Marlborough Contemporary, New York, NY

Opening Reception:
April 2, 6 – 8 PM
New York

Asians Smaisians and Other Abstract Racial Slurs is an exhibition of works by conceptual artist Nyeema Morgan and painter Mike Cloud. Their Viewing Room exhibition introduces Cloud’s series of loosely abstracted portraits integrated into a support of large-scale collages made of paper grocery bags, Artforum advertisements, cash, and other print ephemera. Cloud incorporates media text evoking the dissemination and simultaneous flattening of narratives about murder and victimhood. These new paintings ruminate on image production, empathy, storytelling, and tragedy. They are paired with Morgan’s multi-part sculptural installation of large monoprints titled “horror horror.” Morgan’s work complicates its photographic subject matter with allusions to the tragicomic pratfalls of Warner Brother’s cartoons, the “primitivism” of the early Modernists, and fairy tales and childhood fables.

Nyeema Morgan lives in Chicago, Illinois. Her art practice includes meticulous drawings, sculptures, and installations. Her works employ non-identical repetition and unexpected juxtaposition to prompt reflection on the mechanics of representation and its political and social underpinnings and consequences. Morgan earned her BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art, an MFA from California College of the Arts, and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her works have been shown at The Drawing Center, NYC; The Studio Museum in Harlem (in collaboration with william cordova and Otabenga Jones & Associates); Art in General, NYC; Galerie Jean Roche Dard, Paris; CSS Bard Galleries, NY; and Grant Wahlquist Gallery, ME. Morgan’s work has been written about in publications including Artforum, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. She is the recipient of awards including the Joan Mitchell Painters & Sculptors Grant and an Art Matters Foundation grant.

Mike Cloud earned his MFA from the Yale School of Art and a BFA from University of Illinois-Chicago. Through his trademark unrefined painterly gestures, exposed painting supports and his integration of everyday objects (children’s clothes, toys and other consumables), Cloud emphasizes Painting’s semiotic function and relationship within a larger system of worldly objects. He has exhibited nationally and internationally at The Studio Museum in Harlem, NYC; Marianne Goodman Gallery, NYC; Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles; MoMA P.S.1, NYC; The Reva and David Logan Art Center, Chicago; Danubiana Art Museum, Slovakia; Max Protetch Gallery, NYC; and Thomas Erben Gallery, NYC. Cloud’s work has been featured in the New York Times, Art in America, Artforum, and “Painting Abstraction” by Bob Nickas (Phaidon). He currently lives in Chicago where he is an Associate Professor at the School of the Art Institute Chicago.