June 27 – October 17, 2009

Black Is, Black Ain’t

Opening reception: Friday, June 26, 6:00-8:00pm

Featuring:
Soul/Funk/Hip Hop Extravaganza
With DJs Fat Sal & Joc Max

Black Is, Black Ain’t takes its title from Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and features 26 artists whose work offers glimpses into one of the most timely and complex issues in contemporary American culture: race and “blackness.”

The exhibition explores a shift in the rhetoric of race from an earlier emphasis on inclusion to a present moment where racial identity is being simultaneously rejected and retained. The exhibition will bring together works by black and non-black artists whose work together examines a moment where the cultural production of so-called “blackness” is concurrent with efforts to make race socially and politically irrelevant.

Artists include Terry Adkins, Edgar Arceneaux, Elizabeth Axtman, Jonathan Calm, Paul D'Amato, Deborah Grant, Todd Gray, Shannon Jackson, Thomas Johnson, Jason Lazarus, David Levinthal, Glenn Ligon, David McKenzie, Rodney McMillian, Jerome Mosley, Virginia Nimarkoh, Demetrius Oliver, Sze Lin Pang, Carl Pope, William Pope.L , Robert A. Pruitt, Randy Regier, Daniel Roth, Joanna Rytel, Andres Serrano, Hank Willis Thomas, and Mickalene Thomas.

Taking its title from Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, this exhibition will explore a shift in the rhetoric of race from an earlier emphasis on inclusion to a present moment where racial identity is being simultaneously rejected and retained. The exhibition will bring together works by 26 black and non-black artists whose work together examines a moment where the cultural production of so-called “blackness” is concurrent with efforts to make race socially and politically irrelevant.

The exhibition is curated by Hamza Walker and organized by The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, and is made possible by an Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award, with additional support from the Woods Fund of Chicago.

www.renaissancesociety.org
image: Andres Serrano

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