pt.2 Gallery presents Skeletons, a solo exhibition from Muzae Sesay opening this Saturday, June 15th in Downtown Oakland. The exhibition features a new series of paintings by the Oakland-based artist.
With a Winter 2019 Feature and appearance on Radio Juxtapoz (listen below), Muzae Sesay has become a regular at Juxtapoz over the last year. While using art to challenge himself, Sesay gains inspiration from architecture and the community around him. Originally from Orange County, Sesay offers questions, like "Why does San Francisco have an environment that encourages people's houses to all look different and colorful, but no Orange County?"
Skeletons
A big hotel
yon ghost is fetish
eating the sun from under the freeway overpass
...and oh what a life it was
your world and ours
yet still also
when cities progress as a leaf grows to die
...and you?
Muzae Sesay on Skeletons:
"The works step toward making sense the complexity of systemic happenings we must assess through multiple dimensions before approaching the consequences they bring forth."
"A dim day's end. The orange sunset within a black landscape. Colorful rhythmic pillars sway; pressured yet determined to hold ground. Bones of past lives lived. Bones that built the beauty that brought us. The home that housed a community now starves. Ripped and exposed from their centric progression within the last moments before rehabilitation. Skeletons of the cultural vibrancy and historic diversity that give Oakland its strength and vitality. Now a relic for the rich living in fear and power."
"Grey elegance and the facade of class, both intrigued and envious; surround, smother, and suffocate. Drawn in by the radiance of culture yet blind to what culture actually is. A mixture of apathy, sterile ideas of luxury, superficial solutions to safety, capitalization of land, commodification of identity, allocation of resources, and power create a toxic storm."
One picks up trash to beautify one’s neighborhood
beauty to value
an L for homie to find nice coffee
all edges cut
"As a sword has two sides, Skeletons similarly personifies the towering bars of development that suck up visible light. A home is gutted while a condominium goes up. Visually, the two become one and morality cancels itself out. Like Skeletons crippled by dichotomy, our position is 'and/both' yet we proclaim 'either/or'. The tension of division veils the layers of oppression and agency of each participant."
"Just as night falls into day, there's always motion toward the horizon; the idea of something more, something beautiful within grasp. It is consciousness and community that lends itself to hope and strength. Together, cutting through the noise, a challenge to the depleting intergenerational treasures of our diversity is made in response. In the dark, we grow the bones through cracks in the cement. The push and pull of colonization."
Muzae Sesay's "Skeletons" opens at pt.2 Gallery on June 15, 2019. In conjunction with Basil Kincaid's "Shamans Death" exhibition, there will be an opening reception from 12 pm to 10 pm, including a musical performance and a talk with the artist. "Skeletons" will be on view through July 5, 2019.
pt.2 gallery is located at 1523 b Webster St. and is just blocks away from both 12th & 19th St Bart Stations. Opening receptions at pt.2: are always free and open to the public. To receive a preview of the exhibition please contact [email protected]. On June 16th, Muzae Sesay will be doing another talk with artist Basil Kincaid and curator Emily Kuhlmann at the MoAD in San Francisco, from 3 to 5 pm.
