OPENING SEPTEMBER 26
RECEPTION 5-7PM

In SHIFT, Clarence Heyward and André Leon Gray look back without standing still, drawing on memory and lived experience to create work that speaks directly to the present.

Fresh off his acclaimed EDEN exhibition at the Houston Museum of African American Culture, Clarence Heyward returns to the Triangle with SHIFT, a powerful new body of work that marks another leap forward in his practice. Following the widely reported vandalism of his painting Man in the Garden, covered by The New York Times and Hyperallergic, Heyward’s work feels more urgent than ever and affirms painting’s ability to spark dialogue and demand attention.

In SHIFT, Heyward revisits the rhythms of his childhood in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn: double dutch chants, the song of the ice cream truck, pickup basketball, water gun fights, chalk-covered sidewalks, and conversations unfolding on brownstone stoops. Richly layered with collage, pattern, and increasingly complex surfaces, these paintings reveal an artist who refuses to get comfortable, continually challenging himself to push his work further.

Over the past five years, Heyward has emerged as one of the most compelling painters working in North Carolina today. His work is held in major public and private collections, including the North Carolina Museum of Art, where it is prominently displayed in the permanent collection and featured in the museum’s collection catalog. SHIFT captures an artist at full stride, confident, evolving, and impossible to ignore.

Hand-selected by Heyward to exhibit alongside him, André Leon Gray brings an interdisciplinary perspective to SHIFT. Working across sculpture, collage, painting, drawing, and text, Gray transforms reclaimed materials into layered compositions that explore history, culture, and collective memory. Inspired by the improvisational rhythms of jazz and freestyle rap, his work invites viewers to look closer, revealing coded visual narratives that challenge familiar assumptions and illuminate the complex relationship between remembering and forgetting.

Born in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he continues to live and work, Gray’s work is held in the permanent collections of the North Carolina Museum of Art, the California African American Museum, and the Gregg Museum of Art & Design. He is a recipient of the 2024 Joan Mitchell Fellowship and the 2023 21c Research Triangle Artadia Award.

SHIFT brings together two artists at compelling moments in their careers, each pushing forward in his own distinct way. Together, they create a conversation about where we come from and what we carry forward.

PAST EXHIBITIONS

 

STATEMENT

Using painting as my primary tool of communication, I make works examining my identity as a Black American man, husband and father; compositions documenting my life experiences and how the media and historical documentation contribute to the perception of Black Americans and our collective culture. Much of my work is influenced by my memories which serve as a database filled with television shows, movies, music, and pop-culture which become metaphors and or references used in my compositions.

ABOUT CLARENCE HEYWARD

Clarence Heyward is a painter whose work explores notions of the Black American experience, primarily focusing on how the use of media and historical documentation is used to shape perceptions of Black American culture. His work investigates cultural truths, challenges stereotypes, and examines identity.

He has exhibited his work in spaces nationally including the 21c Museum of Durham, the Harvey B. Gantt Center for Cultural Arts, the Wiregrass Museum, the Museum of Science and Industry Chicago, Art Miami Art Fair, the Dallas Art Fair, the Container-Santa Fe, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, and (CAM) the Contemporary Art Museum of Raleigh.

Heyward was the recipient of The Brightwork Fellowship residency at Anchorlight Raleigh in 2019-2020, the Emerging Artist in Residence at Artspace, Raleigh in 2021, the Ragdale (IL) artist fellowship in 2022 and was the 2022 Artist in Residence at NC State University. His work is in the collections of several notable private and public institutions including the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Nasher Museum of Art, the Ackland Art Museum, the Cameron Museum of Art and the Rubell Family Collection.

WORK FROM PREVIOUS SHOWS