LatchKey Gallery is pleased to present Thy Neighbor for the 1.54 Art Fair, opening May 4-6, 2020. The exhibition can be viewed via the online platform Artsy and our website, latchkeygallery.com.
Thy Neighbor is a multi-disciplinary communion for the every-day interaction. The exhibition seeks to invoke the spirit of what we are missing in this socially distant moment: the tactile nature of interaction and the contemplation of self through human connection.
Displayed entirely online and through digital formats, Thy Neighbor furthers LatchKey Gallery’s core mission to highlight artists whose works speak to a global human condition. The show brings together artists Turiya Magadlela, Taha Clayton, Raelis Vasquez, and Anthony Akinbola whose works collectively speak to the complexity, and cultural legacies of human experience and history. The exhibition engages the viewers with one’s own memories and relationships to the nuances of the subjects, and thereby the shared beauty of our diverse global community.
South African artist Turiya Magadlela works with art making techniques that are traditionally used by women, using sewing and embroidery on various conceptually loaded fabrics, from pantyhose to correctional service uniforms, and creates abstract compositions by cutting, stitching, folding and stretching these materials across wooden frames.
Her subject matter moves between articulations of personal experiences of woman and motherhood, and narratives from black South African history. Magadlela engages in a conversation on the colonization of black bodies and women; her art uses materials capitalist in nature at a time when commoditization is ever more prescient.
Anthony O. Akinbola is a Nigerian-American interdisciplinary artist who employs the ready made motif in relation to the human experience and history. Working with sculpture, performative and text-based works Akinbola is attuned to the void between artistic intention and the viewer’s own comprehension, and he transforms this chasm into a discourse of sorts, using it as a source of creative energy.
Through portraiture, the realistic renderings of Taha Clayton transcend time to celebrate culture and legacy. Heritage influences his work in addressing mistruths of black antiquity while playing with fantasy and mystics of the universe. Focusing on subjects and narratives reflective of today’s social climate, his work and style concepts are rooted in traditional practices of Old Masters from the Dutch-Realism school, High Renaissance, and Neoclassical style. Most of his subjects are drawn from family, friends, or inspiring strangers he has met while traveling internationally.
Taha Clayton is based in Brooklyn, NY, born in Houston, TX and raised in Toronto, ON. He has exhibited extensively through out the United Stats and Canada including, New York, Miami, Boston, and Toronto. Clayton’s artistic journey was documented in the award winning 2016 documentary, Heavyweight Paint.
To be represented is to say that the subject is worthy of representation, that the subject exists as an essential element of societal life. The paintings of Raelis Vasquez function as platforms for engaging in conversations; coalescing personal and political themes regarding his experience as an Afro-Latino artist in the United States. Vasquez’s devotion to representation as a means of inclusion and presence explores the convoluted histories of the Dominican Republic in relation to the United States.
Growing up, Vasquez was confronted with inaccurate, stereotypical representations of his Afro-Latino ancestry. By using the Western style of painting as a means of protest, he more accurately depicts the narrative of people of color, unveiling historical silences of family, societal life and the traumatic and disruptive experience of immigration.
ARTISTS
