Jeff Donaldson: Dig
Karl and Bertl Arnstein Galleries
October 27–January 20

Jeff Donaldson: Dig, the artist’s first museum retrospective, explores Donaldson’s four-decade career. Spanning his activist roots in Chicago to his influence on future generations of artists as a professor at Howard University and vice president of the Barnes Foundation, this major exhibition presents new scholarship and features works never before publicly presented.

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 political and social unrest and in an art world that privileged white artists and audiences. AfriCOBRA sought to create a new kind of art that was not only politically engaged but reflected contemporary Black culture and appealed specifically to a Black audience.

Donaldson’s work across the decades combines energetic colors, intricate patterns and African iconography to celebrate 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 both socially relevant and visually striking. The exhibition features iconic examples of Donaldson’s early work known for its high energy “Kool-Aid” palette. For the first time, these early examples are shown alongside Donaldson’s later, lesser-known works from the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, demonstrating the artist’s lifelong commitment to making, as he often described, “art for the people, not for critics.”

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

 

Allison Zuckerman: Paintings and Sculpture
Karl and Bertl Arnstein Galleries
October 27–January 20

Allison Zuckerman’s art cuts right to the uncomfortable and sometimes painful truths of women’s existence. She undoes Western art history, dismantling bodies and piecing together new ones that expose vulnerability and imperfection. Zuckerman’s figures are amalgams of body parts, clothing and background elements from artists (all male) throughout history, and Disney and other pop culture imagery. Paintings and sculptures made for exhibition at the Akron Art Museum evidence her embrace of the label “pirate” as a plunderer of art history who brazenly steals from other artists.

A Picasso head, a Lucas Cranach torso, Richard Prince hand, Cezanne fruit, Lichtenstein paint brushes and Disney bluebirds comingle to create a grotesque, unapologetic encapsulation of the absurdity with which female figures have been depicted throughout art history. But Zuckerman is not just looking backward. She is proposing a way forward that is more honest, more embracing of the plurality of women’s identities. She states that her work represents a “marginalized perspective that’s been cast aside—one that’s emotional, unsure and vulnerable yet powerful in the conviction that [they] belong in the world.”

Technology and social media figure prominently in Zuckerman’s work. She creates her compositions digitally, taking passages and body parts from online sources, then printing them on canvas and painting on the surface. The artist likens that process to the carefully curated identities people present on social media. Her figures are cobbled together from disparate sources in a performance of a person that when examined closely—like her cut-out sculptures—only exist in a flattened reality. Meanwhile, pixelated areas illustrate the arbitrariness of censorship in our society—background passages, a portion of an arm or an innocent bird appear to be pixelated at random giving the impression that you’re waiting for the painting to fully resolve itself. Which is exactly the point.

Allison Zuckerman is organized by the Akron Art Museum with support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Ohio Arts Council.

 

FRAMEWORKS: PAINTINGS BY DRAGANA CRNJAK, ANDREA JOKI & MATTHEW KOLODZIEJ | THROUGH SEPTEMBER 9 | Judith Bear Isroff Gallery

JERRY BIRCHFIELD: ASLEEP IN THE DUST| THROUGH SEPTEMBER 23 | Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell Gallery

FRONT: AN AMERICAN CITY | THROUGH SEPTEMBER 30 | Karl and Bertl Arnstein Galleries

PLANES, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES | THROUGH JULY 19, 2019 | Mary S. and David C. Corbin Foundation Gallery

JEFF DONALDSON: DIG | OCTOBER 27– JANUARY 20 | Karl and Bertl Arnstein Galleries

ALLISON ZUCKERMAN: PAINTINGS & SCULPTURE | OCTOBER 27–JANUARY 20 | Karl and Bertl Arnstein Galleries

Akron Art Museum

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Akron, Ohio 44308

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