MONTREAL.- The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is presenting the American artist Kerry James Marshall for the first time in Montreal. As part of BNLMTL 2016, The Grand Balcony, the MMFA is presenting a new chapter from Rythm Mastr, the artist’s well-known project, with a new series of illustrations displayed in lightboxes.

Considered one of the most important American artists of his generation, Kerry James Marshall questions the depiction of African-Americans in culture and in art history. Over the past thirty-five years, he has produced a complex body of work, from painting to comic strips. Creating portraits, interiors, nudes and landscapes in various mediums, Marshall conflates actual and imagined events from African-American history and culture, and integrates a variety of stylistic influences to address the limited historiography of African-American art.

For the BNLMTL 2016, The Grand Balcony, the MMFA’s Contemporary Art Square is presenting seven new lightboxes created by the artist, a continuation of his work Rythm Mastr. Written in vernacular, this comic strip features an urban superhero who fights the forces of evil using a combination of futuristic and traditional African accoutrements.

“The Rythm Mastr project has been under development since 1999, first as an installation and then as a conceptual project titled Dailies, comprising three cartoon strips: Rhythm Mastr, P-Van- and On the Stroll. These overlapping comics all take place in ‘Black Metropolis’ – the long dreamed-of capital of the ‘Black World’ – and are written in Black vernacular English. The comics form provides a vehicle for talking about all manner of subjects,”1 explained the artist.

“Alongside our Robert Mapplethorpe retrospective, which celebrates the beauty of the body – black or white – in a post-segregation America, Kerry James Marshall’s work drives home the point. His scathing commentary on present-day racial inequality, on the steps of a leading museum of modern art and with the recent opening of a major museum of African-American history and culture in Washington, is right on the mark,” said Nathalie Bondil, the Museum’s Director General and Chief Curator.

“We’re really delighted to work with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts to present the work of an artist of Marshall’s stature. He has made a vital and unique contribution to contemporary art,” added Sylvie Fortin, General and Artistic Director, La Biennale de Montréal.

The MMFA’s presentation coincides with MASTRY, a major retrospective of Marshall’s work at the MET Breuer in New York, on display from October 25, 2016, to January 29, 2017.

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1955, Kerry James Marshall lives and works in Chicago. His paintings, sculptures and installations have been exhibited around the world.

Marshall was awarded the Rosenberger Medal (2016), the Wolfgang Hahn Prize (2014), a grant from the MacArthur Foundation (1997) and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (1991). Since 2013, he has been one of the appointees to President Barack Obama’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities

After the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2016), the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is presenting Kerry James Marshall: Mastry, major retrospective of his paintings. In 2015, Marshall completed his first public commission for New York City, a large mural for the High Line, a former elevated railway that has been converted into an aerial greenway. Entitled Above the Line, the mural is inspired by his comic strip project, Rythm Mastr.

In 2013, the Museum of Modern Art in Antwerp, presented a Marshall retrospective that travelled to the Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen the following year, and was presented jointly at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC (2013); Secession, Vienna (2012); the Vancouver Art Gallery (2010); the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2009); the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio (2008); the Camden Arts Centre, London (2005); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2003) and the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago (1998) have also presented monograph exhibitions of his work.

Marshall’s works can be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.