“Contextual Proportions”
November 15 - February 3, 2020
Jenkins-Johnson Projects, 207 Ocean Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11225
Kenturah Davis collaborates with Jenkins-Johnson Projects in organizing a group show highlighting artists who work with text as a flexible material that can both amplify and diffuse ideas. “Contextual Proportions” is inspired by An excerpt from Toni Morrison’s essay “Sites of Memory” which states, “If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic.” Each artist leverages the written language to explore dualities including: legibility/illegibility and meaning/mystery.
The show includes a large-scale, multi-panel book and a corresponding video by Davis in which she transcribes an section of the congressional debate passing the 13th amendment across 200 sheets of handmade kozo paper. The loose-leaf stack of pages expands into a 16’ wide wall drawing when completely installed. The looming figure in the image is rendered by layering the text of the document in repetition.
Artists:
Sadie Barnette
Adriana Corral
Kenturah Davis
Johnathan Payne
Esteban Ramon Perez
Kameelah Janan Rasheed
Peter Williams