Berry Campbell is pleased to present its first solo exhibition of paintings by contemporary artist, Beverly McIver (b. 1962), after announcing her representation last year. Beverly McIver: Entangled is comprised of 18 recent paintings created in the artist’s North Carolina studio with subjects ranging from reflective self-portraits that capture her emotional ebbs and flows of the past year, to portraits of her family, friends, and neighbors, including tributes to her mentors, Faith Ringgold and Philip Pearlstein. The exhibition will be accompanied by a 44-page, fully-illustrated catalogue with essay by Paul Jaskot, Professor of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, and introduction by Dorothy Moss, Director of the Hung Liu Estate.
The central paintings of the exhibition are a series of emotional self-portraits entitled Entangled that depict the artist’s head being wrapped and strangled by colorful chords or rope or netting, showing the artist at her most vulnerable. While the subject matter of her paintings can be challenging, McIver’s virtuoso painting technique is unrivaled. McIver says: “The commonality is the human part, I think people are just refreshed to see somebody telling the truth, being authentic.”
McIver often chooses to paint the grittier side of her life: depression, poverty, illness, death, and the life of her developmentally disabled older sister. McIver’s artistic journey serves as a testament to her perseverance and the complexities that shape her identity such as stereotyping, self-acceptance, family, otherness, and, ultimately, freedom to express one’s individuality. McIver states: “I think it gives others hope that you can be on welfare, from the projects, and everybody around you doing other things like selling drugs and you can actually get a college degree and be a professor at Duke and have this great gift of sharing your voice and offering it as sort of a hug to what it means to be a human being and what it means to suffer.”
The exhibition coincides with McIver’s involvement in People for the American Way’s Artists for Democracy project, in which McIver is working alongside other renowned contemporary artists including Carrie Mae Weems, Jeffrey Gibson, Jenny Holzer, Shepard Fairey, and Titus Kaphar to promote voter mobilization through art in advance of the 2024 presidential election.
Beverly McIver is a Professor of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, and recently had a museum survey organized by the Scottsdale Museum of Art, Arizona, that traveled to Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and The Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, South Carolina. Last month, The National Academy of Design announced Beverly McIver has been elected as part of the class of 2024. Beverly McIver: Entangled opens at Berry Campbell with a reception on Thursday, October 17, 2024, from 6 to 8 pm and runs through November 16, 2024.
