NEW YORK, NY.- James Cohan presents Language of Tears, an exhibition of new paintings by Baltimore-based artist Jerrell Gibbs, on view from May 3 through June 15, 2024, at the gallery’s 52 Walker Street location. This marks the artist’s New York debut and first solo exhibition with James Cohan.
Jerrell Gibbs creates luminously rendered, expressionistic oil paintings that synthesize a wide range of art historical and cultural references to mine the elliptical contours of memory. His allegorical and autobiographical compositions explore themes of Black masculinity, fatherhood, legacy, and remembrance, complicating and subverting visual stereotypes and misrepresentations. Often working from archival family photographs, Gibbs creates tender, emotionally evocative vignettes that highlight moments of quiet joy and sorrow, rest, and mundane beauty while engaging deeply with the materiality of his process.
The inspiration for the body of work in this exhibition came from the artist’s viewing of the 1977 Ralph Nelson film A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich, which centers on the struggles of a young boy in South Central Los Angeles following the abandonment of his biological father. This film sparked a period of self-examination and painterly exploration for Gibbs, bringing to the surface his own experience of losing his father at a young age. For Gibbs, the canvas becomes a space within which he can parse the gaps and ruptures of personal memory to create works that provide portals into universal human emotional experiences.
Jerrell Gibbs (b. 1988; Baltimore, Maryland) graduated with an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, in 2020. He has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Mariane Ibrahim, Chicago, and Paris; and featured in exhibitions at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, Baltimore, and The Gallery at Howard University,Washington, D.C. His first solo museum exhibition, No Solace in the Shade, will be on view at the Brandywine Museum of Art from September 27, 2025, through March 1, 2026, following the institution’s recent acquisition of a landmark painting by Gibbs. The accompanying scholarly publication will feature an essay by guest curator, writer, and art historian Angela N. Carroll; a conversation between Gibbs and Jessica Bell Brown, Curator and Department Head of Contemporary Art at the Baltimore Museum of Art; a discussion between Gibbs and Larry Ossei-Mensah, curator and cultural critic; and a lyrical response by filmmaker and poet NIA JUNE. Gibbs’ work is included in the permanent collection of institutions including the Brandywine Museum of Art, Baltimore Museum of Art; Columbus Museum of Art; Los Angeles Museum of Art; CC Foundation, and the X Museum Beijing. The artist’s official portrait of the late civil rights activist and United States Representative Elijah E. Cummings is on permanent display in the U.S. Capitol.
