TURN Gallery is pleased to present Marcus Leslie Singleton in FUTURE MEMORIES opening Saturday May 1st, 2021. This marks his second solo exhibition at the gallery.


In this new body of work Singleton presents what he calls Bubble Paintings - a series of oil on panels that explore the symbiosis between time and the Black body. Wading through imagination and memory he weaves together personal experience with current narratives. Singlelton’s vibrant language of figures and forms conveyed through lively brushstrokes reminisces details of life both small and grand.


“The main entity tying this series of work together is time and how it interacts with the black body. My aim in making these paintings between my residency in Wellfleet, MA and Brooklyn studio was to elaborate on the complex dance between time, space, experience and our bodies. I explored how we as black people live within these structures and how that informs our reality. This development of thought was essential to creating the work, although we are alive in this same wild time, we have experienced two very different positions, because there are two different Americas, there are two different judicial systems. Since the pandemic started, time has flown by but I was so still, we all were, inside for hours and days. This reminded me of how moments are birthed, how you could be physically somewhere and mentally in a different space, how paradoxes appear, how we have been policed and praised in the same breath. Some bubbles are time experienced, a record of the past made permanently present and some are ideas for the future. I also thought about how resilient the black body is to time, I never saw many wrinkles on my grandmothers face, I know all our ancestors saw or hoped for a brighter future for us. These will be our memories.”


Marcus Leslie Singleton's (b.1990) recent solo exhibitions include Steve Turner Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Journal Gallery, New York, NY; TURN Gallery New York, NY. Group exhibitions include September Gallery, Hudson, NY; University Museum, Albany, NY; Superposition Gallery, Amagansett, NY. Singleton currently lives and works in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.


PRESS

ARTFORUM, May 17, 2021