Matthew Marks is pleased to announce Nayland Blake: The Black / White Album, the next exhibition in his second floor gallery at 523 West 24th Street.

The exhibition will consist of five new sculptures and eighty drawings which continue to explore themes of racial and sexual identity using the rabbit as a central image. Expanding on the rabbit and hare’s traditional portrayal as symbols of lust and fecundity, Blake’s “rabbit” has evolved into the artist’s iconographic surrogate for gay men (playing off the stereotype of the promiscuous gay man) as well as a threshold figure for black/white and male/female. Blake draws from the experience of his own mixed racial parentage and from sources as diverse as the Easter resurrection, Renaissance and African iconography, Brer Rabbit, Bugs Bunny, Harvey, and Uncle Wiggly. read more

In addition to the sculptures and drawings in the exhibition, Nayland Blake will present a performance, Bunny Slumber II, The Rising, during the opening reception on Saturday, March 29 from 6:00 to 8:00 PM.

Born in 1960, Nayland Blake has been exhibiting his work since 1985 and has had one-person exhibitions in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, London Brussels and Houston, where his work was the subject of an exhibition, “Hare Attitudes,” at the Contemporary Arts Museum last year. His work was last seen in New York in the Whitney Museum’s exhibition, “Black Male,” in 1994.

Nayland Blake: The Black / White Album will be on view at the Matthew Marks Gallery, 523 West 24th Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues) through Saturday, April 26, 1997. Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM.