Steve Turner is pleased to present One Way Ticket, a three-person online exhibition featuring recent works by Patrick Alston, Khari Turner and Raelis Vasquez. Each creates paintings that reflect their experiences as young Black men at the outset of their professional careers. While they are all under thirty, they have been single-mindedly on the art road for some time, having moved from city to city to pursue education, experience and self-reflection. Their artistic styles differ–ranging from the gestural abstraction of Alston to the social realism of Vasquez with Turner’s expressive figuration lying somewhere in between—but they all seek to represent their struggles, those of their community and those of their forebears with clarity and nuance. As a group, they well represent the current moment, demonstrating that identity shapes work, but also that work can shape identity.
Patrick Alston creates energy-infused paintings with titles which are meant to trigger thoughts on politics, identity and language. He chooses colors for their psychological value and remixes gestures found in the graffiti of the urbanscape and the history of abstract painting. Alston hopes his paintings will inspire viewers to look more closely at the world around them so that they might see the same beauty that he sees.
Khari Turner creates expressionist gestural portraits with realistic details of Black lips, noses and limbs that represent his struggles as a young Black man trying to find his way in an uncertain world. He attributes his fluid mark-making approach to his experience of growing up in Milwaukee where he often sat contemplatively along the shoreline of Lake Michigan. While Black issues are central to his work, he hopes to inspire thought and contemplation rather than pain.
Raelis Vasquez creates representational paintings of scenes drawn from his immigrant Afro-Latinx community. He does so in a naturalistic manner to give clarity to the subjects and to convey the psychological state of the individuals depicted. As an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, Vasquez hopes to inspire viewers to question their position on issues of class, race and national origin.
Please direct inquiries to
steve@steveturner.la
jonathan@steveturner.la
