BravinLee programs is very pleased to present “Fashionable Hybrids” new work on paper by Marcia Kure. This is the artist’s second solo exhibition at BravinLee. The show will open March 11th and run through April 16th 2011.

Born in Nigeria, Marcia Kure has had nine one-person shows and over forty exhibitions in Nigeria, Germany, the US, Spain, the Netherlands, United Arab Emirates, Japan, Canada, Austria and Switzerland. She has exhibited at The New Museum, New York, The Newark Museum, the 7th Sharjah Biennale, the Spelman College Museum, and the 2nd Seville International Biennial curated by Okwui Enwezor. Reviews have appeared in the New York Times, Frieze, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, African Arts and Flash Art. In the fall she made a project for Esopus Magazine.

Marcia Kure’s imagery is partially influenced by ancient cave drawings in southern Africa, as well as the traditional Uli murals of Nigeria. For this exhibition, the “Fashionable Hybrids” Kure creates a cast of female character forms that are surrealistically costumed and possess a detached glamour, evoking the cold aggression and sexuality of fashion, advertising and military uniforms. Taking a page from contemporary currents in haute couture, Kure’s designs are smart and exotic. The figures seem other-worldly, militaristic and touch on sources that range from Victorian, British Colonial to Gothic. Precisely rendered and beautifully and intricately executed, Kure’s handling of drawing and water-based mediums recall Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. Kure’s intricate images of semi-plausible figures compel the viewer to consider a world condition that is glamorous yet strange and foreboding.

This exhibition is concurrent with an exhibition of editioned photo based montages being held at Susan Inglett Gallery in New York. The two exhibitions are explained in the artist’s statement:

The “Fashionable Hybrids” series evolved from my “Dressed Up” series (2009-2010), the photomontage portraits constructed from fragments of bodies and fashion associated with Hip-Hop and Victorian/contemporary haute couture. The “Dressed Up” series dramatized the visible difference between the two modes of dress and the social worlds they invoke in order to dismantle the usual cultural and social boundaries cloth imposes on bodies, and to challenge the ways human beings are defined by what they wear. The “Fashionable Hybrids” series goes even further. In it, visual elements from Disney cartoon, Japanese Anime and Manga, medieval fashion, military outfits, and contemporary couture fashion collide with pictorial forms inspired by the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, Roy Lichtenstein, Jan Vermeer, Gustav Klimt, and Édouard Manet. The resulting figures, with their quirky and delirious anatomical structures, revel in their hybridity, as if they are proud avatars of extreme fashion. (Marcia Kure Princeton, NJ 2011).

Project Room: “Pour Encourager Les Autres” Painting and Photography by David Wojnarowicz

Upcoming Exhibitions: Iva Gueorguieva, April 21 – May 21, 2011. Nina Bovasso, May 26 – July 2011.