December 2003 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Kerry James Marshall
Color Blind: A Selection of New Work
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 10, 6:00-8:00 p.m.
Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Friday: 10:00 a.m. – 5:30 p.m., Saturday: 11:00 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.

Koplin Del Rio Gallery is pleased to announce its fifth exhibition of new work by Kerry James Marshall.

Throughout his career, Marshall’s paintings have explored African American history and experience in contemporary socio-political contexts. His work draws on a full range of art historical and social knowledge.

Marshall’s latest body of work developed for the Color Blind exhibition describes the human experience of race as social structure and suggests that, through vision, we construct a social ontology based on color. The paintings draw upon the Isihara Isochromatic plates (also known as the Confusion Test), which test vision deficiencies, and also illustrate the “black effect”. The exhibition’s title and subject matter deconstruct the “color blind approach” to eradicating racism (act as if it does not exist, therefore it ceases to exist). By questioning the notion of color blindness, the work suggests an approach that dismantles it in the same way it was constructed in the first place. Also on view will be his visually compelling and pragmatic Heirlooms and Accessories, a three-part series of ink jet prints on paper in wooden frames with rhinestone trim borders. For this series, Marshall appropriates powerful imagery taken from the well-known 1930 photograph of the lynching of two black men in Marion, Indiana, and reminds the viewer that a legacy of violence is the foundation upon which much of white privilege is built and handed down to future generations.

Kerry James Marshall was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1955. He grew up in Los Angeles and attended Otis Art Institute, where he received his BFA in 1978 and an Honorary Doctorate in 1999. He moved to Chicago in 1987, where he currently lives and works. Marshall also participated in the 2003 Venice Biennale, the 1997 Whitney Biennial, The Carnegie International 1999/2000, and Documenta X in 1997. Marshall has been awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Grant and a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship in Painting. His works have been acquired by several institutions, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, among others.

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, has also organized a major exhibition of new work by Kerry James Marshall titled “One True Thing: A Meditation on Black Aesthetics”, which travels to Baltimore Museum of Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and The Birmingham Museum of Art.