Blackbird Rook is presenting three artists with Foundations, an online fair curated by Artsy, spotlighting fresh works from galleries that discover and nurture rising artists. This year’s fair includes presentations from galleries in 36 countries, featuring exceptional talents whose practices deserve greater recognition.
Christina Barrera, Nick Devereux and Susan Metrican
CHRISTINA BARRERA
Christina Barrera is a first-generation Colombian-American artist from West Palm Beach, Florida. She holds a BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art, an MFA from Hunter College, and works as a multidisciplinary artist and educator in New York City. Her works span a variety of mediums, including painting, printmaking, sculpture, and textile.
Barrera’s work often deals with questions of the body, identity, and colonialism, particularly in terms of how they relate to craft. Her figurative drawings pay homage to the glyphs and icons of Pre-Colonial South and Central America, a reclamation of what has been stolen and erased through colonization, while her textiles are demonstrative of her effort to weave information into the very fabric of the work, even down to the techniques she uses. She blends indigenous and European weaving traditions to talk about imperialism and her own identity as mestizo. Barrera’s work is also highly tied to her own body and the labor of the body. Her work truly captures the famous adage “the personal is political,” and through it, she asks us to contemplate the borders within ourselves, our lands, and our universe.
NICK DEVEREUX
Nick Devereux (born 1978 in Panama City) lives and works in London. He works between sculpture, painting, drawing and photography. His studio is a stage for imaginary environments filled with surfaces and sculptures made from a range of found materials: broken glass and ceramics, wood, metals and scraps of fabric.
Often, these dioramas are drawn or painted through careful observation, resulting in images that seem both familiar and unnatural. Recent solo shows include: Ritorno al collage. Nick Devereux e i maestri italiani del disegno novecentesco / Case Chiuse #07, a cura di Irina Zucca Alessandrelli, Bosco Verticale, Milan, 2019; In the Round, Adelaide, Marseille, 2018; Nick Devereux, Museo Pietro Canonica, Rome, 2017; Known Unknown, Art Club Villa Medici, Rome, 2016.
SUSAN METRICAN
Susan Metrican is an artist living and working in Fairfield, IA via Boston, NYC, Toronto, and Bangkok. Metrican received an MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute, and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2014.
“I am drawn to images and objects that resonate across seemingly disparate cultures and time periods. As a Thai American raised mostly in the midwest, I am interested in imagery that is “culturally familiar” through its connection to folktales and shared traditions, particularly imagery that evokes a reverence for rural life.”
ARTSY FOUNDATIONS
The Foundations online fair will be live at 9am EST on Tuesday, January 23
At launch please click below.