Brooklyn Museum's RAW/COOKED Exhibition Series Continues with Duron Jackson Today, 11/16

Raw/Cooked, a major series of exhibitions of work by under-the-radar Brooklyn artists, made possible with support from Bloomberg, will continue at the Brooklyn Museum for a second season, to be launched with a presentation of work by Bedford-Stuyvesant-based artist Duron Jackson, on view today, November 16, 2012, through February 10, 2013.

The project will continue with three additional artists. Each of the artists in the series were recommended by an advisory panel of leading Brooklyn artists that includes Michael Joo, Paul Ramiírez Jonas, Amy Sillman, and Mickalene Thomas, who each proposed three artists. The panelists are asked to recommend artists who have no gallery representation and have not participated in a major museum exhibition. The works considered may be in any medium.

The final selection of the four to be shown this season was made by Eugenie Tsai, John and Barbara Vogelstein Curator of Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum. As with the previous season, the Museum will offer the participating artists a variety of unconventional spaces that make possible a wide range of art interventions in which the artists create projects that draw inspiration from the architecture of the building and/or works from the Museum collections, which may be included in the exhibitions.

"We are delighted to continue our ongoing commitment to Brooklyn artists by presenting four new exhibitions by some of Brooklyn's best emerging artistic talent in this critically acclaimed series. We are immensely grateful to Bloomberg for making this possible," comments Brooklyn Museum Director Arnold L. Lehman.

"The artistic community in Brooklyn is large and diverse, including artists ranging from those working under the radar to the world renowned. The Raw/Cooked series continues to provide an important showcase for the work of some of Brooklyn's most talented artists in this series of thought-provoking, adventurous exhibitions inspired by the Brooklyn Museum's exceptional Permanent Collections," comments Bloomberg's Erana M. Stennett.

Jackson, whose studio is located in Clinton Hill near the Navy Yard, was recommended by Mickalene Thomas. Jackson's work includes installations, performance, video, sculpture, and painting and explores the social inter-relationships of "blackness" within the broader context of contemporary culture, focusing on social and political histories in relation to incarceration, criminality, and surveillance in the United States.

Jackson's project, titled Raw/Cooked: Duron Jackson, Rumination will create a library- or parlor-like environment that invites visitors to consider the African slave trade of the past and the incarceration of African Americans today. The installation will feature a floor and chair made of dominoes and a number of Duron's paintings, displayed alongside sculpture Senegalese Soldier (1928), by Malvina Hoffman, part of the Museum's collection of American art.

The recipient of an MFA from Bard College, Jackson will travel to Brazil this winter on a Fulbright Research Scholarship to study African Roots in contemporary art practices in the diaspora in Brazil. He has had solo exhibitions at the Galeries Zidoun in Luxembourg as well as at various Brooklyn galleries, and his work has been included in numerous group exhibitions.

The Duron Jackson installation will be followed by exhibitions of work by Marela Zacarias, recommended by Paul Ramírez Jonas; MIke Ballou, nominated by Amy Sillman; and an artist yet to be named, selected by Michael Joo.

Raw/Cooked continues the Brooklyn Museum's long tradition of collecting and presenting work by both emerging and established Brooklyn artists. Over the past decade the Museum has presented numerous exhibitions focused on Brooklyn artists, among them Open House, featuring the work of 200 Brooklyn artists, and solo exhibitions of work by Fred Tomaselli, Lorna Simpson, and Mickalene Thomas, as well as the upcoming GO: a community-curated open studio project.

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