Christina Quarles | Laid Up (2020)

Christina Quarles | Laid Up (2020)[[specs start]] 10 colour silkscreen on Somerset Tub Sized Radiant White 410gsm 41 x 51 cm [16. 2 x 20 inches] Edition of 35, signed and numbered. [[specs end]] [[work start]] About the work Christina Quarles' has created Laid Up, 2020, a ten colour silkscreen print in an edition of 35, for Whitechapel Gallery to accompany the exhibition Radical Figures; Painting in the New Millennium, 2 February Sept 2020. Christina Quarles' edition for Whitechapel

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10 colour silkscreen on Somerset Tub Sized Radiant White 410gsm
41 x 51 cm [16.2 x 20 inches] 
Edition of 35, signed and numbered.

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About the work

Christina Quarles' has created Laid Up, 2020, a ten colour silkscreen print in an edition of 35, for Whitechapel Gallery to accompany the exhibition Radical Figures; Painting in the New Millennium, 2 February – Sept 2020.

Christina Quarles' edition for Whitechapel Gallery is closely related to her recent paintings, which feature entwined nude figures within flat abstracted environments. She draws on her background as a graphic designer to develop her compositions and creates some elements with computer software such as Adobe Illustrator. Quarles explores female, black and queer identity through the active agency of these contorted bodies pressing against the confines of the canvas and reflecting her experience of feeling fragmented in her own body.

Laid Up, 2020. depicts bodies enmeshed in a close embrace of limbs, torsos and heads against a patterned background. The composition hems the figures in to a complicated entanglement. The lines drawn between one body and another are ambiguous and the figures fold and overlap. Made during Spring 2020, the title of the print, Laid Up could also be seen as a nod to the monotony of pandemic life in lockdown.

Like her paintings, this silkscreen print is made from a process of intricate layering, with mat and gloss inks combining to create a seductive surface. Quarles describes this layering process as ‘looking for patterns that have… a sort of visual punning and multiple locations, like a field of flowers that’s a pattern on a bedspread or a field of flowers in nature’.

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About the artist

Christina Quarles (b. 1985 Chicago, USA) currently lives and works in Los Angeles. She studied at the Yale School of Art, Hampshire College and Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture. Quarles was the inaugural recipient of the 2019 Pérez Art Museum Miami Prize.

Her paintings explore legibility as it teeters on the edge of excess, lack or excess of information and the risk for contradiction this brings.

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Selected exhibitions

Recent exhibitions include, But I Woke Jus’ Tha Same, Regen Projects, Los Angeles (2019); Always Brightest Before Tha Dusk, Pilar Corrias, London (2018); Christina Quarles / MATRIX 271, UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley (2018); Made in L.A., Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018); Trigger: Gender as a Tool and as a Weapon, New Museum, New York (2017-18); It’s Gunna Be All Right, Cause Baby, There Ain’t Nuthin’ Left, Skibum MacArthur, Los Angeles (2017); No burden as heavy, David Castillo Gallery, Miami (2017); Fictions, The Studio Museum, New York (2017); and Reconstitution, LAXART, Los Angeles (2017) among others.

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Whitechapel Gallery editions are generously donated by the artists. All proceeds from the sale of these works directly support our exhibition and education programmes. As is traditional in editions publishing, prices will rise as an edition starts to sell out. 

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The purchase of this edition is subject to resale restrictions. See Terms and Conditions at point of sale. 

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