We are pleased to announce Max Res Default, the second solo exhibition for Caitlin Cherry at Luce Gallery in Turin. Thirteen works of art - all with her signature iridescent, aurora-inspired palette - will be on view beginning June 8th through July 8th, 2022.

Cherry is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice, and current paintings, explore the diversity and iconic status of Black femininity, and our society’s consumer-like relationship with it. Her colorful paintings of overlapping vignettes resembling desktop windows are inspired by mined internet images of Black femme celebrities, influencers and sex workers. Her palette - bold, bright, and prismatic - distorts each image’s original color, using a moiré-like technique to sometimes mimic the color swirling patterns visible when touching an LCD screen. Together, the paintings presented in Max Res Default, seek to explore the many aspects of Black femininity as seen through “The Yee-Haw Agenda”, contemporary pornography and drag culture, while also encouraging deeper conversations about gender, commodification, and forgotten histories.

Max Res Default references the technical term for how we prefer to view images online, with maximum resolution as the default setting. In each painting, Cherry seemingly turns up the volume to “max” on everything from saturated color to a multitude of imagery, to brazen sexuality - all as her default setting. The strength of Cherry’s work is how she manages to balance all of these bold subjects by obscuring the images with equally bold color and pattern. The result elevates an underrepresented feminine Black aesthetic to fine art.

In Video Killed the Painting Star, the artist includes scenes of six distinct performances by famous Black female performers. The largest figure on the right is of porn actress Ana Foxxx, overlapped by a scene from HBO’s western drama “Westworld” of actress Thandiwe Newton. On the left are a few close-ups of Cardi B wearing a cowboy hat, mid-song, in two separate performances along with a background dancer. Ana Foxxx is depicted as statuesque, tall and idealized with her nude skin resembling the sheen of a highly polished bronze statue. This, combined with her size in the composition, emphasizes the artist’s interest to remove judgment of Foxxx’s profession, and, instead elevate sex workers to a celebrity status. This painting also heavily references “The Yee-Haw Agenda”, a cultural phenomenon referring to the Black cowboy aesthetics made popular by Black rappers and singers such as Cardi B. While cowboy culture is typically associated with rugged white males (think the Marlboro Man), the first cowboys in America were of Mexican and Black descent. “The Yee-Haw Agenda” in part seeks to reclaim Black America’s role in and contributions to Country Western culture.

Skete Davidson features a close-up of the transgender actress Indya Moore with their chin slightly resting in their open hands, and a dark red and black halo surrounding their head. Their full lips are pursed as they stare directly at the viewer through flirtatious lashes. This composition is based on the promotional poster for the series “Pose” on Netflix, where Moore plays “Angel”. By including a transgender, non-binary person, Cherry intentionally attempts an inclusive and expansive idea of Black femininity, acknowledging that it has never aligned neatly into a sole gender category.

BIO

Caitlin Cherry (1987, Chicago, Illinois, United States) lives and works in Richmond, Virginia. She is an African-American artist with a multifaceted practice that includes painting, sculpture, and installation. Cherry earned a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts, where she studied under Kara Walker. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of Painting and Printmaking at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. Cherry participated in solo shows at Providence College Galleries in Providence (2018), The Anderson - Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond (2018), University Museum of Contemporary Art - UMass Amherst in Amherst (2017), Brooklyn Museum in New York (2013), and in group shows at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Virginia Beach (2021), Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York (2021), San Diego Art Institute in San Diego (2020), Hallie Ford Museum of Art in Salem (2018), Performance Space in New York (2018), Utah Museum of Contemporary Art in Salt Lake City (2016), Studio Museum of Harlem in New York (2012). Among her recent high-profile group shows: Jeffrey Deitch in Los Angeles (2022, 2019, 2018), Perrotin in New York (2022), and Pace in New York (2021). In 2022, her upcoming exhibitions include group shows at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, the Museum of Sex in New York, and the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) in Cape Town. In 2023, her works will be presented in a solo show at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco and in the group shows at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and the Baltimore Museum of Art. She was a recipient of the Colene Brown Art Prize 2020, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Fellowship Residency 2016, and Leonore Annenberg Fellowship 2015. Additionally, her work has been acquired by numerous private collections and public institutions.

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