ALCHEMICAL

ARTIST IMAGE RESOURCE | PGH PA | MARCH 2022 - APRIL 2022

D.S. KINSEL | QUAISHAWN WHITLOCK | BEKEZELA MGUNI

Alchemical

Relating to esoteric process; turning base metals into gold

PITTSBURGH, PA, March 4, 2022–Black magic as a double entendre, playing with perceptions and periods. Artists and educators Bekezela Mguni, D.S. Kinsel, and Quaishawn Whitlock use screen printing to exhume past contexts and shared histories. Alchemical is a group exhibition opening today at Artists Image Resource (AIR).

“We are all walking archives,” says Mguni, and she ought to know, studying libraries and catalogs and call numbers and the procedural collection of artifacts, with a Masters in Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh. “I am giving myself more information and space at AIR; the permission and capability to deconstruct the archive and what it means.”

In partnership with Boom Concepts, the artist troupe presents a body of work over a year and a half in the making: a postlude to AIR’s Golden Cage portfolio project that also featured veteran artists Robert Hodge, Maritza Mosquera, and Robert Williams. “Alchemical is a formula,” says Whitlock, and Black people are the base, a foundational component to the Western equation, but never the prized element. Whitlock, whose sum 60 artworks contain an average of 15 distinct paint layers of textures, gradients, and iconography, refers to his pictures as members of the family, possessing memories both lived and mediated. “The idea of an archive is very important in re-claiming, breaking down, and re-writing our stories.”

Alchemical is representative of the printmaking process and its mode of possibility. Follow AIR’s Instagram page for tonight’s art talk at 6 pm and join the exhibiting artists next Friday, March 11, for the opening reception from 6-8 pm.