NEW YORK, NY.- The Studio Museum in Harlem announces its full roster of Fall/Winter 2014–15 exhibitions and projects. Joining the pioneering exhibition Speaking of People: Ebony, Jet and Contemporary Art are Kianja Strobert: Of This Day in Time, Titus Kaphar: The Jerome Project and the latest installment of Harlem Postcards. Fall/Winter 2014–15 exhibitions and projects are on view from November 13, 2014 to March 8, 2015.

Kianja Strobert: Of This Day in Time
Through her exploration of acrylic, ink and other materials, Kianja Strobert (b. 1980) has emerged as an innovative voice in contemporary abstraction. Kianja Strobert: Of This Day in Time is the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in New York, presenting a selection of paintings and drawings made over the last five years.

Employing a gestural vocabulary of banded brushstrokes, swaths, whorls and zips, Strobert’s compositions convey a sense of movement that keeps the eye in constant motion. The earliest works on view, from 2010, reveal Strobert’s interest in closing the gap between the artist and the painted mark. In 2011, Strobert conveys the presence of the body through messy smudges and drips that are applied directly by hand and since 2012, experiments more closely with the effects of paint mixed with other materials. These paintings, created in multiple small-scale series, allow for repeated, methodical experimentations with specific color fields and patterns, shifting away from grand, monumental notions of mid-century abstraction that emphasized the artist’s gestural expression in relation to universal themes.

Strobert’s most recent works on paper depict vertical forms with hard, linear edges that intersect with bands of paint that radiate outward from various points. These formal configurations, traced from torn pieces of paper, invite any number of open-ended associations from the viewer. Many of Strobert’s paintings and drawings are inspired by abstract painter Alma Thomas, whom Strobert cites as an influence. Strobert’s painting is rooted in what the older artist called a “day in time,” or a commitment to the artistic practices of the present.

Contemporary exhibitions have posited abstract painting as a continuous dialogue, whether between artists and historical traditions of abstraction, or among artists of current and prior generations. Throughout its history, The Studio Museum in Harlem has examined the intersections of abstract art and subjectivity in exhibitions such as Energy/Experimentation: Black Artists and Abstraction 1964-1980 (2006). As the most recent addition to this lineage, Kianja Strobert: Of This Day in Time presents an artist whose unique consideration of universal human emotions provides a fresh take on the legacy of twentieth century abstraction.

Kianja Strobert: Of This Day in Time is organized by Naima J. Keith, Associate Curator.

Born in 1980, Kianja Strobert received her MFA from the Yale University School of Art in 2006 and her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004. Her work has been included in museum exhibitions such as Fore (2012) and 30 Seconds off an Inch (2009) at The Studio Museum in Harlem, and Outside the Lines: Black in the Abstract, Part 1: Epistrophy at The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston in 2013. Strobert has had a solo exhibition, Nothing to Do but Keep Going, at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, California in 2012 and one- person gallery exhibitions at Tilton Gallery and Zach Feuer Gallery, both in New York. She lives and works in Hudson, New York.

Titus Kaphar: The Jerome Project
Titus Kaphar (b. 1976) is celebrated for producing paintings, drawings and installations that initiate a contemporary dialogue with history. The Jerome Project is composed of small-scale works that engage with the criminal justice system as a contemporary social issue. With their gold leaf backgrounds and single central figures, The Jerome Project works bring to mind Byzantine holy portraits and Saint Jerome, the patron saint of librarians and scholars, in particular.

The exhibition derives its title from the subjects of the work whom the artist selected for their name, Jerome, and sourced from a website specializing in photographs of people who have recently been arrested. In 2011, Kaphar began searching for his father’s prison record, finding dozens of men who share his given name, Jerome. Influenced by the writings of Michelle Alexander and William Julius Wilson on the prison industrial complex—the use of policing and imprisonment by the United States government as solutions to economic, social and political problems—Kaphar created each panel based on the police portraits he found preserved in the public record online. Though each work depicts an individual, this series represents a community of people, particularly African American men, who are proportionally overrepresented in prisons.

Titus Kaphar: The Jerome Project is organized by Naima J. Keith, Associate Curator.

Titus Kaphar was born in 1976 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He currently lives and works between New York and Connecticut. Kaphar received an MFA from the Yale School of Art and the distinguished recipient of the Gwendolyn Knight and Jacob Lawrence Fellowship. His work has been included in solo and group exhibitions at Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY and the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA. His work is included in the collections of the New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT, the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA and The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY.

Harlem Postcards Fall/Winter 2014–15
Harlem Postcards is an ongoing project that invites a diverse group of contemporary artists to reflect on Harlem as a site of cultural activity, political vitality, visual stimuli, artistic contemplation and creative production. Representing intimate and dynamic perspectives of Harlem, the images reflect the idiosyncratic visions of contemporary artists from a wide range of backgrounds and locations. Each photograph has been reproduced as a limited-edition postcard available free to visitors. This season, we are pleased to feature postcard images by Pamela Council, Yashua Klos, So Yoon Lym and Youssef Nabil.

Harlem Postcards Fall/Winter 2014–15 is organized by Hallie Ringle, Senior Curatorial Assistant.