What’s good, friends? Today, I’m sharing with you the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit’s (MOCAD) summer 2019 art exhibition season. Check out the summaries of the upcoming exhibitions. Dates for each exhibit is listed at the end of this post.

Peace + Blessings– Jennifer

MOCAD’s SUMMER 2019 SEASON

For its summer 2019 season, MOCAD presents the first US museum solo presentation of Bailey Scieszka and the Detroit museum premieres of Mary Helena Clark, and Helina Metaferia, along with an exhibition of Eddie Martinez and a new installation in Mike Kelley’s Mobile Homestead by Nicolas Lobo.

These exhibitions join KAWS: ALONE AGAIN, the Museum’s lead exhibition of the season.


KAWS, ALONE AGAIN (2016). Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 120 in. Photo: Farzad Owrang.

1. KAWS: ALONE AGAIN BY KAWS

KAWS: ALONE AGAIN, is a solo exhibition of the Brooklyn-based artist KAWS (American, born 1974), organized by the Museum of the Contemporary Art Detroit’s Executive Director Elysia Borowy-Reeder in close collaboration with the artist.

Featuring five sculptures, a site-specific wall work, and three paintings, this highly anticipated exhibition will occupy the main exhibition space of the museum.

ALONE AGAIN will showcase the artist’s masterful compositions that appear to be abstract while retaining the artist’s colorful acrylic palette with his trademark motif. Riffing on specific genres of pop art, figuration, deconstruction, collage, and fashion, the exhibition represents an underlying irreverence and affection for our turbulent times, as well as KAWS’ agility as an artist to appropriate and transform.

KAWS: ALONE AGAIN is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD). Exhibitions and public programs at MOCAD are supported by the A. Alfred Taubman Foundation. Additional support for KAWS: ALONE AGAIN is provided by Library Street Collective.


Eddie Martinez, Time Takes (2018). Oil paint, silkscreen, gesso, spray paint, and pencil, 72 x 108 in. Photo: Stan Narten/JSP Art Photography.

2. FAST EDDIE: NEW PAINTINGS BY EDDIE MARTINEZ

Fast Eddie: New Paintings is a solo exhibition of the Brooklyn-based artist Eddie Martinez (American, born 1977). Featuring over 12 new paintings, this solo exhibition will occupy two gallery spaces showcasing never-before-seen paintings.

Martinez’s masterful abstract compositions include the artist’s signature motif of floating heads and gestural sweeping paint strokes. Spanning from popular urban culture to Action Painting, Automatism, and Surrealism.

Martinez’s work joins together painting and drawing, abstraction and representation in non-traditional ways.  Permeated with a sense of personal iconography, his practice often combines signature figurative elements, such as bug-eyed humans and eclectic headgear with gestural, abstract blocks of color.  

Energetic and raw, his paintings employ an aggressive use of color and texture with various combinations of oil, enamel, spray paint, and collage elements on canvas.

LIMITED-EDITION HAND-PRINTED ARTWORK BY EDDIE MARTINEZ

MOCAD is pleased to offer a limited-edition hand-painted artwork by Eddie Martinez as a special benefit for supporters of the exhibition. Each work within the edition is unique and has been made with the same set of materials, enamel and oil paint on paper.

For inquiries please contact Elysia Borowy-Reeder at eborowy@mocadetroit.org.

Fast Eddie: New Paintings is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) and curated by Elysia Borowy-Reeder, Executive Director. Exhibitions and public programs at MOCAD are supported by the A. Alfred Taubman Foundation. Additional support for Fast Eddie: New Paintings is provided by the Edward C. and Linda Dresner Levy Foundation, Jorge Saade Tanus, and Mitchell-Innes & Nash. 


Nicolas Lobo, Triple Rose Mask Residue Test (Rose water hydrogel, gooseberry hydrator, Cannabis pain creme, double phalaenopsis), 2019. UV ink on aluminum, 12×18 in.
Image courtesy of Nina Johnson Gallery

3. WELLNESS CENTER BY NICOLAS LOBO

Mike Kelley’s Mobile Homestead at MOCAD presents a new series of works by Nicolas Lobo (b. 1979, Los Angeles; lives in Miami) in a solo exhibition entitled Wellness Center.

Miami’s identity as a resort city built atop a crumbling ecology is a source of rich contemplation for Lobo’s research-intensive process. His work often focuses on points of friction within the urban milieu, from informal markets—transnational multi-service shops and relics of the leisure industry.  

In recent work, the Miami-based artist has focused on ways in which the human body extends into the socioeconomic, spanning between individual and collective space.

Wellness Center is conceived specifically for Mike Kelley’s Mobile Homestead at MOCAD, in which Lobo, concerned with the tension between labor and leisure imagines wellness and healing from a variety of collective harms; presenting a prototype for utilities of a new kind.

Nicolas Lobo: Wellness Center at Mike Kelley’s Mobile Homestead is organized by Amy Corle, Curator of Education and Public Engagement. Generous support is provided by John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Nicolas Lobo: Wellness Center is funded by The Ellies, Miami’s visual arts awards, presented by ArtCenter/South Florida.

Mike Kelley’s Mobile Homestead is commissioned by Artangel in association with MOCAD, LUMA Foundation, and Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, with the generous support of the Artangel International Circle. Support for Mike Kelley’s Mobile Homestead is provided by the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts and the MOCAD Leadership Circle.


Mary Helena Clark, The Glass Note (2018). Courtesy of the artist.

4. UNBOXING: DOUBLESPEAK

Unboxing: Doublespeak explores the boundaries between storytelling, self-perception, and moving image through a series of film and video installations. An ensemble of artists and filmmakers that includes Bailey Scieszka, Mary Helena Clark, Laure Prouvost, and Helina Metaferia engage the human voice as both material and technology—confronting its capacity as a narrative device, a vehicle for rendering history, and a means of individual empowerment.

This suite of moving image and experimental media is comprised of new works and regional premieres, and accompanied by a public program series. 

Doublespeak is the first installment in Unboxing, an ongoing series of exhibitions, screenings, and performances dedicated to emerging ideas at the crossroads of technology, media, and contemporary art.

Unboxing: Doublespeak is organized by Pat Elifritz, Curator of New Media and Technology at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, with generous support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.


Martin Creed’s “Work No. 709: EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT” courtesy of Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, Applebaum Family Compass Fund, and Spectrum Neon.
(Photo credit: MOCAD’s official Facebook page)

EXHIBITION VIEWING DATES

KAWS: ALONE AGAIN on view May 10 through August 4, 2019

Eddie Martinez: New Paintings on view May 10 through August 18, 2019

Nicolas Lobo: Wellness Center on view May 10 through August 4, 2019

Unboxing: Doublespeak on view May 10 through August 18, 2019

Visit MOCAD’s official website for more information about their ongoing and future programming.

SOURCE: MOCAD

FEATURE IMAGE: courtesy of MOCAD


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    Written by

    Jennifer Hamra

    Freelance creative Jennifer Hamra created her blog Good Life Detroit in 2015 after relocating from Tennessee to Southeast Michigan.

    Inspired by her love for personal blogging and photography, Jennifer likes to share her favorite Detroit things, from cool places to visit (the hidden gems are her favorite!) to the amazing people she has connected with over the years.

    When she's not busy juggling family life and her creative projects, you can find her at an art gallery, community event, farmers market, or spending quiet time at home with a good book and cup of tea.

    Jennifer lives in the metro Detroit area with her husband Travis and their six children.

    Connect with Jennifer on social media @goodlifedetroit on all social media platforms or via email at [email protected].