“Look up here, I’m in heaven” Exhibition

BRIC

poster for “Look up here, I’m in heaven” Exhibition
[Image: David Antonio Cruz "bybeingcarefulofthecompanyyoukeep" (detail) (2016) courtesy the artist and Project For Empty Space [at] Gateway Project Spaces]

This event has ended.

Curated by Elizabeth Ferrer, Vice President, Contemporary Art,
and Jenny Gerow, Assistant Curator

Look up here, I’m in heaven is a group exhibition of unconventional portraits featuring paintings, works on paper, and mixed-media work by David Antonio Cruz, Yashua Klos, Tschabalala Self, and Yoon Ji Seon. Genres are cut up and new materials enter the conversation, unraveling the traditional understanding of portraiture as a singular representation of an individual. By countering old narratives which had long framed the representation of persons of color—of privilege and exclusion, vulnerability and typecasting—the four artists foreground their diverse perspectives and question how identity unfolds.

While cultural and political realities are central elements of the work on view, the artists in Look up here, I’m in heaven create imagery that aims to transcend the here and now to establish a more transcendent sense of self. Although the artists shed physical, temporal markers of identity in their works, they never fully escape the world at hand. In exploring issues of race and representation, the figures portrayed by David Antonio Cruz, Yashua Klos, Tschabalala Self, and Yoon Ji Seon, also seem to be bound up in gazing upon, or imagining a different reality. They aim for a form of transcendence—not quite heaven, but a place where the self can exist on its own terms.

In conjunction with the exhibition, a series of performance art, music, and dance programs will take place in the gallery.

Media

Schedule

from June 30, 2016 to August 14, 2016

Opening Reception on 2016-06-29 from 19:00 to 21:00

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