Artist Nathaniel Mary Quinn talks on his artwork and life on Tuesday, April 30th, 2019, at FIT in the Katie Murphy Amphitheatre, located in the Fred P. Pomerantz Center on the northwest corner of 27th Street and 7th Avenue.
Nathaniel Mary Quinn (b. 1977) creates hybrid, fractured portraits on paper and linen
using charcoal, gouache, pastel, paint stick, and oil paint. His works are replete with art
historical references to Cubism, Surrealism, Francis Bacon, and others, yet his process is
also very personal, drawing from his memories, experiences, traumas, and family history
growing up in Chicago’s Robert Taylor housing project. Nathaniel Mary Quinn balances
the beautiful with the grotesque, the sinister with the benevolent, capturing the
complexity of human emotion in a way that is individual and also representative of the
human condition.
Nathaniel Mary Quinn has exhibited at galleries and institutions internationally. Recent
solo exhibitions include Half Gallery, New York; Luce Gallery, Torino, Italy; M + B Gallery,
Los Angeles; Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago; Bunker 259 Gallery, Brooklyn; Pace
Gallery, London, England; and the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts
(MoCADA), Brooklyn, New York. He has also been featured in the group exhibitions at
Artist Space, New York; The Bronx Museum of Arts; Albertz Benda, New York; Satori
Gallery, New York; Susan-Inglett Gallery, New York; and Driscoll Babcock Gallery, New
York; and in A Process Series | Here He Come: Black Jesus, curated by Jessamyn Fiore,
Rawson Projects, New York. His work has been reviewed in numerous publications,
including the New York Times, The Independent (London), AFROPUNK, the Chicago
Reader, The Daily News, The New York Times, Huffington Post, and Time Out New York.
He is the recipient of the Lorraine Hansberry Artistic, Performance, and Fine Arts Award
and a two-time winner of the National Arts Club Prize. Quinn is included in the public
collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Sheldon Museum of Art and the Whitney
Museum of American Art, among others. Nathaniel Mary Quinn, a native of Chicago,
received his BFA from Wabash College and his MFA from New York University. He
currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Nathaniel Mary Quinn’s page on his gallery’s website is here.
