BUFFALO, NY.- The Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art announced The Language of Color, a solo exhibition by Detroit-based multidisciplinary artist Jova Lynne, opening Friday, January 30 from 7–10PM. The exhibition marks the first installment in BICA’s new exhibition series, The Real Deal, a two-year project that spotlights six contemporary artists whose work blurs the boundaries between photography and sculpture.
The same evening marks the opening of Nick Mass: Under Observation in the BICA Project Space and the launch of Cornelia Magazine Issue 20.
Jova Lynne: The Language of Color
At the core of The Language of Color is the idea that color produces meaning, rather than merely representing it. Detroit-based multidisciplinary artist Jova Lynne explores this concept through photography, video, installation, and sound—drawing from Caribbean diasporic experience, material culture, and Black musical traditions to examine how histories are recorded, mythologized, and passed on.
Red and blue appear throughout the exhibition as foundational sources—much like rhythm and tone in music, or vibration in the cosmos. Blue moves through the space as a frequency of continuity, depth, and expansion. Red emerges as an equally generative force. Often coded as alarm or anger, red is reconsidered here as a site of vitality, joy, and insistence.
She draws from sources like Miles Davis’s All Blues and Sun Ra’s theory of cosmic vibration, where sound and color act as carriers of knowledge across time and space. Her references bring together scientific concepts of resonance and frequency with oral history, ritual, and visual symbolism. Color is treated not as surface, but as an energetic condition—something that travels, accumulates, and reverberates over time. Like musical tones that linger and overlap, memories and histories persist through repeated encounters, shaping perception long after their point of origin.
The Language of Color invites viewers to reflect on the shifting relationship between self, lineage, and collective memory. Color becomes a living language shaped by time, sound, and vibration—activated through presence, attention, and return.
Jova Lynne holds an MFA in Photography from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BA in Film/Video from Hampshire College. Lynne’s recent and upcoming solo exhibitions include The Language of Color at the Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art (2026), Convergence at Sculpture Center in Cleveland (2024), and Split at Matéria Gallery in Detroit (2023). Her work has also been featured in major group exhibitions such as the Kingston Biennial at the National Gallery of Jamaica (2024), Luminosity at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History (2025), and State of the Art II, a nationally touring exhibition presented at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and partnering institutions (2020–2022). Lynne has held residencies and fellowships at Yaddo (2024), Anderson Ranch Arts Center (2022), Mass MoCA (2020), Halcyon Arts Lab (2020), Vermont Studio Center (2020), and Loghaven (2026). Her work is included in major collections such as the Harvard Art Museums, the Detroit Institute of Arts, Cranbrook Art Museum, the Wedge Collection, and the Progressive Art Collection. Lynne’s practice has been profiled in The New York Times, ArtForum, HyperAllergic, Document Journal, The Detroit News, and Runner Magazine, among others. She lives and works in Detroit, MI.
The Language of Color is the first exhibition in The Real Deal, a new two-year series of six solo exhibitions. Featuring Jova Lynne (Detroit), Emma Safir (New York), Lyndon Barrois Jr. (Pittsburgh), Devin T. Mays (Houston), Megan Mi-Ai Lee (New York), and Chris Curreri (Toronto), the series examines the slippery space between objects and images—where sculptures behave like photographs, photographs refuse to stay flat, and materials shimmer with memory.
As Buffalo itself navigates the tension between legacy and reinvention, the artists in The Real Deal ask similar questions: How do we live among remnants? What does it mean to inherit a history? And what can be built from what’s left behind?
Each artist in the series will present a solo exhibition, lead a workshop with BICA School, and engage in public conversations about process and practice.
Nick Mass: Under Observation
Also opening on January 30 in the BICA Project Space is Under Observation, a new portrait series by Buffalo-based artist Nick Mass. Constructed from collaged Polaroids taken with a forensic Macro 5 SLR camera, the work uses close-up fragments of the face to create composite portraits that shift in scale, perspective, and emotional tone.
The resulting images resist easy readability—fractured, tender, and full of unresolved tension. Each piece honors the analog imperfections of instant film while revealing the layered, often contradictory realities of artist identity. Under Observation runs through March 7, 2026.
