More Alive | Art Basel OVR 2020
Charlie James Gallery is delighted to present a solo presentation titled More Alive by Oakland-based artist Sadie Barnette, featuring six new 45 x 36 inch powdered graphite on paper drawings and three new photo-based works at the same scale for Art Basel OVR: Miami Beach this December. The presentation will be available to view at the gallery by appointment through January 1st, 2021.
Barnette’s six new works from her “Text Compositions” series employ a playful, familiar visual design sensibility in depicting phrases and words that appeal to ideas of community, agency, and resilience. Phrases such as We All We Got, Together, Change, People in Motion, and More Alive provide a chorus of affirmation in direct response to the contemporary moment.
Barnette’s photo-based works operate in ways similar to collage, typically bringing together images from the physical world with suggestions of celestial transcendence. In one piece, a verdant marijuana plant is foregrounded amidst an otherworldly orange sky captured during the devastating 2020 fire season in Northern California. A vase of wilted flowers shot in harsh light against a gray fabric background is illuminated by a halo of Swarovski crystals applied to the surface of the print. An array of cowrie shells, formerly used as currency in African culture(s) and still key elements in rituals of divination, float against the backdrop of the moon.
Sadie Barnette (b. 1984, Oakland, CA) has a BFA from CalArts and an MFA from University of California, San Diego. She has been awarded grants and residencies by the Studio Museum in Harlem, Artadia, Art Matters, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Headlands Center for the Arts, and the Carmago Foundation in France. She has had solo shows in the following public institutions: ICA Los Angeles, The Lab and the Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco; MCA San Diego, CA; Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Haverford College, PA; and the Manetti Shrem Museum, UC Davis. Her work is in the permanent collections of: the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); Brooklyn Museum, NY; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; Guggenheim Museum, NY; MCA San Diego; JP Morgan Chase Collection; Blanton Museum at UT Austin, TX; Cornell Fine Arts Museum; and the Berkeley Art Museum, CA. Barnette lives and works in Oakland, CA. She is represented by Charlie James Gallery and Jessica Silverman.
Selected Works
Installation
