FRIDMAN GALLERY

Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to 'jump at the sun.' We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.

Zora Neal Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

​

Fridman Gallery presents jump at the sun, the second solo exhibition with the gallery by the cross-disciplinary artist Matana Roberts. 

The exhibition consists of new mixed-media collages made of objects, photographs, graphical scores, and sound compositions. Roberts defines her process as “panoramic sound quilting” – assembling visual and musical works illuminating personal histories against a broader national landscape. Defying “colonization of form”, the assemblages place participants in a call-and-response relationship with a historical ecosystem. 

​

Roberts harnesses and challenges the filters that are at the crux of this country, questioning how interpretations of individual experiences shift over time. Her first exhibition with the gallery in 2016, I Call America II, inquired what it meant to be a U.S. citizen in the 21st Century, across centuries of disagreement, disjunction, enslavement, coercion, shame. jump at the sun continues that inquiry by taking a closer look at the human experience through constructs of memory, myth, make-believe, and value. 

​

The program of events accompanying the exhibition includes presentation of new works by Peter Evans/Levy Lorenzo and Yvette Janine Jackson, as well as Roberts’ own Artists Studio performance in the Veterans Room of Park Avenue Armory.

​

Matana Roberts has emerged as one of the most innovative artists of her generation. Her practice aims to expose the mystical roots and the intuitive spirit-raising traditions of American creative expression. Roberts’ work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, and Bergen Kunsthall. Born in Chicago, Roberts works between New York City and London.