Torkwase Dyson interrogates architecture and infrastructure to radically engage with form as power, particularly in how Black and brown bodies compose, perceive, and negotiate space.This exhibition is the culmination of a period of process-oriented study for Dyson’s ongoing project, Bird and Lava, which is a multifaceted expression of a question: “If blackness is already an architectonic developed out of liquidity (ocean), can the work embody this phenomenon and offer sensation (sensoria) at the register of liberation?” DetailsTorkwase DysonStudies for Bird and LavaAug 1 – 9, 2020 Gallery68 Park PlaceEast HamptonAbove: Torkwase Dyson, Space as Form: Movement 1 (Bird and Lava) (detail), 2020, acrylic on canvas, 40-1/4" × 48" (102.2 cm × 121.9 cm) © Torkwase Dyson PressPress Release Connect (opens in a new window) @pacegallery Torkwase Dyson, Space as Form: Movement 1 (Bird and Lava), 2020, acrylic on canvas, 40-1/4" × 48" (102.2 cm × 121.9 cm) Learn More "In this moment of environmental precarity we will need to be both liquid and mountains, bird and lava. And it is the density of Black grace that will always be the thing that keeps us in our own humanity. Thinking through the histories of Black liberation, these are the victories that fortify my being in the objects I make. It's time for a new relationship with abstraction, an illegal abstraction developed out of the condition of new world building toward liberation and revolution."Torkwase Dyson Close modal View Previous View Next Carousel slide 0 Carousel slide 1 Carousel slide 2 Carousel slide 3 Carousel slide 4 Carousel slide 5 Torkwase Dyson Space as Form: Movement 1 (Bird and Lava) 2020 acrylic on canvas 40-1/4" × 48" (102.2 cm × 121.9 cm) Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back Torkwase Dyson, Closer #5 (Bird and Lava), 2020, gouache and pen on paper, 24" × 18" (61 cm × 45.7 cm) Learn More Close modal Torkwase Dyson Closer #5 (Bird and Lava) 2020 gouache and pen on paper 24" × 18" (61 cm × 45.7 cm) Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back Torkwase Dyson, Overall Form #1 (Bird and Lava), 2020, gouache, acrylic, pencil and collage mounted on paper, 17" × 14" (43.2 cm × 35.6 cm) Learn More Close modal View Previous View Next Carousel slide 0 Carousel slide 1 Torkwase Dyson Overall Form #1 (Bird and Lava) 2020 gouache, acrylic, pencil and collage mounted on paper 17" × 14" (43.2 cm × 35.6 cm) Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back Integral to both her painting and sculptural installations, the artist’s assertion of Black Compositional Thought functions as a mode of awareness that contends with the formal applications of mark-making and constructions of space. Specifically, Dyson has created a compositional system of curvilinear and rectilinear shapes as a starting point for this body of work. Responding to the spatial tragedies of enslaved people who hid or stowed away in architectural spaces to attain their freedom, especially Anthony Burns (hull=curve), Henry “Box” Brown (box=square) and Harriet Jacobs (garret=triangle), the shape system is a compositional tool to articulate an infrastructure of resistance in geometric abstraction. Read More Torkwase Dyson, Scalar Test #1 (Bird and Lava), 2020, graphite, acrylic and string on wood, 12" × 12" (30.5 cm × 30.5 cm) Learn More "Each human here manipulated and moved through infrastructures of state-sanctioned domination by converting enslavement into a system of self-imposed displacement, structural confinement, and clandestine geographic movement. I’ve culled a geometric shape language from histories of Black liberation strategies to develop a system/structure/scaffolding of self-expression."Torkwase Dyson Close modal View Previous View Next Carousel slide 0 Carousel slide 1 Carousel slide 2 Carousel slide 3 Carousel slide 4 Torkwase Dyson Scalar Test #1 (Bird and Lava) 2020 graphite, acrylic and string on wood 12" × 12" (30.5 cm × 30.5 cm) Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back Interested in the phenomenological presence of geometric forms, painting and dimensionality, the artist’s hand is present throughout these new works, in the layers of wax and ink on paper, and the compositions that gesture to horizon lines and ocean depths. These works invite a haptic response that moves beyond the referential or pictorial to assert an autonomy in abstraction. In the artist’s words, this is “an illegal abstraction where Black perception, ideas of scale, space, and the immeasurable are embedded in art experience.” Read More Torkwase Dyson, I Am Everything That Will Save Me (Bird and Lava), 2020, acrylic and string on wood, 36" (91.4 cm), diameter Learn More Close modal View Previous View Next Carousel slide 0 Carousel slide 1 Carousel slide 2 Carousel slide 3 Carousel slide 4 Carousel slide 5 Carousel slide 6 Torkwase Dyson I Am Everything That Will Save Me (Bird and Lava) 2020 acrylic and string on wood 36" (91.4 cm), diameter Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back Torkwase Dyson, Both, All and Everything (Bird and Lava), 2020, acrylic on board, 40" × 30" (101.6 cm × 76.2 cm) Learn More Throughout her work, Dyson refers to the Plantationocene as site of ongoing exploration—its spatial and architectural infrastructures of power and its accompanying strategies of survival and resistance. The Plantationocene—a term first proposed by feminist theorist Donna Haraway—offers an alternative to the human geological epoch often called the Anthropocene. The term centralizes the role of an agro-industrial system of enterprise as integral to the historic rise and growth of capitalism. Close modal View Previous View Next Carousel slide 0 Carousel slide 1 Carousel slide 2 Carousel slide 3 Carousel slide 4 Torkwase Dyson Both, All and Everything (Bird and Lava) 2020 acrylic on board 40" × 30" (101.6 cm × 76.2 cm) Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back The geography of the Atlantic Ocean and its relationship to the Plantationocene is present throughout Dyson’s works. Using this as an organizational tool, Dyson’s new works explore the shape-space of spheres contained in trapezoids, with each work charting the horizon line and the surface below with new compositional proposals. Together these forms gesture to the hauntological specter of the Middle Passage and the waterways that have been sites of colonial trauma for Black bodies, as well as spaces of survival and resilience. Read More Torkwase Dyson, Space as Form: Movement 2 (Bird and Lava), 2020, acrylic on canvas, 40-1/4" × 48" (102.2 cm × 121.9 cm) Learn More Close modal View Previous View Next Carousel slide 0 Carousel slide 1 Carousel slide 2 Carousel slide 3 Carousel slide 4 Carousel slide 5 Torkwase Dyson Space as Form: Movement 2 (Bird and Lava) 2020 acrylic on canvas 40-1/4" × 48" (102.2 cm × 121.9 cm) Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back Torkwase Dyson, Liquid, Space and Light #1, 2020, gouache and pen on paper, 12" × 12" (30.5 cm × 30.5 cm) Learn More Close modal Torkwase Dyson Liquid, Space and Light #1 2020 gouache and pen on paper 12" × 12" (30.5 cm × 30.5 cm) Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back Torkwase Dyson, Liquid, Space and Light #4, 2020, gouache and pen on paper, 12" × 16" (30.5 cm × 40.6 cm) Learn More Close modal Torkwase Dyson Liquid, Space and Light #4 2020 gouache and pen on paper 12" × 16" (30.5 cm × 40.6 cm) Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back Dyson’s poetics of form and composition offers an approach to abstraction that conveys a self-determination and spatial discovery in phenomenological gestures. In articulating and subverting the architectonics of the infrastructure of racism and colonialism, Dyson’s abstract paintings and sculptures direct us to the political potential of shape and surface to build new worlds. Read More Torkwase Dyson, Liberation Scaled (Bird and Lava), 2020, charcoal, acrylic, oil stick, graphite and collage, 102" × 91" (259.1 cm × 231.1 cm) Learn More Close modal View Previous View Next Carousel slide 0 Carousel slide 1 Carousel slide 2 Carousel slide 3 Carousel slide 4 Carousel slide 5 Carousel slide 6 Carousel slide 7 Torkwase Dyson Liberation Scaled (Bird and Lava) 2020 charcoal, acrylic, oil stick, graphite and collage 102" × 91" (259.1 cm × 231.1 cm) Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back Torkwase DysonTorkwase Dyson describes herself as a painter working across multiple mediums to explore the continuity between ecology, infrastructure, and architecture. Examining environmental racism as well as the history and future of Black spatial liberation strategies, Dyson’s abstract works grapple with the ways in which space is perceived and negotiated, particularly by Black and brown bodies. In 2019, Dyson’s solo exhibition I Can Drink the Distance was on view at The Cooper Union, New York, and her work was also presented at the Sharjah Biennial.Learn More