Christina Quarles / MATRIX 271

September 19–November 18, 2018

A gathering of paintings by Quarles, whose work tussles with culturally prescribed identities and probes the margins where meaning remains unfixed, illegible, and subject to question.

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Christina Quarles: Small Offerings, 2017; acrylic on canvas; 48 x 60 in.; BAMPFA, purchase made possible through a gift of an anonymous donor. Photo: Jonathan Bloom.

Upcoming
Films
Upcoming
Events
Selected
Objects
Past
Films
Past
Events

Selected Exhibition Objects

Painting

Small Offerings

Christina Quarles

2017
Acrylic on canvas
48 x 60 in.
BAMPFA, purchase made possible through a gift of an anonymous donor. Photo: Jonathan Bloom.
Painting

...Tha Color of Tha Sky (Magic Hour)

Christina Quarles

2017
Acrylic on canvas
55 x 88 in.
Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Pilar Corrias, London. © Christina Quarles
Painting

Moon (Lez Go Out N’ Feel Tha Nite)

Christina Quarles

2017
Acrylic on canvas
50 x 40 in.
Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Pilar Corrias, London. © Christina Quarles
Painting

Only Right Twice A Day

Christina Quarles

2017
Acrylic on canvas
60 x 72 in.
Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Pilar Corrias, London. © Christina Quarles
Painting

June Gloom

Christina Quarles

2017
Acrylic on canvas
50 x 56 in.
Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Pilar Corrias, London. © Christina Quarles

Past Events

Wednesday, October 10, 5:30 PM
Gallery Talk: Olivia Young on Christina Quarles

Young offers insights into Quarles’s work, including the dynamics of excess, visibility, and form as instruments of black queer longing.

BAMPFA
Thursday, September 20, 6 PM
Artist’s Talk: Christina Quarles in Conversation with Apsara DiQuinzio

The MATRIX artist discusses her work with the exhibition curator, illuminating the important role of ambiguity in Quarles’s representation of race and sexual identity.

BAMPFA

Past Films

Christina Quarles / MATRIX 271

September 19–November 18, 2018

Christina Quarles (born 1985) tussles with culturally prescribed identities and probes those margins where meaning remains unfixed, illegible, and something that one questions. In her paintings, figures inhabit a world defined by their multiple positions and perspectives. “As a queer, cis woman who is black but is often mistaken as white,” she has said, “I engage with the world from a position that is multiply situated.” Largely informed by her own subjective experience in the world, her work exhibits a prevailing sense of ambiguity, particularly in relation to race, gender, and human relationships.

This exhibition includes a selection of paintings made over the past couple of years. The works present bodies in a state of flux or transformation—nothing appears clear, and everything is fluid. In the painting Small Offerings (2017), a woman with long brown hair rests her elbows on a table with her hands clasped beneath her chin, as a sun radiates in the distance. Beneath the table another figure, vaguely defined, reaches out in an act of flirtation, laying a bouquet of flowers at her beloved’s feet. The hands and feet of the subjects in Quarles’s paintings tend to be some of the most prominent and highly defined features—because these are the parts of our body we know the most objectively from our own lived experience in the world, the artist explains. The figures in Small Offerings seem to simultaneously inhabit interior and exterior space, making it difficult to demarcate their positions in the world of multiple perspectives Quarles has created.

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Download the exhibition brochure (PDF)

Christina Quarles / MATRIX 271 is organized by Apsara DiQuinzio, curator of modern and contemporary art and Phyllis C. Wattis MATRIX Curator, with Matthew Coleman, curatorial assistant. The MATRIX Program is made possible by a generous endowment gift from Phyllis C. Wattis and the continued support of the BAMPFA Trustees. Additional support is provided by Hotel Shattuck Plaza.

Christina Quarles / MATRIX 271

September 19–November 18, 2018

Selected Exhibition Objects

Painting

Small Offerings

Christina Quarles

Painting

...Tha Color of Tha Sky (Magic Hour)

Christina Quarles

Painting

Moon (Lez Go Out N’ Feel Tha Nite)

Christina Quarles

Painting

Only Right Twice A Day

Christina Quarles

Painting

June Gloom

Christina Quarles

Past Events

Gallery Talk: Olivia Young on Christina Quarles

Artist’s Talk: Christina Quarles in Conversation with Apsara DiQuinzio

Past Films