Kavi Gupta amplifies voices of diverse and underrepresented artists to expand the canon of art history. Through innovative and ambitious exhibitions, multimedia programming, and rigorous publications, we foster an evolving conversation among international communities about art and ideas.Headquartered in Chicago’s West Loop, we operate five museum quality exhibition spaces, including research archives, conservation facilities, our publishing arm, Kavi Gupta Editions, and two warehouses. The gallery participates in the leading international art fairs, including EXPO Chicago, Art Basel Miami, The Armory Show, Frieze New York, Frieze London, and Frieze Masters, among others.&nbsp;

Kavi Gupta - Elizabeth St.

Walkthrough: Saturday, April 15, 4–6 PM Kavi Gupta | 219 N. Elizabeth St. Floor 2Join us on Saturday, April 15th for a walkthrough with artist Suchitra Mattai of her newly reopened Osmosis: in the face of the sea at Kavi Gupta | Elizabeth St. Fl. 2.&nbsp;<a href="https://kavigupta.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0f9399c027227e18423d8d34a&amp;id=022aab792e&amp;e=d64831a8d2">ONLINE VIEWING ROOM</a>Kavi Gupta presents&nbsp;Osmosis: in the face of the sea, an expanded and extended edition of Suchitra Mattai’s groundbreaking solo exhibition&nbsp;Osmosis.Thinking about the saltwater ocean migrations that have shaped her family’s heritage, Mattai has both a scientific and a poetic interest in osmosis, a process that involves the migration of water molecules from one region to another. In a manner of speaking, osmosis is about equilibrium, or the transferral of something to achieve a new balance. Salt is an osmotic trigger; throughout the exhibition, Mattai employs salt as both a sculptural medium and a chemical instigator of aesthetic transformation.Mattai’s expressions of transference and balance relate to the layering of new stories and cultural traditions atop those that already exist. Conceived as an exhibition that would evolve in order to allow a living examination of its theme, this second manifestation of Osmosis introduces multiple new works, including three new large-scale wall tapestries woven from vintage saris.As in the original manifestation of the exhibition, the central work in Osmosis: in the face of the seais a large-scale sculpture of a temple ruin made from salt. The form appears to be emerging from the floor. Its glistening, encrusted form recalls a story of seafarers off the coast of ​​Mahabalipuram who witnessed the appearance of such ruins when the waters temporarily receded from shore prior to a tsunami. When the sea rushed back in, the ruins disappeared. They exist now only in the seafarers’ memories and the stories they tell. Recalling the architecture of a Hindu temple, the temple ruin is positioned in the part of the gallery where the garbha griha, or most sacred space, would be.&nbsp;

Walkthrough | Suchitra Mattai, Osmosis: in the face of the sea

Kavi Gupta presents Let Them Consume Me In The Light, a solo exhibition of new works by internationally acclaimed conceptual artist Esmaa Mohamoud. The exhibition examines what Mohamoud calls “Black body politics”—a web of interconnected personal, social, economic, and historical factors that shape how Blackness is perceived by Black people and nonBlack people alike. The title alludes to the inevitability that Black cultural products and their creators will be exploited by majoritarian society. “They’re already gonna consume us, it might as well be out in the open,” Mohamoud says.“They should&nbsp;consume us in the light of the truth, in the light of racial injustice, in the light of the things we don’t usually want to talk about. There are many lights this exhibition can hold.”Four paradoxical sculptural phenomena fill the gallery: an elegant but inaccessibly tall peacock chair; a marvelous but un-drivable pink Cadillac; an enchanting but lifeless prairie of black steel dandelions; and the visages of three young African girls, tenderly carved from shea butter. The utilitarian functionality of Mohamoud’s uncanny creations has been obliterated, leaving only their&nbsp;artifice to behold.Like monuments to nostalgia lining a road to nirvana, they make longing and nothingness seem eerily the same. A Seat Above the Table (Angela Bassett), Mohamoud’s 12-foot-tall rattan peacock chair, is named in honor of an actress who towers over her contemporaries, deserving not only a seat at the table but a seat high above it. Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton was famously photographed sitting in such a chair during the height of the 1960s Civil Rights Era, transforming it from an ordinary piece of furniture into an icon of pride and power. With its seat raised absurdly beyond the reach of a sitter, Mohamoud’s peacock chair takes on a double meaning that infers the hollowness that often underlies symbols. Its rattan bars project penitent shadows on the walls—a reminder that the original peacock chairs were woven by prisoners in colonial Asia (particularly the Philippines) and then sold to visiting dignitaries, with the revenue channeled back into the prisons.Mohamoud’s colossal pink Cadillac sculpture, titled Nirvana (Oh, Sweet Elham), perches on steel rims so massive that viewers can walk under its glossy chassis. From there, they can see that the guts of the car have been removed, rendering it useless as a conveyance. The work was initially inspired by a miniature black Cadillac VHS tape rewinder once owned by Mohamoud’s grandmother Elham. Examining her childhood memories of watching movies with her grandmother and rewinding them in that little car prompted Mohamoud to research how Cadillacs became an iconic part of Black culture. She learned how Black people were systematically barred from purchasing luxury automobiles in the early 20th century.Threatened by slumping sales as wealthy White people lost their fortunes in the Great Depression, Cadillac broke the trend, becoming the first luxury car brand in America to directly market and sell to Black consumers. Mohamoud underscores the literal emptiness of Nirvana (Oh, Sweet Elham) with symbolic custom additions. Hidden speakers broadcasting ghostly melodies through the void; an American flag vanity license plate bearing the slogan In God We Trust; and a dazzling but inoperative chrome steering wheel become tokens of the strange currencies of visibility, status, and shine.Like the peacock chair and Cadillac they surround, Mohamoud’s black steel dandelions are notable for both their beauty and their artificiality. Part of a larger installation project called Faith in the Seeds, the dandelions memorialize Black people killed by police violence. Dandelions are hardy wildflowers that can survive in even the harshest conditions, and are known to be among the most nutritious plants on the planet.Nonetheless, they became classified as weeds in the majority White suburbs of North America, where pristine green lawns signal a homeowner’s assiduousness and dominion over nature. In the gallery, Mohamoud’s dandelions are bathed in a soft, yellow-orange light, like a peaceful sunset. Pillows are offered to visitors who wish to sit among the dandelions.Mohamoud calls it a “melanin charging station,” a space of peace and lightness to just exist in and absorb energy before having to go back out into a world filled with racism and hate. “The eradication of Black bodies by the American police is analogous with dandelions,” Mohamoud says. “Dandelions are beautiful, but people hate this flower. We have conditioned ourselves for this response. I couldn’t unsee the comparison between the resilience of dandelions and the resilience of the Black community.&nbsp;The African diaspora, it spreads its seeds in the wind.”Titled Gluttony, Gluttony, Gluttony, Mohamoud’s shea butter triptych mobilizes a material prized as a&nbsp;moisturizer to shine light on the exploitation of child labor in Africa.&nbsp;Before carving it, Mohamoud dries her ethically sourced shea butter until it takes on an ivory color. No longer useful as a beauty product, the material is carved into the haunting reflections of the young African girls who harvest shea nuts in Africa. Sitting atop Italian marble plinths, the three busts are surrounded by 15,000 sculpted shea butter nuts, cast from real Ghanaian shea nuts. Ghana produces around 130,000 tons of shea butter per year.While the international companies that export the material make exorbitant profits, the women who harvest and process shea nuts are ruthlessly exploited, working long hours, largely during the rainy season, and typically earning the equivalent of about two dollars after a five-day work week. “It’s this system of North American consumption without regard for the environment or for the young girls who are doing the labor,” Mohamoud says. “Feels like gluttony to me.”Replacing monolithic depictions of Black culture with more layered representations, Let Them Consume Me In The Light elucidates the complexity of the narratives shaping contemporary Black body politics. Mohamoud creates space in which to reconsider our nostalgia for misremembered, and often misrepresented histories, and invites us into a more open and multitudinous relationship with Blackness than we have had in the past.&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://kavigupta.com/usr/library/main/images/e580a65e-b487-11ed-9344-525400c74c14.jpeg" alt=""></figure>&nbsp;&nbsp;Mohamoud’s critically acclaimed solo exhibition To Play in the Face of Certain Defeat debuted at Museum London in Ontario and is currently on view at the Art Gallery of Alberta, following iterations at the Art Galleries of Ottawa, Winnipeg, and Hamilton (Ontario). Other recent exhibitions featuring Mohamoud’s work include Garmenting: Costume and Contemporary Art,Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY, USA; In These Truths, Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, NY, USA; and Esmaa Mohamoud: It Cannot Always Be Night, Arsenal Contemporary, New York, NY, USA; as well as exhibitions at the Royal Ontario Museum; Museum of Fine Arts Montreal; and Weatherspoon Art Museum, UNCG, Greensboro, NC, USA, among others. Works by Mohamoud are in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada; Art Gallery of Ontario; Weatherspoon Museum; Institute for the Humanities, University of Michigan; Museum London; and University of Victoria Legacy Art Galleries, among others. Mohamoud was an Artist-in-Residence in Kehinde Wiley’s renowned Black Rock Senegal residency program in Dakar, Senegal in 2021.Key image: Esmaa Mohamoud, Darkness Doesn’t Rise To The Sun But We Do, 2020. Steel, paint, epoxy, 8.5 x 12 x 9 in.

Esmaa Mohamoud: Let Them Consume Me In The Light

OPENING SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2022 | 4–7 PM KAVI GUPTA | ELIZABETH ST. FL. 1<a href="https://kavigupta.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0f9399c027227e18423d8d34a&amp;id=e4f8411e1f&amp;e=d64831a8d2">ONLINE VIEWING ROOM</a>Kavi Gupta presents <a href="https://kavigupta.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0f9399c027227e18423d8d34a&amp;id=91fdec41ad&amp;e=d64831a8d2">Black Stars &amp; White Paintings</a>, the highly anticipated solo exhibition of new paintings by New York-based abstract artist James Little, a critically and publicly celebrated highlight of the 2022 Whitney Biennial, Quiet as It's Kept. In her recent longform profile on Little in the New York Times, Hilarie M. Sheets described Little as “one of the breakout stars” of the Biennial, describing how his paintings “held court with a mysterious luminosity and presence."The phenomenal impact Little’s work had on Biennial visitors marks just one more milestone in a tremendous year, which also includes the stunning, retrospective tribute James Little: Homecomingat The Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Little’s hometown of Memphis, TN, and the inclusion of Little’s work in the era-defining traveling exhibition The Dirty South.Black Stars &amp; White Paintings builds on the momentum of Little’s landmark year, marking a moment of long overdue, global recognition of his status as a contemporary master. Little’s erudite Black Stars captivate the eye with their velvety luster, dramatic, acuminate forms, and restrained palette of only two shades of black. Their elegant simplicity belies the months of exacting effort Little invests building up their luxuriant surfaces with dozens of layers of handmade encaustic paints—a medium he painstakingly manufactures himself in his Brooklyn studio. Reflective of Little’s lifelong study of color relationships and formal aesthetic theories, these guileless masterworks demand veneration as monuments to pure abstraction. Yet, as their carefully crafted name reveals, they simultaneously proclaim Little’s grasp of this historical moment, and his awareness of how identity politics has often skewed people’s perspective on his work.“I call them Black Stars because they are black stars,” Little says. “The name Black Stars is also a reflection on Black exceptionalism. It’s a celebration of that. But that’s not what drove me to make the paintings. That whole racial aspect isn’t any more important to me than trying to paint some emblematic arrangements with two tones of black.” Little’s White Paintings similarly demonstrate his nuanced sensibility towards both formal aesthetics and socio-political subtext. Topped with a glossy, vicious stratus of white oil paints, pierced with a geometric lattice of voids, their surfaces blaze with multitudes of swirling, prismatic rainbows. “The White Paintings are more or less experiments in color,” Little says. “The thing you see first is the last layer of paint, which is white. But if you look beyond the surface, within the squares and circles there’s a whole universe of activity. The paintings keep changing, keep engaging, and are animated. The title is catchy, and there’s a lot behind that. It’s where we live and how we live. It’s America. So I want to try to bring as much of that in as I can without sacrificing the integrity of what I’m trying to do.” When asked what he most hopes people take home with them after an encounter with his paintings, Little answers with his trademark combination of sincerity and wit: “Emotion. It’s about getting as much feeling out of the work as you can. There’s not a lot of verbiage surrounding what I do. You’re not gonna get a syllabi on my Black identity, or anything like that. The art world is overloaded with rhetoric and jargon. Just stop and put it on the wall and let’s see what happens. If it performs, it performs. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. To have to explain it is what creates the deficit for me. Those things get in the way of having an experience with the art.”–James Little &nbsp; From making his own mediums, to meticulously planning his intricate designs, to carefully applying dozens of layers to each painting over the course of as many weeks, emotion also defines every phase of the creation of Little’s Black Stars &amp; White Paintings—emotion brought about by transcendent focus, exhaustive effort, and ecstatic appreciation for visions manifested as sublime masterworks of art. &nbsp;Image: James Little,&nbsp;Spangled Star, 2022.&nbsp;Oil and wax on linen,&nbsp;72 x 72 in.&nbsp;

James Little: Black Stars & White Paintings

<a href="https://kavigupta.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0f9399c027227e18423d8d34a&amp;id=91e8b09041&amp;e=d64831a8d2">Suchitra Mattai,&nbsp;Osmosis</a>As part of the opening reception for Suchitra Mattai's Osmosis at Kavi Gupta | Elizabeth St. Fl. 2, join the artist and Lauren Haynes,&nbsp;Director of Curatorial Affairs and Programs at the Queens Museum, for a&nbsp;walkthrough of the exhibition.&nbsp;<a href="https://kavigupta.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0f9399c027227e18423d8d34a&amp;id=25f96abb96&amp;e=d64831a8d2">ONLINE VIEWING ROOM</a>Kavi Gupta presents <a href="https://kavigupta.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0f9399c027227e18423d8d34a&amp;id=45f7dad3bc&amp;e=d64831a8d2">Osmosis</a>, a solo exhibition of new multi-media works by Indo-Caribbean American artist Suchitra Mattai.Thinking about the saltwater ocean migrations that have shaped her family’s cultural and geographic heritage, Mattai has both a scientific and a poetic interest in the process of osmosis, which involves the migration of water molecules from one region to another. Salt is a trigger for the osmotic process, which, in a manner of speaking, is about the emergence of something and the loss of something.To create the works in Osmosis Mattai employed salt as both a sculptural medium and a chemical instigator of aesthetic transformation. The material empowers Mattai’s aesthetic expressions of emergence and loss as they relate to the layering of new stories and cultural traditions atop those that already exist.Anchoring the exhibition is a large-scale salt sculpture depicting a tilted temple ruin, seemingly emerging from underground. The glistening, encrusted form recalls the story of seafarers off the coast of ​​Mahabalipuram who witnessed the appearance of such ruins when the waters temporarily receded from shore prior to a tsunami. When the sea rushed back in, the ruins disappeared. They exist now only in the seafarers’ memories, and in folklore.Mattai’s personal, familial, and cultural history has similarly been revealed, erased, altered, and in some ways constructed by the sea. Her artworks critically, and often joyfully, reflect upon this complex past by incorporating significant family heirlooms such as her mother’s vintage saris and her grandmother’s prayer Dupatta. Simultaneously, the works push her family’s story forward by incorporating materials of personal significance to Mattai’s American experience, such as feather boas, shattered glass from her broken studio window, and found objects recovered from second hand stores.Image: Suchitra Mattai,&nbsp;Osmosis, 2022.&nbsp;Salt, fabric, cords, wood.&nbsp;Dimensions variable. &nbsp;

Suchitra Mattai: Osmosis

Guest curated by Vic Mensa&nbsp;Antilles-born author Frantz Fanon wrote brilliantly about the ways that the barriers of race impede our ability to experience humanity. Published in 1952, his book "Black Skin, White Masks" is a psychoanalytical tour-de-force, exposing how colonization weaponized skin as an agent of alienation, imposing an existential deviation on man, black and white.“The White man is sealed in his whiteness,” Fanon Writes. “The Black man in his blackness.”&nbsp;The supremacy assumed and projected by the European, colonial White gaze causes Black people to experience what Fanon calls “an amputation, an excision, a hemorrhage” that separates them from the development of an individuated self image. This prevents Black people and White people alike from experiencing anything close to true freedom.“I believe that the fact of the juxtaposition of the White and Black races has created a massive psychoexistential complex,” Fanon writes. “I hope by analyzing it to destroy it.”For his curatorial debut with Kavi Gupta, Vic Mensa—rapper, activist, and Founder of the non-profit Save Money Save Life—deploys Fanon’s seminal text as a foundation for a group art exhibition aimed at decolonizing Black art beyond the politics of visibility, by spotlighting dis-alienated representations of identity.Entitled Skin + Masks, the exhibition centers contemporary artists who, like Fanon, are striving to understand and express the meaning of black identity not from the vantage point of White gaze, but from the perspective of individual reality.&nbsp;Images: Nikko Washington, "Swing On 'Em," 2021. Oil and on canvas, 60" x 48" inches.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Skin + Masks, Decolonizing Art Beyond the Politics of Visibility

Kavi Gupta presents an evening of conversation between artists Devan Shimoyama and Alisa Sikelianos-Carter, and writer, educator and curator Rikki Byrd. Centering the topics of transformation, self-reflection, and mysticism, the conversation coincides with the gallery’s ongoing concurrent solo exhibitions, Devan Shimoyama's A Counterfeit Gift Wrapped In Fire and Alisa Sikelianos Carter's Stars Are Born In Darkness. Stars Are Born In Darkness is the newest solo exhibition by New York-based mixed media artist Alisa Sikelianos-Carter, inaugural Foreland Fellow, 2020 NXTHVN Fellow, Sustainable Arts Foundation Grantee, and a 2022 Headlands Center for the Arts Artist in Residence. Stars Are Born In Darkness envisions a parallel universe in which white supremacy has been eradicated and Black features are honored as a manifestation of the mystical. Within this universe, ancient, supernatural guardians call upon Black people to activate the innate divine technology they possess in order to manifest their transmutation into consecrated, immortal beings whose Blackness is critical to their survival and essential to their celestial transcendency. A Counterfeit Gift Wrapped in Fire, an exhibition of new works by Devan Shimoyama, follows the artist's debut European solo museum exhibition, All the Rage, at Kunstpalais, Erlangen, Germany, and coincides with his ongoing monumental installation The Grove at the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building in Washington, DC. A Counterfeit Gift Wrapped in Fire examines cultural representations related to transformation. The result of a long period of self-reflection for Shimoyama, the work materially alludes to an internal dialog with which he has been wrangling, concerning the difference between superficial and true change. Rikki Byrd is a writer, educator and curator, with research interests in Black studies, performance studies, fashion studies, and art history. Her research has been published in several academic journals, books, and exhibition catalogs. She has also written for Teen Vogue, Artsy, and Hyperallergic, among several other media outlets. She has interviewed formidable professionals in art and fashion including André Leon Talley, Bethann Hardison, Mickalene Thomas, and Amy Sherald. Rikki has lectured and participated in panel discussions with Google and The Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) at Parsons School of Design, Barnes Foundation, and UCLA, among several other academic, arts, and cultural institutions. She is the co-founder and editor of the Fashion and Race Syllabus and Black Fashion Archive, and was a guest editor for the Spring 2017 International Journal of Fashion Studies, where she edited a special section on Black Fashion Studies. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in African American Studies at Northwestern University.&nbsp;<a href="https://kavigupta.com/events/90/overview/">https://kavigupta.com/events/90/overview/</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;

In Conversation: Artists Devan Shimoyama and Alisa Sikelianos-Carter, and Curator Rikki Byrd

<a href="https://www.expochicago.com/art-after-hours">Also open as part of EXPO CHICAGO's Art After Hours</a>Kavi Gupta proudly presents A Counterfeit Gift Wrapped in Fire, a solo exhibition of new works by acclaimed visual artist Devan Shimoyama. The exhibition follows Shimoyama’s debut European solo museum exhibition, All the Rage, at Kunstpalais, Erlangen, Germany, and coincides with his ongoing monumental installation The Grove at the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building in Washington, DC.&nbsp;Shimoyama’s visually scintillating artworks stop people in their tracks. Viewers easily enchanted by beautiful things might get lost in the shimmering artistry of Shimoyama’s expertly crafted cosmetic veils. Those whose eyes and minds travel beyond the surface subterfuge of glitter, flowers, and jewels gain precious entry into a complex world of mystery, introspection, rhapsody, and desire.&nbsp;The paintings and sculptures in A Counterfeit Gift Wrapped in Fire examine cultural representations related to transformation. The result of a long period of self-reflection for Shimoyama, the work materially alludes to an internal dialog he has been wrangling with concerning the difference between superficial and true change—a discrepancy noticeable at all levels, from the societal, to individual interactions in which we perform social niceties for each other rather than admit the truth about how we are doing.&nbsp;“We have this desire to present outwardly as contained and keeping it together,” Shimoyama says. “We think it’s a gift to say, ‘I’m fine.’ There’s a mimicry of something really desired, but it’s fake. There’s a danger to that kind of thing.”&nbsp;Many works in the exhibition reference tarot cards, which for Shimoyama relate to how mysticisms can help people adapt to difficult or tumultuous times.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

Devan Shimoyama: A Counterfeit Gift Wrapped in Fire 

Alisa Sikelianos-Carter is a mixed-media painter from upstate New York.&nbsp;Her work asserts that Black features are a manifestation of a sacred and divine technology that has served as a means of survival, both physically and metaphysically. She envisions a cosmically bountiful world that celebrates and pays homage to ancestral majesty, power, and aesthetics.Inspired by traditionally Black hairstyles, Sikelianos-Carter uses web and catalogue-sourced images to construct new archetypes. Through her exploration of opulent, luminescent materials she is creating a mythology that is centered on Black resistance and utilizes the body as a sight of alchemy and divinity.“I want to live in a world in which every micro-aggression, attack on humanity, and doubt of divinity aimed at Black people is destroyed by future-sent deities,” says Sikelianos-Carter. “These Godx are completely enveloped and adorned by magnificent cornrows, dreadlocks, and twists. The hairstyles act as armor and weapon, protecting and repelling wearers from white supremacy and misogyny. These are the beings I create. My wildest dreams realized; a marriage between the spectral beings we (as Black people) can and will transform into as a result of the culture we currently live in with the majesty, magic, and tradition of our ancestors.”Sikelianos-Carter earned her BA and MA in Painting and Drawing from SUNY Albany. She is a recent NXTHVN Fellow, and in 2021 was awarded the inaugural fellowship at Foreland, a six month studio residency in the Catskills conferred biennially on an outstanding artist of color. Recent exhibitions of her work include Realms of Refuge, Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL; NXTHVN Fellows Group Show, New York, NY; Beasts Like Me: Feminism and Fantasy, Bronx Art Space, Bronx, NY; and Never Done: 100 Years of Women in Politics and Beyond, Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY. Sikelianos-Carter was featured in New American Paintings, No. 146, Northeast Issue, and received the Sustainable Arts Foundation Grant. She has been awarded residencies at the Millay Colony for the Arts, Austerlitz, NY; Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT; Wassaic Project, Wassaic, NY; Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY; and Fountainhead Residency, Miami, FL.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Alisa Sikleanos Carter, Stars Are Born In Darkness

<a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/tomokazu-matsuyama-in-conversation-with-yi-cao-and-maritza-lacayo-tickets-289790580427">Register here</a>PROOF OF VACCINATION REQUIRED UPON ENTRYKavi Gupta presents a conversation with Japanese-born, New York-based artist Tomokazu Matsuyama on the occasion of the closing of his critically acclaimed solo exhibition The Best Part About Us. The conversation will take place on the first level of our 219 N. Elizabeth St. space in Chicago from 5-7pm.Matsuyama will be joined by Yi Cao, Director of Curatorial Administration of Arts of Asia at the Art Institute of Chicago; and Maritza Lacayo, Assistant Curator at Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); moderated by Phillip Barcio, Associate Director of Interpretation at Kavi Gupta.The conversation will elucidate how Matsuyama’s work and practice center intercultural aesthetics; examine the current state of museum inclusivity in the United States from the perspectives of artists, visitors, and museum workers alike; and visit the topic of art as an entry point for public engagement in issues of intercultural politics.Our gallery staff is fully vaccinated, but to keep the festivities safe, masks will be required indoors. Updated Covid vaccine cards will be necessary from attendees once entering the space. Occupancy will be limited, so appointments are required. In the event that you encounter trouble scheduling your visit or have additional inquiries please contact info@kavigupta.comThe event will be live streamed on Instagram Live through @kavigupta_

Tomokazu Matsuyama in Conversation with Yi Cao and Maritza Lacayo

Opening Saturday, February 5, 2022 Kavi Gupta | 219 N Elizabeth St. Reception, 4-7 PM Masks required Updated vaccine cards checked at door&nbsp;<a href="https://kavigupta.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0f9399c027227e18423d8d34a&amp;id=45f06f2598&amp;e=f8ec634e74">Reception Registration</a>&nbsp;Kavi Gupta presents&nbsp;The Best Part About Us,&nbsp;a solo exhibition of new paintings and sculptures by internationally acclaimed, Japanese-born, New York-based artist Tomokazu Matsuyama. The exhibition comes on the heels of the artist’s landmark solo exhibitions at two of China’s largest and most influential private museums, Long Museum Shanghai and Long Museum Chongqing. As with those exhibitions, the visual language Matsuyama deploys in the works in&nbsp;The Best Part About Us&nbsp;reﬂects the experiences of today’s nomadic diaspora—a global, intercultural community of wandering people who seek to understand their place in a world full of contrasting visual and cultural dialects. Amalgamated from his vast mental and physical archive of iconographical material, Matsuyama’s painted worlds vivify his lived experience. His fresh approach to the language of figuration creates dual references to both our contemporary realities and our multiplicitous pasts, combining allusions to fashion models torn from the pages of glossy magazines; ﬂora and fauna borrowed from Edo-period folding screens; open-source wallpaper patterns from the Internet; fragmented snippets of pop culture and celebrity life; frozen movements captured from the garments of centuries-old Buddhist sculptures; compositional strategies of the European Renaissance masters; aesthetic cues from Modernist art history such as shaped canvases and Abstract Expressionist techniques; and of course, those innumerable bits of branded trash ubiquitous on the streets of every city in the Western world. Matsuyama’s carefully constructed, ﬁctional landscapes welcome anyone inside to build their own narrative and discover their own meaning. What name should we give this aesthetic, which relates to nobody nowhere, yet is recognized by everyone everywhere? “I call it the global us,” Matsuyama says. This is Matsuyama’s mastery as an artist; by questioning what is familiar and what is foreign, he shows us pictures of others that are also reﬂections of ourselves. The uncanny process of recognizing the unfamiliar also plays out in the presence of Matsuyama’s sculptures, several of which are included in the exhibition. Simultaneously familiar and alien, they hint exquisitely at the worlds we know, not from life but from a dream. Hand welded from sheets of stainless steel and hand buﬀed to a mirror shine, these fragmented, labyrinthine forms are frozen in gestures that, again, relate to the “global us.” “My visual language is a community-based language,” Matsuyama says. “My paintings are not intended to inform viewers of specific messages nor narratives. These little fractions of everyday culture remind the viewers of narratives in their own life. That leads to ownership. It represents them. It represents me. It represents us. What’s the best part? It’s subjective.” &nbsp;Matsuyama received his MFA in Communications Design from the Pratt Institute, New York. Recent exhibitions include&nbsp;Realms of Refuge, Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL, USA;&nbsp;Tomokazu Matsuyama: Accountable Nature, Long Museum West Bund, Shanghai, China, and Long Museum Chongqing;&nbsp;Tomokazu Matsuyama: Palimpsest, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA;&nbsp;Thousand Regards, Katzen Arts Center at American University Museum, Washington, DC, USA; Tomokazu Matsuyama: Oh Magic Night, Hong Kong Contemporary Art (HOCA) Foundation, Repulse Bay, Hong Kong;&nbsp;Tomokazu Matsuyama: No Place Like Home, Zidoun-Bossuyt Gallery, Luxembourg;&nbsp;Made in 17 Hours, Museum of Contemporary Art Museum, Sydney, Australia; and&nbsp;Edo Pop: The Graphic Impact of Japanese Prints, Japan Society, New York, NY, USA, among others. Large-scale public displays of Matsuyama's work can be found all over the world, including a monumental, permanent sculptural installation activating Shinjuku Station East Square, Tokyo, Japan; a sculptural installation at the heart of Ivy Station, a transformative, mixed-use development project in Culver City, CA; a 30m painted mural and two large-scale stainless steel sculptures in Tipstar Dome Chiba, a cutting edge, state-of-the-art cycling arena in Chiba, Japan;&nbsp;Magic City,&nbsp;a 124m x 150m LED billboard animating the facades of neighboring skyscrapers on the riverfront of downtown Chongqing, China; a large-scale, outdoor steel sculpture on the grounds of Meiji Shrine in Tokyo; as well as&nbsp;Thousand Regards/Shape of Color, a monumental mural commissioned by the City of Beverly Hills, CA. Matsuyama’s works are in the permanent collections of the Long Museum, Shanghai, China; Powerlong Art Museum, Shanghai, China; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA, USA; Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, CA, USA; the Royal Family of Dubai; Dean Collection (Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys), USA; Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, CA, USA; Pt. Leo Estate Sculpture Park, Melbourne, Australia; and the institutional collections of Microsoft, Toyota Automobile, Bank of Sharjah, NIKE Japan, and Levi’s Strauss and Co. Japan.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

Tomokazu Matsuyama: The Best Part About Us

<a href="https://kavigupta.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0f9399c027227e18423d8d34a&amp;id=4d317fba40&amp;e=67884572b2">VIEW THE EXHIBITION</a>Kavi Gupta presents <a href="https://kavigupta.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0f9399c027227e18423d8d34a&amp;id=efeaf83605&amp;e=67884572b2">Beyond the Horizon</a>, a solo show of new works by Jeffrey Gibson, acclaimed visual artist and 2019 MacArthur Fellow.Gibson’s aesthetic position is rooted in the spaces where narratives collide. The work recontextualizes relationships between popular culture, identity politics, personal experience, memory, and canonized versions of history, inviting viewers to question the myths and assumptions that empower contemporary social structures.For Beyond the Horizon, Gibson brings together four&nbsp;bodies of work, integrating a broad mix of source content, including a dazzling&nbsp;new series of Quilt Block Paintings. The pastiche appearance of these ambitious works is a material reflection&nbsp;their intertextual narratives. Says Gibson, “My grandmothers made quilts, and I collect quilts. I’m drawn to their patchwork quality. If you know where the fabrics are coming from, there’s a story that can be played out through material culture.”Images of Indigenous people appear throughout the Quilt Block Paintings, interrogating differences between how Native Americans represent themselves and how they are represented by others. Also interwoven into many of the panels are delicate, beaded objects dating from the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries. Taken from Gibson’s private collection, these items were often made for personal reasons by their intended users, and other times made as “whimseys,” so-called because of their value to tourists as objects of wonder and amusement.Each work in&nbsp;Beyond the Horizon&nbsp;exemplifies Gibson's deft ability to intermingle popular culture, literature, art history, memory, politics, myth, and material meaning. The work incites crucial questions about whose representations of people and cultures should be validated; which memories and artifacts should be exalted; what creative products should be deemed to have constructive social value; and who decides.Bio: Gibson (b.1972, USA) has exhibited his work extensively in many of the world's most influential cultural institutions. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York, NY; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK; Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME; Portland Museum of Art, Portland, OR; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; and Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, among others. A 2019 MacArthur Fellow, he holds an MA at the Royal College of Art, London, and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Jeffrey Gibson: Beyond the Horizon

Kavi Gupta presents Surface is Only a Material Vehicle For Spirit, a group exhibition spotlighting the work of eight dynamic voices within the field of contemporary abstraction, guest curated by artist Kennedy Yanko.Is there a metaphysical side to materiality? Sculptor Kennedy Yanko's curatorial debut with Kavi Gupta explores the complex perceptual relationships that exist between the surface realities of aesthetic phenomena, and the illusions and transcendental insights experienced by artists and viewers of the work.“What is the disconnect between our innate knowingness and our optic interpretations of the world around us?” Yanko asks. “I am presented with something seemingly concrete in front of me only to find it is soft and supple. What happens inside me as my brain tries to understand and recalibrate itself? That dissonance is the conduit to a greater understanding—the disruption to our seeming truth that evokes consciousness.”Inspired by the writings of abstract artist Jack Whitten (1939 - 2018), the title of this exhibition spotlights the complications that arise when when we try disseminating what is superficial from the truths that lie beyond first impressions. Whitten considered his paintings to be structured manifestations of his feelings—maps of his soul.While each artist in this exhibition mobilizes a unique visual strategy in their work, each also offers a distinctively personal elucidation of Whitten’s belief that artists are experts at using material realities to convey the unseen depths of spirit.Surface is Only a Material Vehicle For Spirit features a new, site-specific installation by Katie Bell, along with works by Pamela Council, Alexandre Diop, Gracelee Lawrence, Charles Mason III, Monica Rezman, Jessica Stoller, and Chiffon Thomas. Opening reception Saturday, September 25, 2021, from 5 - 8 PM,&nbsp;at 219 N. Elizabeth Street, Chicago, IL, 60607.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Surface is Only a Material Vehicle For Spirit

Kavi Gupta | Elizabeth St.&nbsp;LocationRealms of Refuge will bring together for the first time new works by eight of the most dynamic artists working today: Dominic Chambers, Allana Clarke, Basil Kincaid, Tomokazu Matsuyama, Suchitra Mattai, Michi Meko, Devan Shimoyama, and Alisa Sikelianos-Carter. The works collectively speak to the desire to retreat from the oppressive gaze, towards a safe space for creativity and renewal. “Rest and stillness are essential to the creative act,” says curator Chanelle Lacy, Associate Director,&nbsp;Programming Manager for Kavi Gupta. “Realms of Refuge can be literal or symbolic zones—anywhere the intellect is nurtured, instinct is unhindered, and the soul is free to wander.”&nbsp;&nbsp;

Kavi Gupta - Elizabeth St.

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Kavi Gupta - Elizabeth St.

Current and Upcoming Events at Kavi Gupta - Elizabeth St.

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