CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/23/2024

On view now! 'Surrealism and Us'

Published to accompany the landmark show at The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Surrealism and Us: Caribbean and African Diasporic Artists since 1940 is one of the hottest new releases of the year. Featuring more than 50 works from the 1940s to the present that show how artists of the Black diaspora have transformed and even radicalized what was already a radical European Surrealism, this is a book for any serious art library. Curator María Elena Ortiz “sketches” some weirdness: “We see everywhere the long shadow of histories of colonial domination. Forms of racism that many thought were extinct have come roaring back to life. Moments of glory compete with episodes of despair. As I reflect on it, the situation seems absurd—nonsensical. This is rich soil in which Surrealism can grow—a Surrealism that helps us better see the strange situation we are in, and provokes us to imagine different ways of being. Generations have drawn inspiration from the history this show presents. The flowers of Surrealism are perennials, it seems, for better or worse. They sprout when the situation demands it, when some new absurdity or domination needs to be pictured and navigated. They answer to no-one and follow their own needs.” Featured here is the first panel of Elliot & Erick Jiménez’s “Blue Chapel (Rejection, Acceptance, Advocacy, Interdependence),” 2022.