Kerry James Marshall: Look See, David Zwirner

Kerry James Marshall
With a successful career spanning three decades, Kerry James Marshall is recognised as one of the most celebrated painters currently working in the US. This will be the artist’s first solo show in London since his 2005 exhibition at the Camden Arts Centre. 
Known for work that explores the experience of black Americans and their exclusion from the mainstream narratives of American society, Kerry James Marshall’s paintings mix abstract and figurative styles, drawing equally from high culture and popular culture. The artist uses his personal knowledge of the African diaspora to portray complex scenes of young people, nudes, housing estates and landscapes, all of which are a melange of art traditions that reject stereotypical representation of black people in urban America. With this concern surrounding the representation of African-American identity, his human figures are often completely black – a rhetorical allusion to what being black means in opposition to the dominant ‘whiteness’. 
Back in  2011  his exhibition  Great America  focused on the  transport of African slaves  to America between Africa, Europe and the American colonies up to the mid-19th century. His paintings addressed the economic and sociological impact of this episode, a cornerstone in the US’s history that exerts a constant – if unconscious - pressure on contemporary life.  
David Zwirner exhibition
For this exhibition, Marshall will present a new series of paintings that examine what is to observe and be observed, to witness and to exhibit. These notions are normally considered a passive act, but interestingly here the artist establishes a difference between looking and seeing where his subjects both stare blankly and look out defiantly at the viewer. He has also steered clear of traditional ways of displaying work, producing for this exhibition a series of comic books, photography and video.