Christie’s recently launched a new exhibition dedicated to showcasing works by Black artists. Spearheaded by 24-year-old New York-based curator and art adviser, Destinee Ross-Sutton, the selling presentation titled “SAY IT LOUD (I’m Black and I’m Proud)” will gather over 40 works by 22 emerging and mid-career Black artists. The total value of works on show is $400,000 USD.
Ross-Sutton is considered to be one of the youngest independent curators to organize multiple exhibitions at prestigious art spaces worldwide. Her portfolio of Black artists includes the likes of Kehinde Wiley, Ghanian-born painter, Amoafo Boako, among others. For her most recent effort, she organized “BLACK VOICES/BLACK MICROCOSM” at Sweden’s CHFILL that spotlighted 30 leading emerging Black contemporary artists such as Rashaad Newsome, David Shrobe, Boafo, Quaicoe, and others.
One of the highlighted works includes a 2017 piece by New York-based multimedia artist Azikiwe Mohammed titled Unarmed that features metallic nameplates set against a red-backed jewelry board that includes the names of Black individuals killed by police in 2016. A pair of photographs by celebrated Houston-based filmmaker, Cary Fagan, who has tackled photography projects for Solange Knowles including her 2019 Marfa visual album “When I Get Home” as well as an album cover for ASAP Rocky are included in the show. Los-Angeles based painter Yoyo Lander’s landmark three figure triptych HAVE TEARS priced at $35,000 USD is also among the works available for purchase.
In regards to Ross-Sutton’s curation for the show, Christie’s expressed in a statement that the works incorporate “deeply personal aspects of their immediate environment, elements of the past, utopian premises, spirituality and digital avenues, each of these artists use their mediums as guiding forces to construct images of identity- whether it be their own, that of a society, or that of an overlooked community- in order to empower voices that have traditionally been silenced.”
One of the highlights of Christie’s upcoming 20th and 21st Century Art auction this October is a rare Jackson Pollock painting called Red Composition. The pivotal work is part of a series of seven paintings created by Pollock in 1946. This was the year when the artist’s signature style emerged with the abstract expressionist fully abandoning the application of paint using a brush, and instead, began to smear the pigment directly from the tube onto his canvasses. Pollock’s drip painting technique would since then revolutionize 20th century art.
Red Composition was painted directly after Pollock’s first drip painting called Free Form as part of the artist’s iconic Sounds in Grass series. “This intricate and multi-faceted work stands among the first paintings in which Pollock freed paint from the interference of his brush, allowing it to take on its own form and in the process become a manifestation of true abstraction,” said Christie’s in a statement.
The painting was offered by the Everson Museum in Syracuse New York as part of a wider commitment to diversity its collection and create a fund for future acquisitions of artworks by artists of color, women artist and other under-represented emerging and mid-career artists. A portion of the proceeds from the auction will help support the conservation of the remaining Pollock works in the museum’s collection.
Christie’s is set to launch its 20th and 21st Century Art auction on October 6 with Red Composition expected to fetch over $12 million USD.
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