ADAA: The Art Show

February 27–March 1, 2020

Park Avenue Armory
Park Avenue at 67th Street
New York City

Gala Preview – Wednesday, February 26, 2020

Hours
Thursday – Friday: 12 to 8pm
Saturday: 12 to 7pm
Sunday: 12 to 5pm

For The Art Show 2020, we will be exhibiting mixed-media artist, poet, and performer Vanessa German. For this occasion, German will create a new body of work that includes her signature power figures and wall-mounted altars. Her intricately wrought sculptures, built from dense accumulations of found objects and glittering oddments, will be part of a larger, immersive environment.

German’s work is deeply rooted in spirituality and ritual, most notably inspired by traditional central African nkisi figures, characterized by protrusions of nails that signify awakening and healing. Against the backdrop of our national epidemic of violence against people of color and the LQBTQ community, German’s work as a citizen artist (a term she often employs to describe her practice) and activist reflects an increased sense of urgency and agency. Her enigmatic figures confront gun violence, police brutality, and systemic racism head-on through an accretion of signs and surfaces, affirming German’s belief in the transformative power of love and art to heal a community.

Vanessa German is a visual and performance artist based in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Homewood. Homewood is the community that is the driving force behind German’s powerful performance work, and whose cast-off relics form the language of her copiously embellished sculptures. As a citizen artist, German explores the power of art and love as a transformative force in the dynamic cultural ecosystem of communities and neighborhoods. She is the founder of Love Front Porch and the ARThouse, a community arts initiative for the children of Homewood. Her work is in private and public collections including Everson Museum of Art, Figge Art Museum, Flint Institute of Arts, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, David C. Driskell Center, Snite Museum of Art, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art and Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College. German’s fine artwork has been exhibited widely, most recently at the Figge Art Museum, The Union for Contemporary Art, The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia, Flint Institute of Arts, Mattress Factory, Everson Museum of Art, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Studio Museum, Ringling Museum of Art and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Her work has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, NPR’sAll Things Considered and in The Huffington Post, O Magazine and Essence Magazine. She is the recipient of the 2015 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant, the 2017 Jacob Lawrence Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the 2018 United States Artist Grant and most recently the 2018 Don Tyson Prize from Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

Pavel Zoubok Fine Art

Pavel Zoubok