JUKE JOINT is officially open at MARCH with installation views posted here and to the gallery site. Photography by Cary Whittier. DM for any and all inquiries. From the press release:
Nothing comes from nothing. Everything comes from something. The term juke is believed to come from the Gullah word joog, meaning rowdy or disorderly. Joog, in turn, is almost certainly derived from the Wolof word dzug meaning to misconduct one’s self. Juke also describes the outmaneuvering of an opponent, generally through quick movements. Colloquially the purview of athletes, this exhibition proposes an aesthetic shake off, embodied by Black artists engaged in a century-long dialogue using misdirection as a method of both survival and celebration. It takes the juke joint as both inspiration and setting.
Historically, juke joints were not purpose-built but rather emerged in spaces that previously existed and later outfitted with bars, seating, decoration, and pool tables. These informal but influential establishments featured music, dancing, drinking, and sometimes gambling, operated by Black owners who provided private leisure space against the backdrop of segregation and Jim Crow.
The origins of these spaces may lie in pre-emancipation community rooms, but we are ill-equipped to delve into centuries of creative survivalist response. Instead, this exhibition is focused on the development of a coherent visual language that reached a zenith in the 1980s, after the great social movements of the 1960s and before the ubiquitous arrival of ever-isolating technologies. The congruity of the works can be explained by the once widespread existence of these private gathering spaces paired with the inclinations of artists who held jobs working with their hands. The exhibition shares its title with a book of photographs by Birney Imes, published in 1990 by the University of Mississippi Press. The paintings, assemblages, drawings, and collages in our show appear to have spilled out the back door of any number of these places across the Southern United States and into the collective consciousness.
@marchforwardmarch #jukejoint
@c_whittier @gordonrobichaux @polosilk3 @parker.gallery 
