Solo Exhibition Featuring the Work of Chakaia Booker at Galerie Pfriem

LACOSTE, FRANCE.- The SCAD exhibitions department presents “Sustain”, a solo exhibition featuring the work of Chakaia Booker. “Sustain” pairs Booker’s signature abstract sculptures fashioned from found tires with a series of new photogravures the artist recently created at SCAD Atlanta.

Highlighting her use of sustainable materials, these photogravure prints offer a rare view of the artist’s process as she ceremoniously forages the industrial landscape for sculptural materials. Combined with the expressive materiality of the rubber sculptures, the two series allude to physical and personal strength, racial identity, and the human relationship to the environment.

Chakaia Booker, Foundling Warrior Quest (II 21C), 2010. Photogravure, 76 cm x 56 cm

“‘Sustain’ is a rare opportunity to showcase Booker’s sculptures with another lesser-known, but no less remarkable aspect of her oeuvre – her image-making. SCAD is fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with Booker to realize these photogravures. They enrich our reading of her work and offer an entree into her performative artistic process,” said SCAD Senior Curator Melissa Messina.

The exhibition will be on display at Galerie Pfriem, Rue du Four, Lacoste, France, April 16-June 26. A reception will be held from 6-8 p.m. on April 16, with Booker in attendance. The exhibition and reception are free and open to the public.

Chakaia Booker was born in 1953 in Newark, N.J. She earned a B.A. in sociology in 1976 from Rutgers University in New Jersey, and an M.F.A. in 1993 from the City College of New York. In addition to SCAD’s exhibition, “Sustain”, Booker has had other solo exhibitions in 2010 at the Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, N.J.; the Sculpture Park at the Moore College of Art in Aviator Park, Chicago, Ill.; Moore College of Art, Chicago, Ill.; and Marlborough Chelsea, New York, N.Y. Other recent solos shows have been held at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., in 2006; the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Mo., in 2008; Elmhurst Art Museum, Elmhurst, Ill., in 2008; and Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, N.Y., in 2009.

Booker’s work has been included in group exhibitions such as Museo Nacional de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (2004); Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Houston, Texas (2005); the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (2008-11); the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, N.Y. (2008); Museum of Arts and Design, New York, N.Y.; and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Mo. (2009).

She participated in the Whitney Biennial in 2000 and the 48th Annual Corcoran Biennial in Washington, D.C., in 2005. She received a Pollock-Krasner Award in 2002 and was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2005. In 2008 she was awarded the Merit Award in Public Art, through Keep Indianapolis Beautiful Inc., in Indianapolis, Ind.

Booker’s works are featured in the permanent collections of the Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Ala.; Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, N.Y.; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, N.Y; Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York, Purchase, N.Y.; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, La.; Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, N.Y.; and The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, N.Y. Her work has been featured in publications such as Art in America, ARTnews, The New York Times, Sculpture, and The Wall Street Journal.