Book Signing | Betye Saar: Black Doll Blues
Saturday, February 18, 2023 | 1–3pm
Betye Saar will sign copies of her latest catalogue Betye Saar: Black Doll Blues at Roberts Projects' new gallery location.
Published by Roberts Projects, Betye Saar: Black Doll Blues features new watercolor works on paper and assemblages by Saar (born 1926) that incorporate the artist’s personal collection of Black dolls. These watercolors showcase the artist’s experimentation with vivid color and layered techniques, and her new interest in flat shapes. While Saar has previously used painting in her mixed media collages, this is the first publication to focus on her watercolor works on paper.
New Roberts Projects Publication
Amoako Boafo
The first monograph on the sinuous, exhilaratingly colorful and pattern-filled portraiture of Amoako Boafo.
Exclusively portraying individuals from the diaspora and beyond, Boafo invites a reflection on Black subjectivity, diversity and complexity. His portraits, notable for their bold colors and patterns, celebrate his subjects as a means to challenge portrayals that objectify and dehumanize Blackness. As Boafo has stated, “the primary idea of my practice is representation, documenting, celebrating and showing new ways to approach Blackness.”
Opening Night with Artist Kehinde Wiley
Talk Easy Podcast
January 28, 2023
Talk Easy Podcast sits down with renowned artist Kehinde Wiley on the opening night of Colorful Realm, his new exhibition at Roberts Projects in Los Angeles.
“Portraiture is trying to approximate the temperature of someone. The way that they dress, the way that they see themselves as elevated. I encourage my models to go through art history books and look at the poses that old aristocrats were holding in original paintings.” -Kehinde Wiley, episode 315 of Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso
Kehinde Wiley: “My Figures Demand to Be Taken Seriously”
AnOther Magazine
January 26, 2023
by Alayo Akinkugbe
The New York-based artist – who mixes Japanese Edo period landscaping with western easel painting traditions to dazzling effect – discusses his new exhibition in LA, and configuring Black bodies within “non-western models of freedom of space”
How the Artist Kehinde Wiley Went from Picturing Power to Building It
The New Yorker
December 26, 2022
By Julian Lewis
Soliciting pedestrians in the Matongé neighborhood of Brussels, Kehinde Wiley, forty-five, looked more like a sidewalk canvasser than he did a world-famous artist. He sidled up to strangers in an orange hoodie and lime-green Air Jordans, extending a hand and flashing a gap-toothed grin.
Jeffrey Gibson | The Spirits Are Laughing
Aspen Art Museum
November 4, 2022 - Fall 2023
A new rooftop installation has opened at the Aspen Art Museum as part of Jeffrey Gibson's exhibtion titled THE SPIRITS ARE LAUGHING. The Installation combines an assemblage of anthropomorphized sculptural heads that incorporate stones, fossils, and other natural materials, representative of geolic and natural time. These sculptures are in dialogues with a grouping of Gibsons' signture brightly colored flags, each with a different pattern, text, lyric or slogan.
Amoako Boafo Launches Dot.ateliers Artist Space in Accra, Ghana
December 16, 2022
Next week Ghanian-born, Austria-based painter Amoako Boafo will debut dot.ateliers, Accra’s latest artist residency and art exhibition space. The three-story structure designed by David Adjaye is an “architectural tool” for sustainable design for the community-guided project that serves as a multifaceted space for incubation, mentorship, and gathering. Dot.ateliers opens with Postcards from Home, a solo exhibition of Boafo’s works curated by Aindrea Emelife that reflects on the artist’s relationship with his hometown, and will be followed with a group exhibition curated by Akworkor Thompson, Play it Loud, in January.
New Roberts Projects Publication
Betye Saar: Black Doll Blues
An investigation into Betye Saar's lifelong interest in Black dolls, with new watercolors, historic assemblages, sketchbooks and a selection of Black dolls from the artist's collection.
This volume features new watercolor works on paper and assemblages by Betye Saar (born 1926) that incorporate the artist's personal collection of Black dolls. These watercolors showcase the artist’s experimentation with vivid color and layered techniques, and her new interest in flat shapes. While Saar has previously used painting in her mixed media collages, this is the first publication to focus on her watercolor works on paper.
Jeffrey Gibson: They Come From Fire
Portland Art Museum
October 15, 2022 – February 26, 2023
An immersive, site-responsive installation by multimedia artist Jeffrey Gibson, They Come From Fire will transform the exterior windows on the facade of the museum’s main building as well as its two-story interior Schnitzer Sculpture Court. This dynamic work will celebrate Portland’s Indigenous history, presence and vitality through the use of suspended glass panels, text, and photographic imagery created with Indigenous, BIPOC, LGBTQ+ artists, and other community members on and around the empty monument pedestals in the Park blocks in front of the museum.
Roberts Projects Announces New Location
October 20, 2022
Roberts Projects is thrilled to announce its next chapter with the move to a newly restored, expansive space located in a historic 1948 building in the Mid-Wilshire district of Los Angeles. This relocation marks the gallery’s 23rd year as a significant voice in the Los Angeles arts community. The new creative venue will occupy a 10,000 sq ft historic automobile showroom and feature four exhibition spaces, a bookshop, and a permanent site-specific space conceived by the trailblazing artist Betye Saar. The main exhibition space will be highlighted by a 30-foot-high vaulted ceiling with illuminated “wings.” This major expansion will triple the gallery’s footprint and provide an experience that is reflective of the gallery’s mission and long-term commitment to Los Angeles.
Roberts Projects is leaving Culver City, as gallery scene shifts to Central L.A.
Los Angeles Times
October 20, 2022
By Deborah Vankin
The art gallery scene here continues to expand: Culver City’s Roberts Projects is relocating to a new, triple-in-size location in the Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, punctuating how galleries are coalescing in Hollywood and its environs.
Revisiting 5+1 | Featuring Betye Saar
Paul W. Zuccaire Gallery, Stony Brook University
November 10, 2022 – March 31, 2023
Revisiting 5+1 is a reflection on the historic 1969 Stony Brook University exhibition and features work by the original six artists, all of whom were Black men, with an addition of six Black women artists, all trailblazers at a time when their work in abstraction was challenged by both the mainstream art world and Black art institutions.