Devan Shimoyama

Last updated

Devan Shimoyama (born 1989 in Philadelphia) [1] is a contemporary African-American visual artist best known as a painter that uses mixed mediums in their work. Shimoyama's work is inspired by Black, queer, and male bodies from a personal perspective. [2] The exploration of mythology and folklore also plays a key role in Shimoyama's work. Shimoyama uses his work to examine the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality within everyday life. [2]

Contents

Devan Shimoyama
Born1989
Philadelphia, PA
Nationality American
Education Pennsylvania State University & Yale University School of Art
OccupationFull-Time Faculty at Carnegie Mellon University
Known for Painting, Queer Art, Mixed Media Art, Installation Art
Awards Al Held Fellowship at the Yale University School of Art in 2013 & Artist Residency at the 2015 Fire Island Artist Residency

Early life and education

Devan Shimoyama was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1989. [3]

Shimoyama was exposed to creativity at an early age as his mother studied fashion design and grandfather worked a musician. Though starting off in music as a kid, Shimoyama would later begin to take art courses as his mother noticed his talent with drawing. [4]

He attended Pennsylvania State University as a science major for his undergraduate degree but would later change his program of study to Drawing and Painting during his junior year. [5] Shimoyama would later graduate with his BFA in 2011. [6] Shimoyama was under the advisement of Brian Alfred during undergrad. He then went on to receive his MFA in Painting/Printmaking from Yale University School of Art in 2014. [1]

Artwork, style, and influence

Devan Shimoyama's work focuses on race and sexuality. He often incorporates glitter and rhinestones into his paintings, [7] which consist of large-scale portraits of himself, friends and acquaintances, and figures from his imagination. [8] These characters are drawn from a wide range of sources, from men at barbershops to drag queens. [9] The materials point to drag culture and challenge traditional notions of masculinity and representations of wealth. [7]

Through his work, Shimoyama analyzes the intersections of queer culture and ways it relates to Black American culture. These aspect can often be highlighted through the usage of fur, feathers, glitter and costume jewels including rhinestones and sequins. [10]

Solo/two person exhibitions

[10]

Group exhibitions

[10]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andy Warhol</span> American artist, film director, and producer (1928–1987)

Andy Warhol was an American visual artist, film director, producer, and leading figure in the pop art movement. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, advertising, and celebrity culture that flourished by the 1960s, and span a variety of media, including painting, silkscreening, photography, film, and sculpture. Some of his best-known works include the silkscreen paintings Campbell's Soup Cans (1962) and Marilyn Diptych (1962), the experimental films Empire (1964) and Chelsea Girls (1966), and the multimedia events known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966–67).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean-Michel Basquiat</span> American artist (1960–1988)

Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American artist who rose to success during the 1980s as part of the Neo-expressionism movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kehinde Wiley</span> American artist (born 1977)

Kehinde Wiley is an American portrait painter based in New York City, who is known for his highly naturalistic paintings of Black people, frequently referencing the work of Old Master paintings. He was commissioned in 2017 to paint a portrait of former President Barack Obama for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, which has portraits of all previous American presidents. The Columbus Museum of Art, which hosted an exhibition of his work in 2007, describes his work as follows: "Wiley has gained recent acclaim for his heroic portraits which address the image and status of young African-American men in contemporary culture."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carnegie Mellon School of Art</span> Academic unit of the Carnegie Mellon College of Fine Arts

The Carnegie Mellon School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is a degree-granting institution and a division of the Carnegie Mellon College of Fine Arts. The School of Art was preceded by the School of Applied Design, founded in 1906. In 1967, the School of Art separated from the School of Design and became devoted to visual fine arts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mickalene Thomas</span> American painter

Mickalene Thomas is a contemporary African-American visual artist best known as a painter of complex works using rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel. Thomas's collage work is inspired from popular art histories and movements, including Impressionism, Cubism, Dada, the Harlem Renaissance, and selected works by the Afro-British painter Chris Ofili. Her work draws from Western art history, pop art, and visual culture to examine ideas around femininity, beauty, race, sexuality, and gender.

Deborah Kass is an American artist whose work explores the intersection of pop culture, art history, and the construction of self. Deborah Kass works in mixed media, and is most recognized for her paintings, prints, photography, sculptures and neon lighting installations. Kass's early work mimics and reworks signature styles of iconic male artists of the 20th century including Frank Stella, Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, and Ed Ruscha. Kass's technique of appropriation is a critical commentary on the intersection of social power relations, identity politics, and the historically dominant position of male artists in the art world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chitra Ganesh</span>

Chitra Ganesh is a visual artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Ganesh's work across media includes: charcoal drawings, digital collages, films, web projects, photographs, and wall murals. Ganesh draws from mythology, literature, and popular culture to reveal feminist and queer narratives from the past and to imagine new visions of the future.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nayland Blake</span> American visual artist

Nayland Blake is an American artist whose focus is on interracial attraction, same-sex love, and intolerance of the prejudice toward them. Their mixed-media work has been variously described as disturbing, provocative, elusive, tormented, sinister, hysterical, brutal, and tender.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kent Monkman</span> Canadian artist (born 1965)

Kent Monkman is a Canadian First Nations artist of Cree ancestry. He is a member of the Fisher River band situated in Manitoba's Interlake Region. Monkman lives and works in Toronto, Ontario.

Lyle Ashton Harris is an American artist who has cultivated a diverse artistic practice ranging from photographic media, collage, installation art and performance art. Harris uses his works to comment on societal constructs of sexuality and race, while exploring his own identity as a queer, black man.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ayanah Moor</span> American conceptual artist

Ayanah Moor is a conceptual artist working in print, video, mixed media, and performance. Her work addresses contemporary popular culture by interrogating identity and vernacular aesthetics. Much of her works center on hip-hop culture, American politics, black vernacular and gender performance.

Suzie Silver is an American artist based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, whose artistic focus lies primarily in queer video and performance art. Silver received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute in of Chicago in 1988 and her undergraduate degree from the University of California in 1984 and is currently a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in the School of Art.

Jonathan Lyndon Chase is an American visual artist. Chase's paintings and drawings focus primarily on queer black bodies in mundane, everyday spaces. Chase lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Doron Langberg is an American painter. Langberg paints in the style of genre painting and portraiture and addresses issues of gender and sexuality by making love and desire a shared experience through the surface and subjects of his paintings.

Le déjeuner sur l'herbe: les trois femmes noires is a massive painting created by the African-American visual artist Mickalene Thomas. The painting is both a critique of and reference to Édouard Manet's 1863 painting Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe. Thomas' piece portrays three bold, black women adorned with rich colors, patterned clothing, and radiant Afro-styled hair; the women's positioning and posing is reminiscent of the subjects of Manet's piece, but the gazes of all three women are fixed on the viewer. Thomas created the painting, her largest piece at the time, in 2010 after being commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City to create a display piece for 53rd street window of the museum's restaurant The Modern.

Queer art, also known as LGBT+ art or queer aesthetics, broadly refers to modern and contemporary visual art practices that draw on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and various non-heterosexual, non-cisgender imagery and issues. While by definition there can be no singular "queer art", contemporary artists who identify their practices as queer often call upon "utopian and dystopian alternatives to the ordinary, adopt outlaw stances, embrace criminality and opacity, and forge unprecedented kinships and relationships." Queer art is also occasionally very much about sex and the embracing of unauthorised desires.

Syrus Marcus Ware is a Canadian artist, activist and scholar. He lives and works in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and is an assistant professor in the school of the arts at McMaster University. He has worked since 2014 as faculty and as a designer for The Banff Centre. Ware is the inaugural artist-in-residence for Daniels Spectrum, a cultural centre in Toronto, and a founding member of Black Lives Matter Toronto. For 13 years, he was the coordinator of the Art Gallery of Ontario's youth program. During that time Ware oversaw the creation of the Free After Three program and the expansion of the youth program into a multi pronged offering.

<i>Dos Cabezas</i> 1982 painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat

Dos Cabezas is a painting created by American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1982. The double portrait resulted from Basquiat's first formal meeting with his idol, American pop artist Andy Warhol.

Salman Toor is an American painter. His works depict the imagined lives of young men of South Asian-birth, displayed in close range in either South Asia and New York City fantasized settings. Toor lives and works in New York City.

Anthony Gordon Shadrach is a Canadian artist and educator based in Toronto. Shadrach is known for exploring the semiotics of dress and its impact on culture, in particular the intersection and codification of race and fashion through his painting and textile based work. Born and raised in Brampton to Dominican and Trinidadian parents, Shadrach's work frequently engages themes of Blackness in Canada, the African Diaspora, and masculinity.

References

  1. 1 2 "Devan Shimoyama - Artist | Self-portraiture". De Buck Gallery. Retrieved 2020-06-17.
  2. 1 2 Biswas, Allie. "Devan Shimoyama – interview: 'I use my body to explore magic, mythology, history, intimacy, joy, pain'". www.studiointernational.com. Retrieved 2021-03-31.
  3. "The Artist Up Close: Devan Shimoyama". The Andy Warhol Museum. Retrieved 2021-03-31.
  4. Harper, Daria (2020-07-23). "Devan Shimoyama's Dazzling Paintings Reimagine Black Masculinity". Artsy. Retrieved 2021-03-31.
  5. bernstein, roslyn (2018-11-03). "A Walking Tour with Devan Shimoyama". Medium. Retrieved 2021-03-31.
  6. Hernandez, Jasmin (2021). We are here : visionaries of color transforming the art world. Sunny Leerasanthanah, Swizz Beatz. New York, NY. ISBN   978-1-64700-168-1. OCLC   1235595910.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  7. 1 2 Johnson, Noah. "Artist Devan Shimoyama Takes on Race and Sexuality With Glitter and Rhinestones". GQ. Retrieved 2020-06-17.
  8. Sargent, Antwaun (2019-05-04). "Devan Shimoyama's Vision of a Dazzling Black Future". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved 2020-06-17.
  9. University, Carnegie Mellon (9 October 2018). "Artist Embraces Alternative Perspectives on Race - News - Carnegie Mellon University". www.cmu.edu. Archived from the original on 2020-05-22. Retrieved 2020-06-17.
  10. 1 2 3 "Devan Shimoyama – Kavi Gupta Gallery". kavigupta.com. Retrieved 2021-03-31.