Art lovers finally got the chance to check out Jamel Robinson’s UNFETTERED in person this past Saturday at Established Gallery. The exhibition was up and ready to welcome visitors for the original March 14 opening, but then the gallery was forced to close after a stay-at-home order was issued in New York in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Jamel Robinson poses next to his work, Love Divine, 2019, at Established Gallery
“To have a body of work that I had been waiting to show the world...,” Robinson recalled on Saturday afternoon, “then to have the whole world change…. We’re just changing with the rest of the world.” The exhibit showcases visceral abstract works on canvas and paper that Robinson began creating nearly two years ago. Having his first exhibit in Brooklyn in seven years postponed was disappointing. Still, Robinson stayed productive and navigated the three-month quarantine by developing a consistent schedule for himself which included his usual prayer and meditation along with daily Zoom get-togethers with friends and teaching himself how to play the keyboard. “I went on to compose and sing three songs,” he said, promising to share the tunes online once he properly records them.
Initially during the lockdown Robinson didn't want to think about selling his artwork in the midst of a health crisis, but then he realized that he could assist others with proceeds from the show. “I wanted to help, use the show to help people in need. I decided to donate 20% to the Food Bank For New York City.” The non-profit, which fights to end hunger across the city, is meaningful to Robinson because he’d experienced food insecurity himself early on in his art career. “I didn’t know about Food Bank at that time, but I just knew from the generosity of others what it felt like for somebody to buy me groceries, for somebody to treat me to a meal.” Robinson has already made a contribution to Food Bank and hopes that even if visitors to his show cannot purchase an artwork that they’ll consider making a donation directly to the organization.
Later into the lockdown the Black Lives Matter movement began to intensify around the world. When asked whether the BLM protests have influenced his recent work, Robinson responded, “No,” noting, “It can’t influence something that’s influencing me all the time. I think the Black Lives Matter movement and the systemic oppression of Black people can’t move Black people this time because it’s been moving us the whole time.” He adds that his experience as a Black artist is inherently “embedded” into his work. “I’m not making work that’s specifically talking about how my life matters because it’s always supposed to have mattered.”
Jamel Robinson, Missa Secunda, 2019 (left) and Here I Am, 2018 (right)
Jamel Robinson, Angus Dei, 2019
Jamel Robinson, Here In Your Love, 2018
Jamel Robinson, Promise, 2019
Jamel Robinson, Abide, 2019
Jamel Robinson, Take Me Home, 2019, triptych, mixed media on watercolor paper
Born and raised in Harlem, Robinson converted the apartment where his grandmother raised her family into a studio and gallery space. Originally a poet, the multi-disciplinary artist taught himself how to paint in 2011 after a curator asked him to paint one of his poems on canvas for a group show. The trauma of losing a loved one a month later further encouraged him to embark on “the journey of teaching myself how to paint,” he said. He started by creating a series of abstract self-portraits and self-published a book in 2014, Poems With Faces, featuring 55 of his “unedited stream-of-consciousness” poems each accompanied by a non-representational self-portrait.
Nearly two years ago he decided to abandon the paintbrush and begin painting with his hands. “I was in the studio and I felt like I heard a voice direct me to not use the brush,” he recalls. “Abandoning brushes and traditional painting tools, my body became the catalyst for my practice. Intuitively choosing colors, my hands are the vessels for the process,” according to Robinson’s Artist Statement. “Fingerprints, smudges, and smears of paint layer the surface of the canvas or paper. Working predominately on the floor, in a bent position of surrender the paintings are a way I have processed personal struggles, but are also an area of openness and discovery.”
“Once I’d made the first painting, I knew that I was supposed to continue that way at all costs, to abandon all of my own traditions in order to explore this new way,” he adds. Being able to touch the work with his hands was a freeing experience which inspired the title of the show, UNFETTERED.
Before UNFETTERED, two of Robinson’s paintings included in the exhibit were prominently featured in a recent episode of the ABC sitcom Black-ish. “That was actually the first place that they were ever seen,” according to Robinson. “I knew that making this work was going to take me to a new place and that was the first place that it took me. I thought if millions of people can see the work in one shot that confirms that I was supposed to be making this kind of work. It was the greatest confirmation…and I thought, ‘this is how it’s supposed to be.’”
The earliest works in the exhibit feature intense strokes of murky grey hues interspersed with pops of vivid pink, purple, and yellow, “abstractions without any figurative hints” that allow viewers to decipher and “experience the work on [their] own.” Bits of text peek out from the corners of some canvases—“words that come to me just while I’m making the works,” the artist explains. “Even when there are words in it or…mixed media, that gives you some information, but everything else is up to you. It’s up to your interpretation.”
Music is a “driving force” for Robinson who added a layer of sheet music onto some of the canvases “to incorporate the actual notes of some sound that I might have been listening to” as he worked on a piece. “That’s usually my process. I’m listening to something. I paint what I feel,” he added. “It always starts with whatever is inside of me trying to come out. I believe that I’m a channel. I’m not the one sending the messages, they’re just kind of passing through me.”
Jamel Robinson stands beside his work, Missa Secunda, 2019, featured in his solo exhibition UNFETTERED
The messages channeled in his work involve love and transcendence. “I feel this love, I share it, but it comes through me not necessarily from me,” Robinson explains. “I believe when people react and respond to this work that what they are reacting to [is] God’s love in the work. That’s always my hope.”
Learn more about the artist at jamelrobinson.com and at establishedgallery.com.
Established Gallery will be open again this Saturday, July 4, from 1pm to 6pm. UPDATE: Established Gallery will be closed for the July 4th holiday and will reopen on Thursday, July 9. Check their Instagram account at @established_gallery_ for updates. Three visitors will be permitted into the gallery at a time and masks will be required.
Jamel Robinson: UNFETTERED
Established Gallery
75 6th Avenue, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn
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