“30th Anniversary Group Show” Exhibition
Skoto Gallery
[Image: Sokari Douglas-Camp "Cupid Shoulder Dance" (2021) mild steel and acrylic, 26 inches, 67cm high]
This event has ended.
Ade Adekola, Ahmed Nosseir. Afi Nayo. Bernard Guillot. Bryan McFarlane
Carl Hazlewood. Cathy Lebowitz. Chriss Nwobu. David Rich. Diako
George Afedzi Hughes. Glen Turner. Gopal Dagnogo. Jimi Solanke
Jorge Luis Alvarez Pupo. Juliana Zevallos. Katherine Taylor. Khalid Kodi
Mor Faye. Noah Jemisin. Olu Amoda. Osi Audu. Owusu-Ankomah
Pefura. Peter Wayne Lewis. Piniang Niang. SoHyun Bae. Sokari Douglas Camp
Sokey Edorh. Tesfaye Tessema. Trokon Nagbe. Wosene Worke Kosrof
Skoto Gallery presents its 30th Anniversary with a group exhibition by a selection of artists whose works embrace a culture of boundless creativity and originality as espoused by the gallery over the years.
Since its inception on February 7th, 1992 as one of the first galleries specializing in contemporary African art in New York City, Skoto Gallery has been instrumental in introducing the work of both established and emerging African artists to the American public. The gallery performs a vital intervention into the very idea of contemporary art through its pioneering efforts in organizing exhibitions that showcase the diverse and rich traditions of modern African that has brought greater awareness to the contributions of African artists to global cultural discourse.
When the gallery opened thirty years ago on Prince Street, almost no one knew that African even had something called contemporary culture, and there were racial and gender homogeneity that was slightly masked by an essentially Eurocentric plurality in the New York art world. However, there was also increasing openness to art outside Europe and the United States during this period. Two years earlier in 1990, The Studio Museum in Harlem’s seminal exhibition Contemporary African Artist: Changing Traditions including nine African artists made its debut at the Venice Biennial. In his review of the Studio Museum’s exhibition, critic Michael Brenson stated that “in a careful, measured way, the exhibition lays the groundwork and builds bridges others can use. Eye-opening exhibitions will follow”. Ornette Coleman (1930-2017), the African-American jazz luminary and curator of the inaugural exhibition at the gallery was a musician-philosopher and a free thinker, whose interest went well beyond jazz, and remains the guiding ethos of the gallery.
Though its major commitment to contemporary African art, the gallery has also managed to expand, deepen and diversify its involvement with contemporary issues by engaging a wide range of art and artists in its programming. Towards this end, the gallery has increasingly become a nexus of possibilities not only for African art but for mainstream artists of any ethnic or cultural persuasion. It has become a site where the adventurous viewer and collector can be involved in an ongoing cultural dialogue. The gallery sees art in ecumenical terms and organizes exhibitions to show the relationships of a post-modern global culture after modernism.
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Schedule
from February 10, 2022 to March 19, 2022