Darius Steward: Moving On

M from the MORE? series comprised of 5 works, watercolor on Yupo paper, 2018. 30 ½ x 38 ½ inches

Bonfoey Gallery and Thomas French Fine Art present Moving On, featuring the newest works of Darius Steward. Bonfoey’s is pleased to be the exclusive venue in Cleveland offering these Steward pieces. We will be hosting an opening reception with the artist on Friday, September 13th from 5:00 to 7:30pm, and Darius will be giving a gallery talk about his work on Saturday, September 14th at 10:30am.

Darius Steward works in watercolor to express social issues of identity, commodity, race, and the placement of African Americans in western culture. Steward believes that visual communication is an agent for change. As he states, “I primarily use watercolor on Yupo paper to achieve a stark whiteness against my saturated subjects. I also often use my subject matter metaphorically to address what is going on culturally. Each and every person I paint is a stand in for myself or for the community. I use watercolor portraiture to bring a voice to social injustices which are going on in the world.”

His work has recently become the subject of critical success throughout Cleveland and the United States. He was the focus of two solo shows—one at the Swope Art Museum in Terre Haute, Indiana, in the spring of 2019, and the other at the Canton Art Museum in 2018. Also in 2018, he was the recipient of the Emerging Artist Award in Visual Arts of the Cleveland Arts Prize, and was selected for inclusion in FRONT International’s The Great Lakes Research show at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

This past fall, he was selected to create a work for the award-winning podcast, Serial, which focused on the Cleveland justice system. The podcast has been downloaded over fifty million times. Choices (Push and Pull) was created for use in an animation sequence for the podcast.

Steward’s works are included in the permanent collection of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Akron Art Museum, Canton Museum of Art, MetroHealth Hospital Collection, Summa Health Collection, Davis Museum (Wellesley College), Flint Institute of Arts, Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art (University of Richmond), Minneapolis Institute of Art, Eskenazi Museum of Art (Indiana University), Stanley Museum of Art (University of Iowa), University of Delaware Museum, and the Swope Art Museum.

 

DARIUS STEWARD | SEPTEMBER 13–OCTOBER 12
Reception 5–7:30pm Friday, September 13 | Artist’s Talk 10:30am Saturday, September 14

ARTISTS TO WATCH | NOVEMBER 1–DECEMBER 7
Reception 5–7:30pm Friday, November 1

 

Bonfoey Gallery

1710 Euclid Avenue

Cleveland, OH 44115

216.621.0178

bonfoey.com

gallery@bonfoey.com