May 21 through June 18, 2022
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 21, 6-9 pm
The Future is Brown saw the juxtaposition of Chicano legends like Carlos Almaraz and Frank Romero and their literal and figurative artistic progeny. The Future is Female showed how long-gone Blue Chip artists like Louise Nevelson are still conversing with women working in the arts today. And now comes The Future Is Black, the latest episode in the Bermudez Projects FAST FORWARD series, with a roster of art luminaries, groundbreakers, and unsung heroes.
As Shantay Robinson, Black Art In America scholar, puts it, “Black people have contributed greatly to the larger American cultural landscape. While some of it may be co-opted and filtered into a whole new form by the dominant culture, it’s important for Black people to be aware of their history and the contributions they make to the fabric of the country.”
Black people have been producing visual art in the US since slavery. But only recently has the mainstream moved from fetishization towards true appreciation and acceptance, with representation by prominent art galleries, exhibits in major US museums, and acquisitions by cultural institutions and prominent collectors … not to mention astronomical prices in the secondary art market. In 2018, the rapper P. Diddy acquired Kerry James Marshall’s Past Times for $21.1 million, which set a new record for a living African-American artist. And, in 2017 a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting sold for $110.5 million … second only to Warhol for a dead American artist.
Gallery owner Julian Bermudez says, “Our prices are a bit more modest, but our ultimate goal is to present really amazing art, not just investment portfolio enhancers. We show art to lift your soul – and make you think – at your home or office, not to molder in your vault.”
FAST FORWARD | The Future Is Black features works by Nanci Amaka, Romare Bearden, Zoe Charlton, Delano Dunn, Charles Gaines, Kenyatta A. C. Hinkle, Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Robert Pruitt, and Devan Shimoyama.
You will also see:
- An installation introducing a historical survey of the work of Talita Long, a painter, printmaker, author, and instructor whose artistic oeuvre spans over 40 years. The installation will encapsulate a life’s-long career of the Brooklyn-born artist who has made LA her home. Dark, moody prints; rich, colorful paintings; and mixed-media collages illustrate the artist’s range of media and subject matter;
- Two knockout paintings by Khari Turner, whose signature fluid drips of paint that obscure/accentuate his disjunct figures alludes to the mythological and historical roles bodies of water have played in the Black experience;
- And Bermudez Projects is proud to include two large-scale works by Alison Saar. Breach and Stanch are prints on vintage/found grain and seed sacks illustrating Saar’s iconic female heroines with heaps of objects atop their heads;
- In addition, the gallery is screening Gordon Parks’ The Learning Tree, the first major studio film directed by an African-America, and displaying ephemera from the production.
“Cypress Park has never seen a series of art exhibits like this,” says Bermudez. “Our gallery is kicking things into high-gear and we are bringing museum-quality shows to this part of the city, including The Future Is Queer, The Future Is Equal, and SPACELAND VI: Requiem. Presenting The Future Is Black is a big deal.
In HBO’s 2021 documentary, “Black Art: In the Absence of Light,” art historian Maurice Berger declares, “This is Black art. And it matters. And it’s been going on for two hundred years. Deal with it.”
We’d only add: come see it.