Charisse Pearlina Weston: again that certain dark who risks being the forever nocturnal source of light itself

PATRON is proud to present, again that certain dark who risks being the forever nocturnal source of light itself, a solo-exhibition by New York-based artist Charisse Pearlina Weston. This exhibition marks her first in Chicago and with the gallery since the announcement of her representation in the fall of 2023. 

This exhibition brings together new glass sculptures, installations, and works on canvas exploring iteration, risk, temporality and collapse as tactics of Black refusal. The works in this exhibition feature the artist’s latest experimentations with repetition, conveyed through the reuse of materials: structural components of dismantled or collapsed spatial interventions reappear as tools of inscription, collage material, photographic ground or malleable suture. As a result, this iterative series collapses the established temporal boundaries of the art object and its process of creation. The complex interconnectedness of these works also serves as a disruptive metaphor for the ideological systems which undergird our social realm and reinforce systemic violence. 

Also included in this exhibition are a new series of sculptures in which Weston, through fusing and slumping, inverts the material qualities of Mirropane, a surveillance glass made by the London-based glass manufacturer Pilkington. Once kiln-fired and manipulated, the once silvered, reflective surface of the panes crack and become opaque, allowing Weston’s text, etched into its surface, to evade legibility. This series deepens Weston’s exploration of the intersections of the material and ideological technologies of surveillance, Black interior life, and resistance through a literal blurring of the line between who is surveilled and who surveils, positionalities otherwise determined by light, surface, reflection and transparency.

Taken together, the works in this exhibition arise from a fault plane, an afterward, an entropy and threaten what it means to come again.

Charisse Pearlina Weston (b.1988, Houston, TX) lives and works in Harlem, NY. She received an MFA in Studio Art with Critical Theory emphasis, from the University of California, Irvine; a Masters of Science in Modern Art History, Curating and Criticism from the University of Edinburgh’s Edinburgh College of Art; and a BA in Art History at the University of North Texas. She is also an alumna of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program.

Select solo exhibitions include: when darkness risks being the forever nocturnal light itself (2024), PATRON, Chicago, IL; of [a] tomorrow: lighter than air, stronger than whiskey, cheaper than dust, (2022), Queens Museum, Queens, NY; Plunge, Cry (2021), Curated by Ylinka Barotto, Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston, TX; Through: The Fold, The Shatter (2021), Recess, New York, NY; nine physical poems (7 of nine) (2020), Abrons Art Center, New York, NY; An Appeal, but, in Particular, Very Expressly, To (i sink) (2019), UC Irvine Art Galleries, Irvine, CA; Politics Surrounded (Medley) (2016), Southern Constellations, Elsewhere Museum, Greensboro, NC; The Red Book of Houston: A Compendium for the New Black Metropolis (2015), Curated by Ryan Dennis, Project Row Houses, Houston, TX; Travelin’ Man (2014), Project Row Houses, Houston, TX.

Select group exhibitions include: Reflections: Surface and Substance, Mary M. Torggler Fine Arts Center, Newport News, VA; Light of Winter (2024), Perrotin, New York, NY; Whitney Biennial: Even Better Than the Real Thing (2024), Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; And Ever an Edge (2023), MOMA PS1, Long Island, NY; We is Future - Impulses for the Future (2023), Curated by Studio ADG, Museum of Folkwang, Essen, Germany; SEVEN, We Buy Gold (2023), Jack Shainman Gallery/Nicola Vassel Gallery, New York, NY; Color Effects (2023), Galerie LeLong, New York, NY; The Dissolution caus’d by Fire is in all Bodies (2022), Curated by Luba Drozd and Rachel Vera Steinberg, Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY; Black Melancholia (2022), Curated by Nana Adusei-Poku, Bard College, Hudson, NY; This Tender, Fragile Thing (2022), Jack Shainman Gallery, Kinderhook, NY.

Her work is included in the public collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY. Selected awards include: Creative Capital Awardee (2024), Creative Capital Foundation, New York, NY; Hodder Fellowship (2023), Lewis Center for the Arts; Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship (2023), Jerome Foundation; Paul and Irene Hollister Fields of the Future Fellowship (2022), Bard Graduate College; Rakow Commission (2022), Corning Museum of Glass; Artist Grant (2021), Harpo Foundation; Burke Prize (2021), Museum of Art and Design; Research Grant (2021), Graham Foundation for Advanced Study in Fine Arts; Individual Artist Project Grant (2020), Joseph Robert Foundation; Painters and Sculptors Grant Nomination (2019), Joan Mitchell Foundation.

Image: Charisse Pearlina Weston, hallucinatory field (one), 2024, 53 1/2" x 37" x 20" | 135.9 x 94 x 50.8 cm