic activism.

Exhibitions

Renaissance Noir UTA Artist Space

Renaissance: Noir
UTA Artist Space, Beverly Hills, CA
Curated by Myrtis Bedolla

UTA Artist Space is pleased to present Renaissance: Noir, a virtual exhibition featuring works by 12 emerging Black artists, live on UTAArtistSpace.com from June 9 – July 3, 2020. Curated by Myrtis Bedolla, Baltimore-based owner of Galerie Myrtis, Renaissance: Noir investigates Blackness on the continuum of the historiographies of Black artists’ narratives that assert, individually and collectively, their state-of-mind and state-of-being Black. The timeliness of the exhibition is particularly significant, as its launch comes amidst a heightened awareness of racial injustice against the Black community, with protests occurring around the world. The show marks UTA Artist Space’s first full virtual exhibition.

view the exhibition

The artists highlighted in Renaissance: Noir are Tawny Chatmon, Wesley Clark, Alfred Conteh, Larry Cook, Morel Doucet, Monica Ikegwu, Ronald Jackson, M. Scott Johnson, Delita Martin, Arvie Smith, Nelson Stevens, and Felandus Thames. Their work collectively captures the existence of “double consciousness,” as coined by W.E.B. DuBois, where one is constantly combating the “isms” —racism, colorism, sexism, capitalism, colonialism, escapism, and criticism through the act of artistic activism.

Renaissance: Noir Blackness on the Continuum


by Myrtis Bedolla, Curator

Larry Cook Exhibits in Marking Time: Art in the…

MoMA PS1 will present a major exhibition exploring the work of artists within US prisons and the centrality of incarceration to contemporary art and culture, on view from April 5 through August 23, 2020. Featuring art made by people in prisons and work by nonincarcerated artists concerned with state repression, erasure, and imprisonment, Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration highlights more than 35 artists, including American Artist, Tameca Cole, Russell Craig, James “Yaya” Hough, Jesse Krimes, Mark Loughney, Gilberto Rivera, and Sable Elyse Smith. Alongside the exhibition, a series of public programs, education initiatives, and ongoing projects at MoMA PS1 will explore the social and cultural impact of mass incarceration. read full press release (press.moma.org/exhibition/marking-time/)

Eternal Splendor

Solo Exhibition featuring Larry Cook
November 9, 2019 – January 25, 2020

Opening Reception
November 9, 2019
5:00 – 7:00 pm

Artist’s Talk
January 25, 2020
2:00-4:00 p.m.

The Visiting Room Series, Digital Print, 40×30 inches, 2019