UNIX Gallery is pleased to announce TRANS_MIGRATION, a solo exhibition of Llewellyn Xavier, on view from May 30 – July 6, 2019 at the gallery’s 513 West 26th Street location. The artist will present a dynamic new body of work comprised of a series of lush, tactile oil paintings.

From his early representational oil paintings taking on racial and political themes in the 1960s and 1970s, to his more abstract series of watercolors influenced by ancient myths, Llewellyn Xavier’s work is a carefully considered response to his environment, reflected by themes encompassing the natural world. Evoking the coloration of such varied artists as Mark Rothko, Pietro Perugino, and Marc Chagall, and the conceptual logic of Abstract Expressionism, Xavier’s artwork reimagines the ways in which we engage in both socio-political and spiritual discourse.

In his new exhibition, Xavier examines the subject of transition from two unique but confluent perspectives; he explores the deliberate, sometimes rebellious shift of self that provokes outward change, and the massive shift of societal attitudes that have prompted environmental change and destabilization. The vantage points intersect around the idea of disruption and its pervasive effects on our world. Using vibrant colors, cross-hatching, and thick layers of oil paint to create rich sculptural works, Xavier interweaves his thesis into these abstract compositions; the artist asks the viewer to ponder the ways in which we ourselves have migrated, shifted, and transformed, and how this behavior has influenced our immediate surroundings and beyond.

Born in 1945 in Saint Lucia, Llewellyn Xavier is represented in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. In 2004, Xavier was made a member of the Order of the British Empire in recognition for his contribution to art.

The artist currently works and lives in Saint Lucia.