Benny Andrews and Patrice Renee Washington “Talking”

Blackburn 20|20

poster for Benny Andrews and Patrice Renee Washington “Talking”

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TALKING is a dialogue in print, paint, wool, and Kool-aid powder between two artists across five decades. In conversation are selected paintings and prints by Benny Andrews and recent works by Patrice Renee Washington. This show was conceived in conjunction with EFA Project Space’s exhibition As We Were Saying: Art and Identity in the Age of “Post.”

TALKING grew out of a series of etchings gifted to Robert Blackburn by Benny Andrews. Andrews was among the many artists of color that gravitated to Blackburn’s culturally diverse Printmaking Workshop in the mid-60’s. The son of Georgia sharecroppers, Andrews became a seminal American painter known for richly textured portraits of the southern life. Like Blackburn, Andrews remained a constant advocate for social justice through the arts until the end of his life in 2006.

Andrews’s works draw on a biting tactile syntax. They give voice to many of the struggles that initiated Blackburn’s workshop in 1948: How do we mobilize for change? What is the legacy of American slavery? What lineage do black artists claim today?

TALKING aims to revisit these themes through the work of emerging artist Patrice Renee Washington. Utilizing a range of familiar materials—from towel racks to car-fresheners—Washington has created a body of sculpture in response to a selection of Andrews’s work. Washington’s objects weave abstraction through culturally coded materials and “neutral” commercial armatures, drawing out the ways in which race, class, and gender shade our domestic landscape.

Rather than explicitly depict fraught race relations, both artists speak fiercely through their material sensitivity. TALKING is a platform to continue conversations that began when Blackburn opened his print shop sixty-six years ago, and that continue today at RBPMW.

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Schedule

from September 12, 2014 to October 19, 2014

Opening Reception on 2014-09-12 from 18:00 to 20:00

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