Jeff Donaldson: Dig
Karl and Bertl Arnstein Galleries
Through January 21

Spanning the artist’s entire career from his activist roots in Chicago to his influence on future generations as a professor at Howard University, Jeff Donaldson: Dig presents new scholarship and features works never before seen in public. In 1968, Donaldson, along with Wadsworth Jarrell, Jae Jarrell, Barbara Jones-Hogu and Gerald Williams, founded the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists (AfriCOBRA). Formed in Chicago’s South Side, AfriCOBRA was born in an era of social and political unrest in which the art world privileged white artists and audiences. The collective sought to create a new kind of politically engaged art that was reflective of contemporary Black culture and appealed specifically to a Black audience.

Donaldson’s work across the decades is an amalgamation of energetic colors, intricate patterns and African iconography that celebrates the history of African art and the roots of Black culture. Featuring paintings, prints and mixed media works, Dig reflects on Donaldson’s deep belief in the responsibility of an artist to create work that is socially relevant and visually striking. Iconic examples of Donaldson’s early work, known for its “Kool-Aid” palette, are shown alongside paintings from the 1980s, ’90s and early 2000s, demonstrating the artist’s lifelong commitment to the politics of representation.

Jeff Donaldson: Dig is organized by the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York, and supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Ohio Arts Council, the Akron Community Foundation and Katie and Mark Smucker.

 

Allison Zuckerman: Pirate and Muse
Karl and Bertl Arnstein Galleries
Through January 21

For centuries, Western art history has romanticized the muse as an instrument of male artists’ pleasure and creativity. Bodies onto which male fantasies are projected, they occupy exotic settings in submissive poses. Enter Allison Zuckerman, wielding Photoshop, the internet and a paintbrush to turn those roles upside down.

Co-opting the work of artists—all male—from numerous periods for her own use, Zuckerman swoops in to rescue and empower art history’s muses. No longer the seamless beauties of their original contexts, they are pieced-together Frankenstein figures that shake the ground they walk on and unsettle viewers with their exuberance and large scale.

Zuckerman’s process—and the way she intends her work to be experienced—mirrors the fragmented, distracted, and image-overloaded way we interact with the world today. She coalesces multiple sources, depositing hundreds of years’ worth of art history and present-day popular culture collected from the internet into a single composition.

Satire, parody, and travesty all at once—Zuckerman’s paintings and sculptures are pastiches of decorative motifs, landscape passages, body parts, and background and foreground elements that denounce the power structures they reference while also paying homage to their visual lineage.

Allison Zuckerman: Pirate and Muse is organized by the Akron Art Museum with support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Ohio Arts Council, the Akron Community Foundation and Katie and Mark Smucker.

 

Brian Bress: Pictures Become You
Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell Gallery
Through April 14

Brian Bress makes videos that behave like paintings. Through a complex enterprise of character development, costume design and fabrication, performance and film production, Bress provides something akin to a glimpse inside paintings. His characters—which he sometimes refers to as friends—are usually sandwiched in a shallow space between a painted backdrop and a screen in front of them, which they often slice open in an attempt to peer through or be seen. Camouflaged with their surroundings, the characters literally wear pictures in the form of canvas clothing and painted masks, alternately presenting and concealing themselves. They draw, cut, saw, arrange and pose to reveal invented worlds that form, unfurl and disappear within the window of flat-screen television monitors.

Humor and playfulness are embedded within the slow, deliberate movements of Bress’ figures, which feel familiar—a combination of cartoon- and puppet-like beings. They seem approachable, yet there is no interaction with the viewer—they are hermetically sealed behind glass in repeating fifteen- to thirty-minute loops. Bress unites the masks and costumes with painterly environments through his performance. The characters strive to create meaning through their actions, which transcend spoken language. Their simultaneous appeal and inaccessibility make the question of who they are and what they are trying to say that much more compelling.

Brian Bress: Pictures Become You is organized by the Akron Art Museum and supported by funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Ohio Arts Council, and The Char and Chuck Fowler Family Foundation.

 

The Fabricators
Judith Bear Isroff Gallery
Through March 3

In the mid-twentieth century, abstract painters pushed back against the venerable tradition of easel painting, applying pigment to canvas sprawled directly on the floor. A generation of artists working in the late 1960s and 1970s went further, manipulating canvas or paper in ways that fabric is commonly handled: folding, scrunching or sewing. The Fabricators brings together the work of four artists who treated paper and canvas like one might treat cloth.

While best known for his canvases draped from ceilings and walls, Sam Gilliam (born 1933) is also an accomplished printmaker. For Thursday, Gilliam paired a handmade sheet of paper with another covered in marks applied with a silkscreen and stitched the two pieces together using a sewing machine. Craig Lucas (1941-2011) applied acrylic paint to the surface of paper collaged with tape, fabric and paperboard, then scraped away at the pigment. For his untitled work from 1973, Lucas folded the linen-back paper as he worked. Alan Shields (1944-2005) learned to sew while growing up on a farm in central Kansas and used fabric dye to add color to paper and canvas, embellishing the surfaces with beads and machine-stitched thread. Kenneth Showell (1939-1997) crumpled canvas into balls and showered it with tiny droplets of paint using a spray gun.

The Fabricators is organized by the Akron Art Museum with support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Ohio Arts Council and Rory and Dedee O’Neil.

 

 

PLANES, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES | THROUGH JULY 19
MARY S. AND DAVID C. CORBIN FOUNDATION GALLERY

JEFF DONALDSON: DIG | THROUGH JANUARY 21
KARL AND BERTL ARNSTEIN GALLERIES

ALLISON ZUCKERMAN: PIRATE AND MUSE | THROUGH JANUARY 21
KARL AND BERTL ARNSTEIN GALLERIES

BRIAN BRESS: PICTURES BECOME YOU | THROUGH APRIL 14
FRED AND LAURA RUTH BIDWELL GALLERY

THE FABRICATORS | THROUGH MARCH 3
JUDITH BEAR ISROFF GALLERY

Akron Art Museum

One South High Street

Akron, Ohio 44308

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