Deborah Grant “Christ You Know It Ain’t Easy!!”

The Drawing Center

poster for Deborah Grant “Christ You Know It Ain’t Easy!!”

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The Drawing Center presents Deborah Grant: Christ You Know It Ain’t Easy!!, an installation that combines painting, drawing, and collage to recount the fictional meeting between African-American folk artist Mary A. Bell and renowned modernist painter Henri Matisse. For Christ You Know It Ain’t Easy!!, which takes its title from the Lennon/McCartney song “The Ballad Of John and Yoko,” Grant spent over two years researching primary documents including Mary Bell’s drawing and letters. The exhibition will occupy the Drawing Room and will include a large-scale work on four birch panels (Crowning The Lion and The Lamb), as well as 24 smaller birch panels (God’s Voice in The Midnight Hours), two shaped panels (Obedient Unto Death, Even Death On A Cross and Hosanna To The Son Of David), and a series of five drawings (Easter’s Best). It will be Grant’s first solo museum show in New York.

Christ You Know It Ain’t Easy!! is the latest installment in Grant’s ongoing series Random Select in which she interweaves historical accounts and personal experiences with references to contemporary political and social issues. Grant culls material from a variety of sources including magazine photographs, comic books, and published texts, which she masterfully assembles via a signature drawing method involving silhouetted figures and calligraphic marks and lines to create highly personal, non-linear narratives that investigate politics, race, and cultural identity. Curated by Claire Gilman, Curator.

[Image: Deborah Grant, God’s Voice in The Midnight Hours (detail), 2013, Oil, acrylic, enamel, paper, Arches W.C. paper, linen, and wood on 24 birch panels, 18 x 4 x 2 inches (45.7 x 10.2 x 5 cm) each. All works courtesy of the artist and Steve Turner Contemporary, Los Angeles.]

Media

Schedule

from January 25, 2014 to February 28, 2014

Opening Reception on 2014-01-24 from 18:00 to 20:00

Artist(s)

Deborah Grant

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