Past
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Art Toronto
24 - 27 Oct 2024 Claire Oliver Gallery is pleased to announce its presentation at the 2024 edition of Art Toronto as part of the Discover program, presented by the Royal Bank of Canada. The exhibition showcases more than ten recent works from the gallery’s program, including new works by artists Gio Swaby, Simone Saunders,... Read more -
Carolyn Mazloomi: Whole Cloth, Narratives in Black and White
3 Sep - 9 Nov 2024 Claire Oliver Gallery is pleased to present Whole Cloth: Narratives in Black and White, the gallery’s first solo exhibition of work by Carolyn Mazloomi and the artist’s first-ever gallery exhibition. Through the medium of large-scale quilts, Mazloomi recounts the valiant lives of Black civil-rights activists, leaders and revolutionaries, often overlooked... Read more -
A Brief History of the Future
31 May - 3 Aug 2024 Claire Oliver Gallery is pleased to present A Brief History of the Future , a special group exhibition of works by gallery artists BK Adams, Barbara Earl Thomas, Stan Squirewell, LaNia Roberts, and Carolyn Mazloomi. Expressing themselves through painting, paper cuts, glasswork, found photography, and quilting, the artists in this... Read more -
EXPO CHICAGO 2024
"Threads" 11 - 14 Apr 2024 Claire Oliver Gallery is pleased to return to EXPO CHICAGO for the ninth year in a row, presenting an exhibition of new works by artists Gio Swaby and BK Adams. On view at booth #356 from April 8 – 14, 'Threads' features more than 15 new works including Swaby’s signature... Read more -
Teetering on the Brink:
Femininity, Inheritance, and Disaster 15 Mar - 25 May 2024 Claire Oliver Gallery is pleased to present Teetering on the Brink: Femininity, Inheritance, and Disaster, a special group exhibition marking the New York City debut of work by artists Sami Tsang, Ebony Russell, and Suyao Tian. The exhibition spans media including figurative sculpture, watercolor on paper, sculptural vessels, and installation... Read more -
Barbara Earl Thomas: The Illuminated Body
UPenn Arthur Ross Gallery 17 Feb - 21 May 2024 Barbara Earl Thomas’ most recent series of portraits weave an exquisite tapestry of light and color to depict individuals illuminated in moments of creativity. Invoking the history of portraiture, Thomas’ nine large-scale cut paper pieces celebrate great Black cultural icons such as August Wilson, Seth Parker Woods, and Charles Johnson,... Read more -
Reimagining Icons: Counter-Narratives and Histories Enriched
curated by Evlyne Laurin 19 Jan - 9 Mar 2024 Reimagining Icons: Counter-Narratives and Histories Enriched , an exhibition created by Canadian curator Evlyne Laurin and featuring new works by artists Moridja Kitenge Banza, Simone Elizabeth Saunders, Erika DeFreitas, and Shanna Strauss. The exhibition highlights a connection to a global diaspora of Black community; the four artists have connected through... Read more -
SCOPE Miami Beach: Booth F01
5 - 10 Dec 2023 Claire Oliver Gallery announces our curated program for SCOPE 2023. New large-scale installations by Aaron T. Stephan, Lauren Fensterstock, & BK Adams will have a significant presence at the fair. At the same time, public space has been secured for a special presentation of 'In a Time of Panthers,' the... Read more -
Stan Squirewell
We Speak In Rivers 10 Nov 2023 - 13 Jan 2024 Through a ritualized process, Squirewell’s work examines who curates and controls the narratives that become accepted as history; from what perspective is history written, whose stories are told, and whose are neglected? “As a child of the hip hop era, born in the 70s, growing up in the 80s and... Read more -
BK Adams: Five Miles
Claire Oliver Gallery, Harlem 8 Sep - 4 Nov 2023 “My goal is to make works that are both personal and universal, inspirational, and empathetic,” said Adams. “I am motivated by my own life as a father, artist, and spiritual being in the hopes that I can bring something important to the community. Each element in my work is symbolic.... Read more -
Gio Swaby: I Will Blossom Anyway
Claire Oliver Gallery, Harlem 19 May - 15 Jul 2023 ' My work operates in the context of understanding love as liberation - a healing and restorative force. These pieces celebrate personal style, vulnerability, strength, beauty, individuality, and imperfections.' - Gio Swaby Having grown up in the Bahamas surrounded by the materials her seamstress mother used, Swaby chose to work... Read more -
Claire Oliver Gallery at EXPO CHICAGO
13 - 16 Apr 2023 ''My work revolves around an exploration of identity, more specifically, the intersections of Blackness and womanhood. I am interested in the ways in which this physical identity can serve as a positive force of connection and closeness, while also examining its imposed relationship to otherness.'' - Gio Swaby 'Marginalized communities... Read more -
Gio Swaby: Fresh Up
at The Art Institute of Chicago 8 Apr - 3 Jul 2023 'My work operates in the context of understanding love as liberation—a healing and restorative force. These pieces celebrate personal style, vulnerability, strength, beauty, individuality, and imperfections.' Gio Swaby: Fresh Up is organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg. The exhibition is curated by... Read more -
Simone Elizabeth Saunders: Unearthing Unicorns
17 Mar - 13 May 2023 “ Unearthing Unicorns references both literal and figurative iterations of the historical fable,” states Saunders. “I reimagine stories played out in our history, such as the famous and treasured Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries, to show Black women portrayed as being highly valued and respected. Through my work, I want... Read more -
Hear Me Now, the Black Potters of Old Edgefield
at Museum of Fine Arts Boston 4 Mar - 9 Jul 2023 This exhibition tells a story about art and enslavement—and about the joy, struggle, creative ambition, and lived experience of African Americans in the decades before the Civil War. The exhibition features many objects never before seen outside of the South, bringing together monumental storage jars by the enslaved and literate... Read more -
Barbara Earl Thomas: The Illuminated Body
at The Chrysler Museum of Art 24 Feb - 20 Aug 2023 Layers of luminous, jewel-colored paper pulse with life behind cut black-paper portraits made by Barbara Earl Thomas. These new works by the celebrated artist, writer, and thinker meditate on the visual experience of the body within a physical and metaphorical world of light and shadow. Based on real people, the... Read more -
Adebunmi Gbadebo: Remains
13 Jan - 11 Mar 2023 “I’ve been dedicated to exploring materials, like rice, indigo and cotton, whose origins as commodities were born of violence and enslavement,” states Gbadebo. “My newest work is even more intimate and personal: I have crafted ceramic vessels from the very land that was once cleared by my ancestors as a... Read more -
LOOP Overtown Miami
28 Nov - 3 Dec 2022 Read more -
Barbara Earl Thomas: Make A Joyful Noise
11 Nov 2022 - 7 Jan 2023 'I use my knife like the oar that slices the water’s surface in a swirling motion to reveal through some magic the biofluorescence—I cut to reveal, to make seen. ' T'he body is a liquid vessel, a sculptural form that carries its own light emitted in gestures, movements, sighs, and... Read more -
Judith Schaechter : MAKE / BELIEVE
21 Oct - 17 Dec 2022 “While it may not loo k like at first, the works in MAKE/BELIEVE represent moments in time that are more familiar than you might expect,” states Schaechter. “I am compelled by the relationships of inspiration, creativity and beauty. The experience of a stained-glass window is not only visual per se,... Read more -
1-54 Contemporary, London 2022
Robert Peterson, Simone Elizabeth Saunders, Stan Squirewell 13 - 16 Oct 2022 Read more -
Robert Peterson: When You See Them, You See Me
9 Sep - 5 Nov 2022 'My paintings and the people I paint will live forever, longer than you or I. Black men and boys are gunned down and dying daily and to often they don’t get the chance to live long lives. My goal with every painting especially those focusing on a black person is... Read more -
Future Perfect
Summer Group Exhibition 23 Jun - 30 Jul 2022 Please join us to view our summer group exhibition featuring new works of art by Barbara Earl Thomas, Adebunmi Gbadebo, Robert Peterson, Stan Squirewell, Gio Swaby, and introducing the work of Simone Elizabeth Saunders. Read more -
Gio Swaby: Fresh Up @ MFA St. Petersburg FL
28 May - 9 Oct 2022 The Bahamian-born artist Gio Swaby sews portraits in fabric and thread that she has called “love letters to Black women.” She starts with a photograph of the subject, and in the series “Pretty Pretty” the resulting works are life-size for extra monumentality. The show’s more than 40 works demonstrate how... Read more -
EXPO CHICAGO
Stand 107 7 - 10 Apr 2022 Claire Oliver Gallery is thrilled to announce our return to Chicago for a long-overdue in-person celebration of art. At this inception of EXPO CHICAGO, the Gallery will bring major new works by artists Gio Swaby, Robert Peterson, Adebunmi Gbadebo, and Stan Squirewell. These artists whose practices vary but share a... Read more -
Stan Squirewell : Who That Is?
25 Mar - 11 Jun 2022 “As a child of the hip hop era, born in the 70s, growing up in the 80s and 90s, I look at my work as almost remixing, crate-digging, but my crates are museums, private collections, and historical narratives,” states Squirewell. “I remix my pieces according to my own way of... Read more -
A CONTEMPORARY BLACK MATRIARCHAL LINEAGE IN PRINTMAKING
29 Jan - 19 Mar 2022 Featuring Works By:
Tanekeya Word, Delita Martin, LaToya Hobbs, Lisa Hunt, Ann Johnson, Karen J Revis, Chloe Alexander, Sam Vernon, and Stephanie Santana Read more -
UNTITLED ART, MIAMI BEACH 2021
29 Dec 2021 - 4 Jun 2022 Point of Contact features the work of four artists whose practices vary but share commonality in their desire to reframe the often politicized Black body. Featuring figuration across mediums including Thomas’s signature polychrome cut paper, Swaby’s thread line
drawings on textile and polychrome quilt portraits, Peterson’s monumental oil on canvases and Squirewell’s mixed media photo collage, each work presents an opportunity for engagement where the art historical “gaze” is reversed and viewers are met as equals. The four artists use their works as a striking rebuke to white supremacy, eschewing negativity, they uplift by depicting their community in beauty, joy, and power as the ultimate form of resistance. Read more -
LEONARDO BENZANT: ACROSS SEVEN RUINS AND REDEMPTIONS SOMO KAMARIOKA
11 Nov 2021 - 23 Jan 2022 Read more -
1-54 CONTEMPORARY, LONDON 2021
14 - 17 Oct 2021 'A major aspect of Ms. Swaby’s practice is using her work as a celebration. For her, being joyful as a Black woman, as well as connecting and sharing in that joy with other Black women, is a form of resistance. “What I’m trying to achieve, over all, is to have... Read more -
Jeffrey Henson Scales: In a Time of Panthers
16 Sep - 6 Nov 2021 'As a young activist, I learned how important it is to have a concrete mission to help improve the community you’re speaking for. It’s not just about slogans and protests. It’s also about improving communities and serving underserved people in those communities, and how important that is. I’ve just sort... Read more -
LAUREN FENSTERSTOCK: IMPERMANENT CONDITIONS
12 Jun - 14 Aug 2021 “With so much turmoil on the ground, I've turned my eyes to the sky for wisdom. Moody storms. Ominous comets. Dying stars” states Fensterstock. “Weather events and celestial sightings are a historically rich location for the projection of human anxiety, hopes, and fears. Mosaics highlight the tension between small parts... Read more -
LOVE LETTERS FOR HARLEM
Works by Shawn W. Walker, Ruben Natal-San Miguel, Jeffrey Henson Scales, John Pinderhughes 20 Feb 2021 - 3 Apr 2022 “As longtime residents of Harlem, we are inspired by the rich cultural lineage of our neighborhood,” states gallerist Claire Oliver. “In the midst of this challenging year when we have all been so isolated, we wanted to showcase the resiliency and celebrate the individuals, geography, and culture of Harlem through... Read more -
ADEBUMNI GABADEBO: A DILEMMA OF INHERITANCE
17 Sep - 14 Nov 2020 Claire Oliver Gallery is pleased to announce the debut solo exhibition by artist Adebunmi Gbadebo, A Dilemma of Inheritance. The exhibition will showcase the artist’s True Blue series which is comprised of more than 45 works that grapple with concepts surrounding heredity and the evolution of memory and forgetting focused... Read more -
Bisa Butler : THE STORM, THE WHIRLWIND AND THE EARTHQUAKE
29 Feb - 20 Jun 2020 Bisa Butler Read more
