Yun Bai
Matthew Hollis
Shinique Smith
Jeff Sonhouse
Mickalene Thomas
Kehinde Wiley
Franklin Sirmans
Pop, Portraiture, Pulp and Porn. By Yun Bai, Matthew Hollis, Shinique Smith, Jeff Sonhouse, Mickalene Thomas and Kehinde Wiley. The exhibition includes a range of media revealing the potency of popular genres within contemporary art. In their broad range of styles and modes, the artists find inspiration from everyday objects, urban style, commercial imagery and art historical references. Curated by Franklin Sirmans
Pop, Portraiture, Pulp and Porn
Curated by Franklin Sirmans
Steve Turner Gallery is pleased to announce its upcoming exhibition
NeoVernacular: Pop, Portraiture, Pulp and Porn, the inaugural presentation
in its Guest Curator Series which will showcase contemporary art selected by
curators from around the world. Each exhibition in this series will be
accompanied by a full color catalogue with a new essay written by the
curator.
NeoVernacular is curated by Franklin Sirmans and features new works by six
artists: Yun Bai, Matthew Hollis, Shinique Smith, Jeff Sonhouse, Mickalene
Thomas and Kehinde Wiley. In addition to sharing their connection to
vernacular art forms, all are based outside Los Angeles and except for
Kehinde Wiley, all of them are exhibiting in Los Angeles for the first time.
Sirmans writes in his catalogue essay that too much emphasis in contemporary
art criticism is paid to art historical roots rather than vernacular roots.
As such, he selected six artists whose works incorporate and relate to
popular images of portraiture, pop, pulp, porn and graffiti. The exhibition
includes a range of media--photography, sculpture and painting--revealing
the potency of popular genres within contemporary art. In their broad range
of styles and modes, the artists find inspiration from everyday objects,
urban style, commercial imagery and art historical references.
A graffiti writer, Shinique Smith¹s artworks display the hallmarks of street
graffiti: visual verve, tenacity and the quickened creativity of something
painted in a furtive hurry. Smith¹s cut paper sculptures add a third
dimension to what is normally painted directly on walls and in other
sculptural work, Smith uses cast-off clothing in the same way that the
street artist uses spray paint, tagging empty space with gestural forms.
The Renaissance paintings of Titian and Tiepolo provide the art historical
framework for the work of Kehinde Wiley, although Wiley's works feature
subjects posed in a hardcore B-boy stance. While Wiley's work has obvious
references to a long tradition in the history of western visual art, his
work also incorporates the vernacular tradition of urban portraiture, more
specifically, those of Hip Hop heroes and heroines.
Mickalene Thomas looks to vintage and contemporary popular media images of
women--Jet magazine's 'Beauty of the Week', wrestling girls and 60s and 70s
pin-ups--as source material for her paintings. While also inspired by
Matisse¹s nudes, Thomas adds a bit of bling to hers through the application
of colored Swarovski rhinestones. Thomas¹ partially clothed heroines are
quasi self-portraits that contrast her likeness with the often clich¹d
images of women portrayed by the media.
Jeff Sonhouse finds inspiration from such disparate sources as W. E. B.
DuBois, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Ralph Ellison and Tupac Shakur. His portraits
of masked figures allude to classical and modern portraiture while raising
questions about African American male identity. Sonhouse¹s work in
NeoVernacular depicts Cardinal Arinze, the black cardinal from Nigeria who
made the news when he was rumored to be a candidate for the Papacy. He would
have been the first black Pope, and would have received worldwide media
attention, but now, with no media coverage, he has returned to his life as
an invisible man. In this portrait, for the first time, Sonhouse has
dispensed with the mask, making the invisible man visible.
Matthew Hollis' fascination with pulp and film noir has led him to create
some highly disturbing photographs, often featuring himself as photographer
and actor in his eerie narrative-driven pictures. His panoramic
silver-gelatin photographs pay homage to the work of 1940s filmmakers and
also refer to the literature of Raymond Chandler. Dark and shadowy, the
photographs mine a psychological terrain where race and gender play an
intriguing role.
Yun Bai's paintings are made from images cut from porn magazines, carefully
cut and collaged onto pine tabletops and finished off with calligraphic
swaths of acrylic paint. From afar, swirling plant forms trick the viewer
into believing he is looking at a delicate piece of Asian lacquer. However,
upon closer inspection, one discovers that the flowers are in fact composed
of fragmented and meticulously reorganized female bodies. Bai¹s Porn Flowers
at first seem to derive from recognizable historical styles such as still
life painting, but in reality, they are taken from the found material of
mass-circulation magazines.
Born in New York City, Franklin Sirmans received a B.A. in Art History and
English from Wesleyan University in 1991. Based in New York, he works as an
independent curator, writer, editor and instructor. He is co-curator of
Basquiat presented at the Brooklyn Museum, Los Angeles Museum of
Contemporary Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2005-2006). He was
co-curator of Make It Now: New Sculpture in New York at Sculpture Center
(2005); Ralph Bunche: Diplomat for Peace and Justice at the Queens Museum of
Art (2004); and One Planet Under A Groove: Contemporary Art and Hip Hop held
at the Bronx Museum of Art, Spelman College Art Gallery, Atlanta, the Walker
Art Center, Minneapolis and Villa Stuck, Munich (2001-2003).
Picture: Kehinde Wiley, 'Passing/Posing, (Study of Anonymous)', 2005, graphite,
watercolor on paper, 24 x 18 inches.
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 5, 6-8pm
Steve Turner Gallery
275 So. Beverly Dr., Suite 200 - Beverly Hills
Hours: Wednesday  Friday, 11am-5pm; Saturday, 1-5pm