In the Time of

Curated by Amanda Hunt

UTA Artist Space is pleased to present In the Time of a virtual exhibition curated by Amanda Hunt featuring Texas Isaiah, Kambui Olujimi, Kenny Rivero, and Aaron Wojack, live on UTAArtistSpace.com from today, June 24 – July 15, 2020.

This exhibition was made as a response to our current, collective moment. The COVID cloud began to swallow up so much of our known daily existence – the simple pleasure of friends’ company, the joy of experiencing food made outside of the home, the ability to acknowledge strangers without a mask obscuring our expression. It was a time when all of us were just undergoing the process of making massive adjustments to our households, and to our own psychologies.

“In the Time of was a way to process, as a curator, the times: by asking artists whose work I have been watching over time what they were up to, and how they were making and coping in the “new normal”, said Amanda Hunt. I wanted to get a glimpse of how art was being made in a time of extreme isolation and restricted access to creative spaces, to perhaps help better understand this moment for myself.”

Because contemporary exhibitions must truly reflect the world we are living in, this exhibition came naturally. Each artist has either shared work that was made prior to 2020, that has now taken on an entirely new meaning within the framework of a pandemic and our political unrest, or work that was made out of sheer necessity in this fraught moment.

Texas Isaiah, an artist known for his intimate portraits of LQBTQ community and many of the dynamic couples therein, has offered a selection of works that capture moments of pause. To the artist, these pauses may indicate a reaction to, and more specifically may point to the moment after and within grieving, which takes on a new layer of poignancy in our current climate. This grief can be tied individually to our loss of life as we have known it in the last century, or it can be applied more largely to our society moving through painful and necessary growth.

Texas Isaiah

Space Beneath My Feet

Texas Isaiah

MoRuf

Texas Isaiah

Rose Quartz

Texas Isaiah

My Grandson’s Rise

Texas Isaiah is a visual narrator based in Los Angeles, Oakland, and NYC. The intimate works he creates center the possibilities that can emerge by inviting individuals to participate in the photographic process. He is attempting to shift the power dynamics rooted in photography to display different ways of accessing support in one’s own body. His works have been shown at Fotografiska (NYC), Aperture Foundation Gallery (NYC), Charlie James Gallery (LA), Studio Museum in Harlem (NYC), Residency (LA), Hammer Museum (LA), and The Kitchen (NYC). He is one of the 2018 grant recipients of Art Matters and the 2019 recipient of the Getty Images: Where We Stand Creative Bursary grant.

SELECT PRESS:

The New York Times – “Sources of Self-Regard: Self-Portraits from Black Photographers Reflecting on America”

LA Times – “On Transgender Day of Visibility, a portrait series celebrates black beauty”

Artforum – “TIONA NEKKIA McCLODDEN ON TEXAS ISAIAH”

Vice – “The Joy, Ease, and Respect of Texas Isaiah’s Portraits”

Cultured Magazine – “THE SPOTLIGHT ON ASANTE BLACKK”

For photographer Aaron Wojack, there was “irony in isolation leading to exploration”. These images, taken at home during the early stages of the global pandemic, were made only with contents found in the artist’s home, or with flowers acquired during routine grocery runs. The photographs are in a way a meditation on the world outside, but are also ruminations on death, fragility and trauma. Formally, they are expressed through an innovative use of material, light and color, steeped in a rich tradition of still life.

Aaron Wojack

Isolation Studies #1

Aaron Wojack

Isolation Studies #2

Aaron Wojack

Isolation Studies #3

Aaron Wojack

Isolation Studies #4

Aaron Wojack is a photographer based in Northern California, where he keeps a studio at Minnesota Street Project. His work is rooted in portraiture and social documentary and is driven by his curiosity for the world. Wojack uses the camera as a means of exploring and documenting. Through personal projects and assignments, he interacts with subjects and spaces that are often encountered beyond his normal routine. His work is noted for its subtle intimacy and attention to subtle detail. This particular body of work marks a significant departure from his typical image making practice: for him, there’s irony in isolation that leads to exploration. During the pandemic of 2020, the artist made work with only the contents of his home and flowers acquired during regular grocery runs. These images are inevitably a meditation on the world outside at this moment as well as a reflection on his own history.

Kambui Olujimi makes work in a range of media, from sculpture and large-scale video installation, to more traditional formats that includes drawings, prints and watercolor. This suite of works, a mix of works from 2019 and 2020, are a translation of what Olujimi is witnessing in images in real time – some seem to contain within them billowing clouds of smoke, dust clearing, monuments and stars falling – all with an immediacy that recall the dark, urgent nights unfolding on our screens at the onset of the massive international protests against injustice and in honor of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many others.

Kambui Olujimi

Barry

Kambui Olujimi

Fresh Cut No.3

Kambui Olujimi

Fresh Cut No.9

Kambui Olujimi

Kiss Face

Kambui Olujimi

Stereo 1-2, 2019

Diptych; Ink and graphite on paper

18 x 24 inches

Kambui Olujimi was born and raised in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. He received his MFA from Columbia University and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. His work challenges established modes of thinking that commonly function as “inevitabilities.” This pursuit takes shape through interdisciplinary bodies of work spanning sculpture, installation, photography, writing, video and performance. His works have premiered nationally at The Sundance Film Festival, Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, and Mass MoCA. Internationally his work has been featured Museo Nacional Reina Sofia in Madrid; Kiasma Museum in Finland and Para Site in Hong Kong among others.

SELECT PRESS:

Architectural Digest – “Young Black Artists Speak About the Role of Art in This Moment”

Artnet News – “Which Emerging Artist Dominated 2019? 12 Art-World Players Share Their Thoughts”

Hyperallergic – “Water as a Cinematic Metaphor for the Tides of Time”

Kenny Rivero is an artist whose paintings and watercolors often appear to transmit psychic energy – ghosts of past and present, familial and communal. In more recent works, scenes of city sidewalks and building façades offer surreal second glances: probing eyes are embedded in each brick, watching us as we cycle by in our daily lives, a body’s silhouette is barely registered. What we see might be the stories contained within these walls, or represent the people who occupy these urban spaces. In a COVID world, the uncanny desolation of Rivero’s street scenes strikes a different, deeper chord. Where has everyone gone, and how will they be remembered?

Kenny Rivero

How to Cure a Diamond, or Goodbye Blue Monday

Kenny Rivero

Embers

Kenny Rivero

White Gate (market)

Born and raised in Washington Heights, Kenny Rivero was brought up by parents who felt the aftermath of the Young Lords and La Fania’s era in their bones. Rivero earned a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2006 and an MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2012. He has been a guest lecturer at El Museo del Barrio, Bennington College, Middlebury College, Williams College, and the School of Visual Arts. He is the recipient of a Doonesbury Award, Robert Schoelkopf Memorial Travel Grant, Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant, and has been awarded a Visiting Scholar position at New York University. Recent projects and exhibitions include those at Pera Museum, Turkey; Stedelijk Museum, Netherlands; The Contemporary Art Museum St Louis; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling, New York; El Museo del Barrio, New York; and the Delaware Contemporary, Wilmington. Residencies include the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Program, the Roswell Artist in Residence Program, The Fountainhead Residency, The Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture, and The Macedonia Institute. Rivero is a teaching Artist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a Lecturer at the Yale School of Art.

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