AMERICAN VERSES: TERRY ADKINS, MARK BRADFORD & KERRY JAMES MARSHALL
March 2021 - March 2022 (CLOSED)
Featuring works from the collections of the Art Bridges Foundation and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
Peoria Riverfront Museum in collaboration with the Art Bridges Foundation and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art proudly presents "American Verses: Terry Adkins, Mark Bradford & Kerry James Marshall."
The yearlong exhibition features seminal works by celebrated contemporary Black American artists Terry Adkins, Mark Bradford and Kerry James Marshall from the collections of Art Bridges and Crystal Bridges. These chosen works inform the traditions of painting and sculpture by channeling a variety of literary references.
Through a subversive use of a variety of literary influences, a sense of arrested speech emerges as these works collectively elicit insightful perspectives of the Black male experience. The following descriptions are written to provide context for our viewers in the form of a brief prospectus and are intended to bring our viewers closer to the concept of the exhibition.
These works by Adkins, Bradford and Marshall both induce strength and achieve a perceived silence and theatricality through the adaptation and interruption of language. These important and poignant contemporary works situate, define, and unsettle space while simultaneously relating the literary influences of novel, poem, play and myth to intensify the experience. Collectively, they bring the viewer into narratives that are informed by their own collective and individual pasts while beckoning a united future.