Richard Beavers Gallery, Soho is pleased to announce it’s latest show “It Is What It Is” on view from May 5, 2023 to June 10, 2023 at Richard Beavers Gallery, Soho, 14 Wooster Street, NYC that features a remarkable group presentation of eight spectacular artists, Xavier Daniels, Lynthia Edwards, Marcus Jansen, Frank Morrison, Dappo Reo, Terron Sorrells, Phyllis Stephens, and Michael Vasquez.

Each artist will create new work responding to the quote, “It is what it is” the common expression used to characterize a frustrating or challenging situation that a person believes cannot be changed and must just be accepted. Artists will respond with one to three works each drawing from their own aesthetic preferences and personal backgrounds, each artist will anchor their work with this conceptual framework but then convey it within the confines of painting, collage and textile.

Xavier Daniels pushes societal complacency through his paintings that challenge contemporary narratives of the Black male experience. With a traditional realistic technique, Daniels pulls from his own life experiences and relationships to create poetic imagery of Black men. Heightened through intense textural elements, expressive brushstrokes, and manipulations of space, his method of abstracting his subjects subverts the perpetuated stereotypes that often consume the Black male identity. As the flesh tones swirl with pastel tones, plays of neutral grays and whites, and the occasional vibrant tones of majestic purples, Daniels tells the story of perseverance and brotherhood.

Lynthia Edwards' works present the complex emotions associated with Black girls’ experiences in the American South. Inspired by historical research, personal experience, and everyday encounters, the works reveal the complexity, physical beauty, and internal elegance of her young Black female subjects that is compounded by their unique experiences.

Marcus Jansen is an internationally acclaimed painter, a New York native and former U.S. soldier, with studios based in Bronx, New York and Fort Myers Florida. Over the last twenty years, Jansen has pioneered a raw concentrated reality in his often socially and politically charged landscape works. Jansen is collected by the likes of Singer, Nicole Scherzinger, NBA Star, Carmelo Anthony, Actor, John Ortiz, top 200 collector list members Amy and John Phelan and Collector, Peggy Cooper Cafritz.

Frank Morrison strives to capture people as they are, translating emotions through his paintings and leaving a memoir of our life and times today. His work depicts African-American livelihood in a way that is both familiar and comforting to those who often feel histories have been forgotten and culture has been usurped. An early indoctrination into hip-hop culture can be seen through Frank Morrison’s work, which has been dubbed a mash-up of urban mannerism, graffiti and abstract contemporary, and reflects deeply on the lost of human stories from past eras.

DaaPo Reo says: "National flags freeze the history and heritage of countries into one- dimensional statements. I produce mixed media flags and textile installations that are not unique to any land or people, but rather intertwine narratives of individual experiences in a global age, with collective memory and composite accounts of events across space and time. I am Nigerian-born and a naturalized U.S. citizen; my artistic practice draws on autobiographical material and my subject matter deals with shifts in perspective, reversible identities, and the intricate networks of threads connecting universal chronology and circumstances with our personal timelines and interactions as humans."

Terron Cooper Sorrells invites his viewers into the neglected narratives of African American history, life, and culture. In his practice of painting and printmaking, he creates large-scale works that envelop viewers in stories of the everyday interwoven with allusions to the past. His work becomes a collective portrait of what it means to be African American today in a celebration of its rich, diverse, and beautiful nature.

Phyllis Stephens (b. 1955, American) is a fifth-generation quilt maker who lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia. She is considered to be a master of African-American story quilts and has quilted professionally for more than thirty years. Stephens is proud to have been a part of the "Water is Life" exhibition which opened in 2016 in Geneva, Switzerland; and traveled to France, Italy, Canada, Israel, Mexico and the U.S. Her work has been shown at museums such as The National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky—considered to have one of the world’s top quilt displays—as well as the National Museum of Ghana in Accra.

Michael Vasquez is an American artist most recognized for his works that explore identity and the cultivation of community amidst an inherent disposition of broken homes inside marginalized neighborhoods. Through figurative painting and portraiture he legitimatizes this complex social landscape, narrating neighborhood events, mischief, and the trials and tribulations that come with the territory as his subjects navigate the expectations and pressures of their peers and society at large.