TANKSLEY / BRANDON / LEGRAND

From March 29 to May 6, 2023, the Wilmer Jennings Gallery at Kenkeleba presents the exhibition, TANKSLEY / BRANDON / LEGRAND. Ann Tanksley, Nancy Brandon and Yolène Legrand are New York based artists who have worked professionally for many decades, and all three artists are connected through the artist community at Dorsey’s Art Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. This exhibition is organized by Denise Pierce and Debra Vanderburg Spencer.

Ann Tanksley’s work is fundamentally grounded in Black culture and history. Several of her paintings of African American life connect to community and generations of people, representing the significant influence of growing up in the segregated circumstances of the Homewood section of Pittsburgh. Many of Tanksley’s figures reflect a deep sense of loss behind mask-like visages and the same sense of melancholy, longing and urgency is enhanced by her flattened compositions and ironic use of bright color.

Tanksley’s narratives include such subjects as the Slave Trade and Slavery, introduced in Slave House. Gorée Island, Senegal. She addresses the historic vestiges of slavery such as the Great Migration in The Harvest Is Over–And We Are Not Saved. She confronts head-on politics in Shot Down by Bureaucratic Rhetoric, and miscegenation in The Red Headed Stepchild. The political satire of Garment Park haunts with enslaved people on moveable platforms. Watermelon Rage offers social satire and represents her facility with abstraction and representation on equal terms.

Nancy Brandon’s abstracted compositions are defined by the City, where they are informed by the chaos of NYC or the turbulent state of the world. Brandon uses lines, squares, circles,rectangles and nebulous geometric shapes to create a complex symbolic language. As a trained harpist, music and improvisation are integral to Brandon’s experimentation with both materials and abstract techniques. A painting like The A Train, with its rougher, lumpy surface, pays homage to Duke Ellington’s 1939 classic jazz standard, “Take the A Train”.

While most of the canvases are abstract, the verticality of Descending Ascending Falling suggests upright human figures. Other works exemplify how drawn lines and marks can communicate without any association to representational imagery. Her seemingly experimental approach to mark-making and minutely irregular marks appear with organic regularity in works like Table, Luminescence and Untitled 9.    

Against the sharp details of the bolder works by Tanksley and Brandon, the intimacy of Yolène Legrand’s realistic landscapes is compelling. Legrand’s study of form and tonal values is evident in her techniques of layering and blending colors to produce rich atmospheric effects whether in oil, pastel or watercolor.

An interesting facet of landscape paintings is that they can be important signals of culture. Political sentiments are found in Ruins of the Old Slave Hospital, St. Simons Island and View of Sidney Lanier Bridge from Jekyll Island, GA. The oak trees in Ses Racines Sont Profondes et Nombreuses may be of important historical significance to Black America.

Legrand’s vision of the landscape is not confined to a few general locations. Her technical proficiency is demonstrated in representations of Central Park, Nantucket Island, Wellfleet Harbor, Normandy in France, and the hillsides of Haiti. The serenity of Legrand’s open vistas and radiant skies belies the genesis of places like Canal d'Avezac, Camp-Perrin, Haiti.

Kenkeleba programs are funded in part by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the Mosaic Fund and many generous friends.

Installation Photography : Christian Carone
Image Photography : Laylah Garcia