Amy Sherald: See these six paintings before 6/6

Amy Sherak’s paintings at Hauser & Wirth are luminous portraits of Black Americans at leisure; her attention to ordinary Black life is both revolutionary and reassuring.

Amy Sherald
A Midsummer Afternoon Dream
2020, oil on canvas

You know the artist as Michelle Obama’s official portraitist (N.B. that painting is NOT on display, but will be visiting LACMA as part of a LACMA exhibit of both Michelle and Barack Obama’s official portraits in November 2022) and visiting the Arts District for this gorgeous – but small – show is a perfect way to break quarantine. Enjoy lunch (and your newfound freedom) at Manuela before or after. Hauser & Wirth has a lovely gift shop and fabulous art book store and wandering around the neighborhood will feel like a trip to another city.

Amy Sherald: The Great American Fact is Sherald’s first west coast solo show and will be on display at Hauser & Wirth through June 6. You can view a 360 degree view of the galleries here:  Here is some context provided by the gallery:

Sherald routinely draws upon literary references in her exhibition and the titles for her paintings. With ‘The Great American Fact’ she is referencing an 1892 book by educator Anna Julia Cooper, who wrote that Black people are ‘‘the great American fact’; the one objective reality on which scholars sharpened their wits, and at which orators and statesmen fired their eloquence.’ Sherald here employs Cooper’s statement as a framework for considering ‘public Blackness’ – the way Black American identity is shaped in the public realm. Her paintings celebrate the Black body at leisure, thereby revealing her subjects’ whole humanity. Sherald’s work thus foregrounds the idea that Black life and identity are not solely tethered to grappling publicly with social issues, and that resistance lies equally in a full interior life and an expansive vision of selfhood in the world.

Hauser & Wirth is a global brand, but the LA gallery is at:

901 East 3rd Street
Los Angeles CA 90013