Curated by Larry Ossei Mensah and Serena Trizzino

Artists: Firelei Báez, Abigail DeVille, Alexandria Smith, Derrick Adams, Paul Anthony Smith, William Villalongo

"The artists featured in Postcard from New York – Part II are all actively creating thought-provoking work that directly responds to the dramatically shifting social, cultural and political landscape. By way of their varied artistic practices, each artist selected shares a vision and sensibility that employ a dynamic approach to art making and underpin the diverse ways in which Afro-descended artists are challenging the status quo, living, working, and experiencing the world."

Anna Marra Contemporanea

32 Via di S. Angelo in Pescheria Roma, Italy 00186

June 6 ,2018 - July 27, 2018

Curated by Greer Pagano

Artists: Nicole Eisenman, Tala Madani, Joan Semmel, Allison Zuckerman, Deana Lawson, Omar Victor Diop, Derrick Adams, Nathanial Mary Quinn, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Kehinde Wiley and William Villalongo

"The works in this exhibition do not shy away from fundamental discussions pertinent to our culture wars, showing how figuration in painting, photography, and sculpture can address aging, sexuality, the inequities of the art historical canon, social media obsessions, and definitions of intimacy."

Pizzuti Collection

632 North Park Street Columbus, OH 43215

May 10, 2018 - August 12, 2018

African American Museum in Philadelphia
701 Arch St, Philadelphia
February 2 - April 29, 2018

"This new body of work suggests a re-imagining of the black male figure at a time when current events and statistics reflect a social reality of limited expectations, contingency, and disproportionate fear. Within the dark tones of these meditations on physiology, the artist uses metaphors of invisibility, nature, and reformation as necessary conditions of being. Much like fallen autumn leaves, Villalongo’s men navigate their world, subject to an unpredictable wind - piling, spinning, and re-collecting. The work conjures spaces of sensuality, humor, and history. Titled after Curtis Mayfield’s 1970 'Keep on Pushing,' Villalongo’s recent body of work speaks to the inherent human spirit’s will to persevere and to find a way."

Susan Inglett Gallery
522 West 24th St, New York, New York 10011
October 26 - December 9
Opening Reception: October 26 from 6 - 8pm

Black Pulp is on a national tour 2016-18 traveling to Yale School of Art, IPCNY, USF Contemporary Art Museum, Wesleyan University, and African American Museum in Philadelphia. Curated by the artists William Villalongo and Mark Thomas Gibson, the exhibition explores the creative and strategic use of printed media such as small run magazines, fiction novels, posters and comic books to challenge racist narratives and change limited notions of Black experience. 

Wesleyan University
The Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery
45 Wyllys Ave, Middletown, CT
September 19 - December 10, 2017

EFA brings together the work of Jennifer Paige Cohen, Anoka Faruqee, Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, Sheila Pepe, Alison Saar, Rachel Stern, William Villalongo, Brian Zegeer.

Curated by Carrie Moyer

"Near & Dear is an intergenerational exhibition that explores amorous connections artists make with signifying materials and objects. This group of eight artists use objects to deliver embodied meaning, from the haptic to the optical to cerebral. All have an investment in a specific material culture and the product of their research takes the form of discrete artifacts."

 EFA Project Space
323 W. 39th Street, 2nd floor, New York, New York 10018
September 15 - October 28
Opening Reception: September 15 from 6 - 8pm

"Outside My Name or Through Other Eyes, weaves the artist’s aesthetic and social interests together with aspects of Pablo Picasso and Aaron Douglas’s visual vocabulary. Villalongo’s paintings, collage works and prints draw upon the distinct illustrative style and political forcefulness employed by Douglas, a celebrated Harlem Renaissance artist. Also evident is the artist’s creative contextualization and reinterpretation of these Modernist Era Masters’ Formalist experiments, their love of African Art and use of black iconography. Villalongo’s art likewise references Picasso’s sexually charged Bather canvases and his once notorious painting, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, from 1907."

UCONN
School of Fine Arts
Contemporary Art Galleries
830 Bolton Road, Storrs, Connecticut 06269
September 11 - October 13, 2017
Opening Reception: September 11 from 5:30 - 6:30pm

BLACK PULP!

A century of visualizing Black experience

June 2–July 22, 2017 - USFCAM Lee & Victor Leavengood Gallery

Hours: M–F 10am–5pm, Thurs. 10am–8pm, Sat. 1–4pm, Closed Sundays cam.usf.edu | 813-974-4133 | caminfo@admin.usf.edu | #usfcam

Black Pulp! examines evolving perspectives of Black identity in American culture and history from 1912 to 2016 through rare historical printed media shown in dialogue with contemporary works of art. The exhibition highlights works by artists, graphic designers, writers, and publishers in formats ranging from little known comic books to covers for historic books and magazines, to etchings, digital prints, drawings, and media-based works by some of today’s leading artists. Historical printed media includes dust jackets by Aaron Douglas and Loïs Mailou Jones, offset lithographs by Charles White, rare Black comics Lobo #1 and All Negro Comics, periodicals Crisis, Fire!! and Opportunity, novels by Chester Himes, album covers by Sun Ra, Donna Summer and more! The exhibition is co-curated by New-York based artists William Villalongo and Mark Thomas Gibson and organized by International Print Center New York. 

CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS

POPE.L, KENNY RIVERO, ALEXANDRIA SMITH, FELANDUS THAMES, HANK WILLIS THOMAS, KARA WALKER , FRED WILSON, DERRICK ADAMS, LAYLAH ALI, FIRELEI BÁEZ, NAYLAND BLAKE, ROBERT COLESCOTT, RENEE COX , WILLIAM DOWNS, ELLEN GALLAGHER, TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK, LUCIA HIERRO, YASHUA KLOS, KERRY JAMES MARSHALL, WANGECHI MUTU, LAMAR PETERSON

WOKE!

June 2–July 22, 2017 - USFCAM West Gallery

Woke! brings together recent work by William Villalongo and Mark Thomas Gibson, artists and the curators of Black Pulp!. The term “woke” is contemporary American vernacular terminology for acute awareness, particularly in reference to the socio-political contexts we inhabit. Woke! presents works made over the past two years, a time when the influence of the hyper-visuality of police violence upon Black bodies and the cultural currents of the Black Lives Matter movement informed new narratives in their practice. They traverse the psychic and spiritual landscape of Black erasure through narrative-figural styles; often negotiating high and low forms of image making. Limited notions of the illustrative tradition’s ability to take on grand narrative or serious content is confronted, questioned and overturned by these works. Villalongo and Gibson address perennial change, biology, protest and revolution in highly contrasting ways, opening up pathways to engage the difficult realities of American history and culture. Woke! calls on the viewer to reorient themselves to current cultural inequities and their reverberations on how we imagine ourselves from the inside out. Woke! is organized by USF Contemporary Art Museum.