Devin N. Morris

Last updated

Devin N. Morris (born 1986 in Baltimore, Maryland) is an American artist who works in assemblage, collage, video, and installation art. The founder of 3 Dot Zine, which art critic Antwaun Sargent named one of "9 Zines by Black and POC Artists That You Need to Read Right Now," [1] Morris's work has been exhibited in the group show "Cold Open Verse" at Knockdown Center and MoMA PS1 in Queens and has featured in solo exhibitions and Vice magazine. [2] [3]

Contents

Early life, education, and career

Devin N. Morris was born in 1986 in Baltimore, and grew up in its downtown. [4] [5] He received a B.A. from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore in Fashion Merchandising in 2009 and another in Journalism and New Media from Towson University in Towson, Maryland in 2010. [2] Morris had a career in fashion buying, merchandising, editorial styling, and writing before embarking upon fine art, [6] and the influence of the industry (the use of fashion labels and drapery) can be seen in some of his work. [5]

Career

Morris took up fine art upon the encouragement of his friends. [6] He has exhibited in group shows at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., Yale School of Art in New Haven, and in New York City, Newark, Rochester, Woodstock, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Portland, Oregon, and Tacoma, Washington. [2]

In 2014, Morris founded 3 Dot Zine, a collaborative zine for artists, writers, and other creatives of color [1] described on the Visual AIDS website as "an annual publication that celebrates the futurity of minorities, in addition to serving as a forum for invited artists to center and elaborate on marginalized concerns." [4]

Morris's video was included in the 2016 exhibition, "Cold Open Verse" at Knockdown Center in Maspeth, Queens and Printed Matter’s New York Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1. Organized by the duo Poet Transmit and publisher Blonde Art Books, [7] it was an exhibition of theatrical trailers and self-produced commercials with a live broadcast program of performances that focussed on art and poetry publications. Morris performed, and the exhibition also featured Constance DeJong, Fiona Banner, and Moyra Davey. [8]

In 2017 Morris founded Brown Paper Zine and Small Press Fair in New York City featuring the work of artists of color. [1] The fair traveled to Baltimore. [4] The same year he also presented an immersive art installation at AC Institute in New York in his solo exhibition that touched upon themes from the Black family album that usually go missing. Both were covered by Vice magazine. Morris has said:

"Collage provides a unique opportunity to use symbolism as a way to stitch together my history as a black American within a surreal imagined space where there aren't any limitations to my sexuality, race or any other socially defined constraint. Working through larger installations disrupts the use of the image as I look at images as a tie to reality." [3]

Personal life

Morris lives and work in Brooklyn. [4]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MoMA PS1</span> Museum in Queens, New York

MoMA PS1 is a contemporary art institution at 22-01 Jackson Avenue in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens in New York City, United States. In addition to its exhibitions, the institution organizes the Sunday Sessions performance series, the Warm Up summer music series, and the Young Architects Program with the Museum of Modern Art. MoMA PS1 has been affiliated with the Museum of Modern Art since January 2000 and, as of 2013, attracts about 200,000 visitors a year.

Peter Ford Young is an American painter. He is primarily known for his abstract paintings that have been widely exhibited in the United States and in Europe since the 1960s. His work is associated with Minimal Art, Post-minimalism, and Lyrical Abstraction. Young has participated in more than a hundred group exhibitions and he has had more than forty solo exhibitions in important contemporary art galleries throughout his career. He currently lives in Bisbee, Arizona.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sterling Ruby</span> American artist

Sterling Ruby is an American artist who works in a large variety of media including ceramics, painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, video, and textiles. Often, his work is presented in large and densely packed installations. The artist has cited a diverse range of sources and influences including aberrant psychologies, urban gangs and graffiti, hip-hop culture, craft, punk, masculinity, violence, public art, prisons, globalization, American domination and decline, waste and consumption. In opposition to the minimalist artistic tradition and influenced by the ubiquity of urban graffiti, the artist's works often appear scratched, defaced, camouflaged, dirty, or splattered. Proclaimed as one of the most interesting artists to emerge this century by New York Times art critic Roberta Smith, Ruby's work examines the psychological space where individual expression confronts social constraint. Sterling Ruby currently lives and works in Los Angeles. His studio is located in Vernon, south of downtown Los Angeles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alanna Heiss</span>

Alanna Heiss is the Founder and Director of Clocktower Productions, a non profit arts organization, online radio station, and program partnership with six cultural institutions in three boroughs in New York. She founded The Institute for Art and Urban Resources, Inc. in 1971, an organization focused on using abandoned and underutilized New York City buildings for art exhibitions and artists' studios, of which P.S.1 was a part. She served as the director of P.S.1 and its later incarnation, the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center from its founding in 1976 until her retirement in 2008. She is recognized as one of the originators of the alternative space movement.

May Wilson was an American artist and figure in the 1960s to 1990s New York City avant-garde art world. A pioneer of the feminist and mail art movement, she is best known for her Surrealist junk assemblages and her "Ridiculous Portrait" photocollages.

The NY Art Book Fair is Printed Matter, Inc's annual event, historically held in September or October. The NY Art Book Fair is the world's largest book fair for artists’ books and related publications, featuring over 370 exhibitors from 30 countries, and attended by over 39,000 visitors annually. Originally free, the now ticketed fair presents an active program of exhibitions, talks, workshops, book launches and performances, as well as many off-schedule events hosted by individual publishers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joyce J. Scott</span> African-American artist

Joyce J. Scott is an African-American artist, sculptor, quilter, performance artist, installation artist, print-maker, lecturer and educator. Named a MacArthur Fellow in 2016, and a Smithsonian Visionary Artist in 2019, Scott is best known for her figurative sculptures and jewelry using free form, off-loom beadweaving techniques, similar to a peyote stitch. Each piece is often constructed using thousands of glass seed beads or pony beads, and sometimes other found objects or materials such as glass, quilting and leather. In 2018, she was hailed for working in new medium — a mixture of soil, clay, straw, and cement — for a sculpture meant to disintegrate and return to the earth. Scott is influenced by a variety of diverse cultures, including Native American and African traditions, Mexican, Czech, and Russian beadwork, illustration and comic books, and pop culture.

A. L. Steiner is an American multimedia artist, author and educator, based in Brooklyn, New York. Her solo and collaborative art projects use constructions of photography, video, installation, collage, and performance. Steiner's art incorporates queer and eco-feminist elements. She is a collective member of the musical group Chicks on Speed; and, along with Nicole Eisenman, is a co-curator/co-founder of Ridykeulous, a curatorial project that encourages the exhibitions of queer and feminist art.

Clifford Owens is an African-American mixed media and performance artist, writer and curator. Owens was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1971 and spent his early life in Baltimore. Owens is known for his works which center on the body and often include interactions with the audience and spontaneity.

Clocktower Productions is a non-profit art institution working in the visual arts, performance, music, and radio. It was founded in 1972 as The Clocktower Gallery by Alanna Heiss, the Founder and former Director of MoMA PS1 under the aegis of the Institute for Art and Urban Resources. From 1972 until 2013, the institution operated out of a building at 346 Broadway, between Catherine Lane and Leonard Street, owned by the New York City government in Tribeca, Manhattan.

Terry Rosenberg is an American artist, known for painting, sculpture, and drawings that reference the body.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Taylor (artist)</span> American painter

Henry Taylor is an American artist and painter who lives and works in Los Angeles, California. He is best known for his acrylic paintings, mixed media sculptures, and installations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Derrick Adams</span> American visual artist

Derrick Adams is an American visual and performance artist and curator. Much of Adams' work is centered around his Black identity, frequently referencing patterns, images, and themes of Black culture in America. Adams has additionally worked as a fine art professor, serving as a faculty member at Maryland Institute College of Art.

Eric National Mack is an American painter, multi-media installation artist, and sculptor, based in New York City.

Kandis Williams is an artist, writer, editor, and publisher stationed both in Berlin and Los Angeles. Williams has received critical acclaim for her collage art, performance art, and publishing work. She is best known for her art exploring racial issues, nationalism, and many other categories.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Janet Taylor Pickett</span> American artist

Janet Taylor Pickett is an American artist. Pickett's mixed media works are inspired by her life experience as an African American woman.

Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. is a queer black American artist and photographer. In 2019 they received an Emerging Visual Arts Grant by The Rema Hort Mann Foundation.

8-Ball Community is a New York City-based artist collective that operates a zine library, online radio station, and online public-access television station.

Antwaun Sargent is an American writer, editor and curator, living in New York City. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker and various art publications. Sargent is the author of The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion (Aperture) and the editor of Young, Gifted and Black: A New Generation of Artists (DAP). He has championed Black art and fashion by young Black photographers, and has built a youth culture around it. He is also a director at Gagosian Gallery.

Ryan Foerster is a Canadian visual artist recognized for his ‘zines, photographs, videos, and sculptural installations which frequently incorporate found objects, salvaged materials, and natural elements. The artist’s reuse of discarded materials to create new artworks is a generative process of discovery and transformation integral to Foerster’s practice as well as a reaction to excessive waste.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Sargent, Antwaun (30 January 2017). "9 Zines by Black and PoC Artists That You Need to Read Right Now". Vice.com.
  2. 1 2 3 "CV". DevinMorris.com.
  3. 1 2 Sargent, Antwuan (31 July 2017). "An Immersive Installation Reimagines the Black Family Photo Album". Vice.com.
  4. 1 2 3 4 "Artists> Devin N. Morris". Visual AIDS.
  5. 1 2 Sargent, Antwaun (15 March 2016). "Inner City Life Meets Fashion in These Video Collages". Vice.
  6. 1 2 "Devin N. Morris". Africanah.
  7. "Cold Open Verse @ Knockdown Center & Printed Matter's New York Art Book Fair – MoMA/PS1". Blonde Art Books. 14 September 2016.
  8. "Cold Open Verse". Knockdown Center.