VANCOUVER Through January 3 2011 Curated by Kathleen Bartels and Jeff Wall
Kerry James Marshall, De Style, 1993, acrylic and collage on canvas, 8'8" x 10'2".
Kerry James Marshall’s 1993 canvas De Style,
a vibrant, large-scale, multifigure painting of an African-American
barbershop, was a breakthrough for the artist and set the basic
parameters of his ensuing practice. In the years since, he has updated
the ostensibly moribund genre of history painting with an important
corpus of visually complex narrative tableaux. For the Chicago-based
painter’s first solo show in Canada, De Style will join some
twenty more recent works, including examples from his iconic series
"Garden Project,” 1995, which richly reimagines the representation of
public housing projects. Organized by Vancouver Art Gallery director
Kathleen Bartels and artist Jeff Wall—whose photographic practice also
often engages history painting—the exhibition promises a much-needed
showcase of Marshall’s vital and inventive picturing of America’s
largely unpictured contemporary histories.
