Mickalene Thomas: découverte

Press release via Facebook by Baldwin Gallery

Mickalene Thomas: découverte
December 26, 2019 – February 4, 2020 at the Baldwin Gallery, Colorado, USA
Opening reception: Thursday, December 26, 6-8 pm

Baldwin Gallery is pleased to announce an inaugural show with artist Mickalene Thomas. The Brooklyn based Thomas works across media in painting, photography, collage, printmaking, video, sculpture and installation. Thomas’ works create immersive environmental experiences: in the current exhibition crystals, pattern, collage elements and paint, against a Minecraft pixelated backdrop interior of dream, memory and 1970s visual aesthetic. Thomas’ découverte (that which is discovered, or discovery itself) evokes the interiors, tastes and manufacturedavailabilities of Thomas’ formative period, steeped in Thomas’ own conceptual, cultural, and artistic awakenings.

Against a vibrant junction of black is beautiful, the late mid-century prosperity of rec rooms and hostess skirts, in the midst of complicated unrest and recession, to be ‘young gifted and black’ in the talk of liberation and examinations of identity, raised consciousness, blaxploitation epics, loud patterns, ‘ethnic’ motifs, lush contemporary textures and patterns are recalibrated through the artist’s academic and painterly engagement with art history: portraiture, landscape and still life. The artist addresses an unapologetic sexuality that is assertive of pose and demeanor: an unexpectedly even gaze and defiant tilt of chin. The images are further informed by Thomas’ queer identity, the radicalizing addition of the self in internalized dialogues of sex, beauty, visibility, and gender performance in an art historical equation that has historically included objectification, coercion, and power.

Raised in Camden NJ, Thomas attended Pratt Institute and Yale University. Public collections include: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; MOMA, New York, NY; Studio Museum of Harlem, New York, NY; and Whitney Museum, New York, NY.

The public is invited to meet the artist at the opening reception on December 26th from 6-8 pm.
Since 1994, the Baldwin Gallery has been presenting new work by established and emerging artists. It has earned an international reputation as an important venue for contemporary art, with a particular focus on American artists.

Gallery hours are Monday through Saturday, 10 am to 6 pm, and Sunday from Noon to 5 pm.
Baldwin Gallery is located at 209 South Galena Street in Aspen, Colorado.