Gray is pleased to present Torkwase Dyson: Of line and memory, the artist’s first solo exhibition in Gray’s Chicago gallery. Installed over three distinct spaces, the exhibition debuts a monumental sculpture in steel and painted wood, an immersive installation of new paintings, and new cast glass and wood constructions. Of line and memory opens at Gray Chicago with a public reception for the artist on November 8 and remains on view through January 25, 2025.

Dyson works across the disciplines of painting, drawing, installation, and sculpture, distilling the spatial and affective residues of diasporic histories to envision new modes of environmental liberation. Through an improvisational process of mindful abstraction, which she calls “Black Compositional Thought”, Dyson seeks to create work that is fluid, abstract, poetic, and open to possibility. “If there is systemic oppression, there must be systemic liberation,” says the artist, “and I am in that zone... trying to condition myself in this relationship of a transhistorical liberation practice”1.

Of line and memory draws from years of research and Dyson’s own spatial memory of navigating the waterways and urban architecture of Chicago. Using the South Shore Cultural Center, a lakeshore landmark with rich historical and architectural significance, as a point of departure, Dyson extracts, reduces, and refines architectural and visual cues into geometric shapes and painterly abstractions. According to the artist, “Of line and memory asks, as we move through dramatic and ever-changing geographies, what memories are stored in these new and improvisational choreographies?”.

An immersive, dynamic interplay of materials emerges throughout the exhibition. Aya, a cantilevered steel, wood, and graphite sculpture in two parts, balances monumental, curved shapes upon the weight of rectangular steel bases. Dyson’s new paintings unlock a sense of “state change” between thinly poured layers of deep blues and reds, opaque blacks, and the shapes and lines of geometric abstraction. Likewise, her Hypershape constructions in glass and graphite-coated wood balance the solidity of wood and graphite with the translucence of cast glass.

Of line and memory underscores Torkwase Dyson’s deep commitment to transforming complex histories of diasporic and urban landscapes into powerful abstractions. The artist states: “the topography echoes familiar and enigmatic ecologies in my consciousness without the promise of stability. Embracing this indeterminacy, I think through how the transhistorical ethos of infrastructure space, both visible and invisible, resonates in liberation and world-building”.

Notes

1 Torkwase Dyson, lecture, SAIC Visiting Artists Program, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, March 7, 2023.