RICO GATSON: EXPO CHICAGO: IN / SITU

"His work that has enjoyed the broadest public reach is his long-running Icons series, which he initiated in 2007. It is celebratory—a contrast to his more somber subject matter, on one level, but also a response to it, attentive to the dialectics of history. These luminous pieces in pencil, each honoring a major figure in Black culture, music, politics, or social history, are less portraits than, again, energy studies. He renders each by appropriation of a black-and- white archival photograph that he places near the paper’s edge, and from which impeccable beams of color radiate across the page. In his permanent installation for the 167th Street subway station (located at 167th Street and Grand Concourse), eight of these Icons, all with ties to the Bronx, grace the platform wall in glass mosaic."