NYAB Event - “Round Zero” Exhibition

“Round Zero” Exhibition

Art Directors Club Gallery

This event has ended.

Round Zero, a fine art exhibition featuring four contemporary painters will be on view May 13—17 at the Art Director’s Club in Manhattan. Tim Okamura, Jerome Lagarrigue, Taha Clayton and Joseph Adolphe will exhibit their latest work in a collection curated by Dexter Wimberly. A May 15th artists’ reception will feature live performance, an open bar and artworks created by the students of Brotherhood/Sister Sol, a Harlem-based youth organization that will benefit from show sales.

Round Zero is comprised of work inspired by the sport of boxing, which serves as both a rich source of inspiration and a metaphor for the artists’ creative struggles. A parallel can be drawn between the physical and emotional challenges and required mental focus of a pugilist in the ring and the demands faced by the show’s four figurative painters in life and before the canvas. With each of the artists interpreting the subject of prize fighting through his own unique filter, the resulting collection is simultaneously an homage to the “sweet science,” an exploration of profound symbolic themes and psychological narratives, and a testament to the potency of dynamic figurative painting in contemporary art today.

“Each of these four artists enter Round Zero with his own history and deeply personal relationship to the exhibition’s primary theme of boxing,” said Dexter Wimberly, curator of Round Zero. “However, this is not a showcase of sports art, but rather a primal, atavistic presentation of figurative painting, steeped in pain and sacrifice, celebrating the durability and upper limits of the human body.”

The Round Zero exhibition goes beneath the surface and extends beyond the gallery. The four-day show will be the culmination of “HEAVYWEIGHTPAINT,” a yearlong documentary film project that follows the artists as they plan and execute Round Zero. Filmmaker and former amateur boxer Jeff Martini is spearheading the production.

Jerome Lagarrigue, born in 1973 to a French father and an American mother, was raised in Paris and graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1996. He has since received several awards for his work including the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award and the Ezra Jack Keats Award in 2002. His many other accomplishments include receiving a grant and residency program at Villa Medici in Rome; collaborating with celebrated African-American poet Maya Angelou for the illustrations of her book Poetry for Young People; and being commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera to paint Tosca. The painting was part of the opera’s set design during the 2009-2012 season. Lagarrigue is represented by Galerie Olivier Waltman (Paris/Miami) and Dolby Chadwick gallery in San Francisco.

Canadian Tim Okamura has a storied career that includes a nine-time selection for the prestigious BP Portrait Awards Exhibition at London’s National Portrait Gallery. He was awarded a fellowship in painting by the New York Foundation for the Arts and was short-listed as a candidate to paint Queen Elizabeth II by the Royal Surveyor of the Queen’s Picture Collection. Okamura’s paintings are also a part of pop culture having been featured in Hollywood films including “Prime” starring Meryl Streep and Uma Thurman, “Pieces of April” (InDiGent), “School of Rock” (Paramount), “Jersey Girl” (Miramax) and Ethan Hawke’s “The Hottest State.” Celebrity collectors include hip-hop artist Swizz Beatz, musician John Mellencamp, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson of The Roots, actress Uma Thurman and actors Bryan Greenberg and Ethan Hawke. Okamura lives and works in Brooklyn.

Joseph Adolphe, born in 1968 in Alberta, Canada, moved to New York City in 1992 to attend the School of Visual Arts where he received his MFA in 1994. He has received several awards and honors for his work and his paintings have been featured in more than 40 exhibitions since 1998 throughout the United States and internationally. Adolphe lives with his wife and children in New Haven, Connecticut and he is a professor of Fine Arts at St. John’s University in New York. He is currently represented by The Bertrand Delacroix Gallery in New York.

Taha Clayton is a self-taught emerging artist inspired by his passion for music, the world around him and his vivid imagination. Born in Houston, raised in Toronto and currently residing in Brooklyn, Clayton’s paintings pull viewers into a dreamlike world, guiding them through a story built from his own experiences, the environment and fantasy. His realistic renderings are not only aesthetically refreshing, but also address social and political issues, spiritual and moral virtues, and universal expression in love and life.

Contemporary art curator and entrepreneur Dexter Wimberly was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Wimberlyʼs curatorial focus is on what he refers to as “important matters of contemporary urban history.” A passionate collector and supporter of the arts, over the past two years Wimberly has exhibited the work of more than 50 individual artists in exhibitions including THE BOX THAT ROCKS: 30 Years of Video Music Box and the Rise of

Hip Hop Music & Culture; Crown Heights Gold; and Waiting for the Queen at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.