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THE ARMORY SHOW
RICO GATSON AND DAVID HUFFMAN
Recognition and Response
9 September - 12 September 2021
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Miles McEnery Gallery is thrilled to present a curated two-person exhibition of significant works by Rico Gatson and David Huffman for The Armory Show 2021.
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"Over the course of the last three decades, Gatson has developed a language that includes video, sculpture, collage, and painting, and that has been chiefly concerned with the icons and symbols of racism, trauma, and power. The new works are rooted more squarely in the abstract mysticism of Hilma af Klint and the vivid Minimalism of Carmen Herrera. They seem to be less concerned with symbols of darkness than they are interested in the meditative quality and promise of light; symbols dance on the canvas with the suggestion of what Gatson calls “the esoteric.”
- Writer, curator and critic, Antwaun Sargent, "Rico Gatson: Spiritual Abstraction"
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Rico GatsonUntitled (Expansive Light Consciousness I), 2021Acrylic paint and glitter on wood36 x 80 inches
91.4 x 203.2 cm“The triangle for me is a symbol that represents any number of things historically, but in a nutshell, it’s a symbol of good and evil. The upright position traditionally represents good, and the subverted one represents evil. I like the idea of this occurring in both directions in the works. Deconstructing symbols over the course of my career, specific forms have come to have specific meaning, but they also kind of dissolve in the repetitive rendering. I am trying to subvert or play with symbols of power."
- Rico Gatson
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Rico GatsonDizzy #2, 2021Color pencil and photograph collage on paper22 x 30 inches
55.9 x 76.2 cm -
Rico GatsonAlice #2, 2021Color pencil and photograph collage on paper22 x 30 inches
55.9 x 76.2 cm -
Rico GatsonJimi, 2021Color pencil and photograph collage on paper22 x 30 inches
55.9 x 76.2 cm -
Rico GatsonRichard, 2021Color pencil and photograph collage on paper22 x 30 inches
55.9 x 76.2 cm
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"The artist has crafted a new formal language, and has reinvigorated nonobjective painting—engendering a new set of potentialities for formalist abstraction. Huffman’s social abstractions make a powerful argument that formalism is not just about escapist pleasures and fraudulent claims of the universal, that within all those tempestuous gestures and drips has always resided an irrepressible social urgency. One need only look a little closer."
- Contemporary art historian Derek Conrad Murray, PhD, "David Huffman's Social Abstractions"
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David HuffmanSublimation, 2020Mixed media on wood panel72 x 59 3/4 inches
182.9 x 151.8 cm"In these recent works, Huffman returns to more didactic forms of representational symbolism, playing with the unsubtle and the overt, while staying nestled within the formal and the material excesses of abstraction."
- Contemporary art historian Derek Conrad Murray, PhD, "David Huffman's Social Abstractions"
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David HuffmanGeorge 8:46, 2021Mixed media on wood panel72 x 60 inches
182.9 x 152.4 cm"David Huffman, an artist whose production has always wrestled with the complexities of content vs. form."
- Contemporary art historian Derek Conrad Murray, PhD, "David Huffman's Social Abstractions"
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Both Gatson and Huffman are actively engaged in creating works that directly respond to today’s unique social and political climate. Through their own depiction of cultural heritage and personal histories, the artists parallel a passion to use their artwork as a vehicle for awareness and connectivity. Recognition and Response investigateS Derek Conrad Murray’s notion that “abstraction is about freedom, self-determination, and transcendence: a means to express an interiority and complexity that can only be articulated via the intangible."
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RICO GATSON (b. 1966 in Augusta, GA) received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Bethel College in 1989 and his Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale School of Art in 1991. He also completed his artist residency in 1998 at Franconia Sculpture Park, Taylor Falls, MN and in 2013 was the Ginsberg Artist in Residence at the Wright Museum of Art, Beloit College, Beloit, WI.
View MoreRecent solo exhibitions include Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; “My Eyes Have Seen,” Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York, NY; “Rico Gatson: 2007-2017,” The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; “Power Lines,” Samsøñ Projects, Boston, MA; “Rico Gatson: When She Speaks,” Studio 10, Brooklyn, NY; “The Promise of Light,” Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, NY; “2013 Ginsberg Artist in Residence, Rico Gatson,” Wright Museum of Art, Beloit College, Beloit, WI; and “RICO GATSON: Three Trips Around the Block,” Exit Art, New York, NY.
Recent group exhibitions include “Dialogues in African American Abstract Painting” (curated by Dr. Beth Hinderliter), Duke Galley of Fine Art at James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA; “Re:Growth, A Celebration of Art, Riverside Park, and the New York Spirit” (curated by Karin Bravin and presented by The Riverside Park Convervancy), New York, NY; “Visions and Nightmares,” Simone Subal Gallery, New York, NY; “Naked in Brooklyn,” Perogi, Brooklyn, NY; and “Wood, Works: Raw, Cut, Carved, Covered,” Sperone Westwater, New York, NY.
His work is included in the permanent collections of The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.; Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN; Bethel College, St. Paul, MN; Cheekwood Museum of Art, Nashville, TN; and Denver Art Museum, Denver CO.
He is the recipient of many awards including the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award for Visual Artists; Prized Pieces Video Award from the National Black Programming Consortium; Oil Bar Ltd. Award for Excellence in Sculpture from Yale School of Art and the Pew Charitable Trust Graduate Fellowship.
Rico Gatson lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
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DAVID HUFFMAN (b. in 1963 in Berkeley, CA) studied at the New York Studio School, the California College of the Arts & Crafts, and received his Master of Fine Art degree at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco in 1999.
He has had numerous exhibitions internationally. Solo exhibitions include Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA; Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; Chase Center and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (permanent commission), San Francisco, CA; 17th & Broadway Apartments (permanent commission), Oakland, CA; Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, CA; “Print Project,” Paulson Fontaine Press, Berkeley, CA; Residency, Palo Alto Art Center, Palo Alto, CA; and “Worlds in Collision,” Roberts and Tilton Gallery, Culver City, CA.
Recent group exhibitions include “To the Hoop: Basketball and Contemporary Art,” Weatherspoon Museum of Art, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC and Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, Wichita, KS; “Personal to Political: Celebrating the African American Artists of Paulson Fontaine Press,” Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, Detroit, M; “Ordinary Objects / Wild Things,” de Young Museum, San Francisco, C A; “Counternarratives,” Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles, C A; “See Something, Say Something,” Museum of Sonoma County, Santa Rosa, CA; “There’s Reality and Then There’s California,” NIAD Art Center, Richmond, CA; and “Way Bay,” Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA.
His work may be found in the permanent collections of Arizona State University Art Museum, Arizona State University, Tempe Campus, Tempe, AZ; Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of; California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA; Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA; de Saisset Museum, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA; and Embassy of the United States of America, Dakar, Senegal.
David Huffman lives and works in Oakland, CA.
