Steve Turner Contemporary is pleased to announce that it will be exhibiting for the first time at VOLTA NY (March 3 - 6, 2011). The gallery will present a solo exhibition featuring new work by the New York-based artist, Deborah Grant. It will be the inaugural presentation of THE PROVENANCE AND CROWNING OF KING WILLIAM, a new series based on the life and work of William H. Johnson. It is the artist's first solo exhibition in New York since 2006.
It is part of an ongoing project that Grant has labeled Random Select. Over the last ten years, Grant has deconstructed and then reassembled visual, historic, and literary material from unrelated sources to create her own non-linear narrative. In appropriating the artworks of famous male artists from the canon such as Picasso, Basquiat, Bacon and Traylor, Grant has reworked images to address histories and narratives pertinent to her own life experience and identity.
For THE PROVENANCE AND CROWNING OF KING WILLIAM, Grant investigates the work of American artist William H. Johnson (1901-1970). Johnson, born in South Carolina, recognized early on that his aspiration of becoming an artist was unattainable in the segregated South. In 1918, he migrated to New York City and was soon admitted to the National Academy of Design where he excelled in painting, studying with noted artist Charles W. Hawthorne. In spite of his achievements and awards at the academy, both teacher and pupil realized that Johnson would face many obstacles as a black artist in America. In 1926, Johnson departed for Europe, where he had a very successful career, living in Denmark and Norway where he painted lush landscapes and portraits. At the outbreak of World War II, he returned to the United States, and began painting scenes of daily life in New York City and images of the rural South. Faced with personal setbacks, among them, the death of his wife, he returned to Europe after the war. He was later hospitalized in Oslo with what turned out to be syphilis and was sent back to the United States, where he was institutionalized for the last 23 years of his life. He did not receive widespread recognition in America until after his death in 1970.
For THE PROVENANCE AND CROWNING OF KING WILLIAM, Grant has culled vast amounts of material from the many books and articles on William H. Johnson. She also goes beyond the Johnson biography by inventing a visual narrative of his last twenty-three years at the Central Islip State Hospital, a period during which Johnson is thought to have made no work. The series will consist of many individual works with the 6 x 16-foot Thieves in the Night is to be the centerpiece of the series. It will be composed of many small cryptic images (drawing and collage) which will sit atop a vaguely familiar form, resulting in a work that will have one meaning when viewed from a distance and another when viewed up close. The seemingly random ideas are metaphors for the human condition.
Grant received a BFA at Columbia College, Chicago (1996), an MFA in painting from Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia (1999) and did residencies at the Skowhegan (1996); Studio Museum in Harlem (2002/2003); and the Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito (2004. She has had solo exhibitions at Roebling Hall, New York, (2006), Dunn and Brown, Dallas (2007) and Steve Turner Contemporary, Los Angeles (2007). She will have a solo exhibition at Steve Turner Contemporary in 2011.