Unveiling of our NEW public art project - The Platform Gallery!
Stepping Out to Step In
Theresa Chromati
June 5 - November 30, 2020
OPENING EVENT: ART ESCAPE DRIVE-THRU
Friday, June 19, 2020 | 5 - 8 PM
One Step and I Shall Form Again (Trust Your Movement)
Theresa Chromati
In three monumental outdoor banners commissioned by The Delaware Contemporary for the debut of its Platform Gallery, Theresa Chromati has created exuberant and bold visions of female bodies. The psychological charge of Chromati’s beings is intense. Taken together the three banners describe, in the artist’s words, an “ambiguous journey” as a central figure attains “balance and then power.”
It is as impossible to fully distill the emotional qualities of Chromati’s figures into simple categories as it is futile to untangle their layered, flowing forms. Complexity and individuality are essential to the artist’s investigation of identity, self-realization, and visual representation. Limbs reach to the sides, while eyes confront that which is directly ahead. Joyful colors are used to define turbulent shapes. Female attributes dominate, still masculine aspects can be deciphered.
Chromati’s works address the legacy of early 20th-century white male artists who abstracted the female body in paintings, sculptures, and public artworks. Willem de Kooning, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, and others pursued formal innovations in compositions that conjured fantastical women who seemed alternatively monstrous, playful, seductive, or tragic, but generally lacking in personal agency. Chromati continues to push the exploration of abstraction and figuration forward into the 21st century. However, her multi-faceted and self-possessed figures are strongly anchored in the real experience of the bodies and lives of black women (including the artist’s).
Although not yet 30, Theresa Chromati (b. 1992) has garnered critical and institutional attention for figurative paintings that burst with color and texture as they deploy abstraction to explore the complex contemporary realities of black women. Chromati has profound connections to Wilmington and the surrounding Northeast region. She was born and raised in Baltimore, MD, attended DCAD (Delaware College of Art and Design) and the Pratt Institute, and is now based in New York City.
One of Chromati’s paintings was recently a highlighted new acquisition at the Pérez Art Museum, Miami, and her work is featured in a group exhibition organized by artist Mickalene Thomas for The Baltimore Museum of Art that runs through 2021. She was the subject of profiles in The New York Times Style Magazine and Interview magazine in 2019, and was invited to create a special “Practice in Print” spread for The Studio Museum in Harlem’s summer 2019 magazine. Chromati is represented by Kravets/Wehby Gallery, New York.
Curated by Kristen Hileman
The Platform Gallery
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IN THE PRESS
The Philadelphia Inquirer
June 18, 2020
With an ‘Art Escape Drive-Thru’ for the pandemic and a ‘Response Gallery’ for the protests, the Delaware Contemporary is reacting to 2020 in real time
By Stephanie Farr
The idea for the outdoor Platform Gallery at the Delaware Contemporary — an art center housed in a former railroad car factory in Wilmington — came well before COVID-19 hit the region.
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T Magazine
June 17, 2020
Theresa Chromati’s Vivid Prints at the Delaware Contemporary
By Rachel May
A drive-through exhibition of the New York-based artist Theresa Chromati’s vivid banners at the Delaware Contemporary in Wilmington should give people new hope for acceptable, more visceral ways of socially distanced art viewing.
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Architectural Digest
June 4, 2020
This Museum Is Finding an Ingenious Way to Open an Exhibition During Lockdown
By Camille Okhio
With social-distancing measures still largely in place, art and design institutions have rushed headfirst onto the web. In the weeks directly following the country’s first coronavirus lockdowns, galleries pushed their online viewing rooms and archives…
But recently, one artist (and museum) figured out how to traverse both digital and physical spaces safely, in order to make sure that a previously scheduled exhibition was able to go forward. Delaware Contemporary, a modest artist-founded institution in Wilmington, is moving forward with its first show since the museum was remodeled. “Stepping Out to Step In” is set to be unveiled tomorrow with works by artist Theresa Chromati. The catch? It’s now completely staged outdoors.
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Bmore Art
June 3, 2020
Stepping Out to Step In: Theresa Chromati’s Commission at The Delaware Contemporary
Words: Kristen Hileman
In the early fall of 2019, Leslie Shaffer, the newly appointed Executive Director at The Delaware Contemporary, asked me to work with the 40-year-old arts organization as a curator-in-residence. I had known Shaffer from her time at Baltimore’s Contemporary where she served as first Director of Education and then Interim Executive Director in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It was exciting to hear her talk about her vision for activating the exterior of TDC’s building, a former railroad car assembly plant in Wilmington’s evolving Riverfront neighborhood.
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Delaware Today
May 26, 2020
The Delaware Contemporary to Host an Interactive, Drive-Thru Art Event
By Olivia Montes
As the country slowly begins lifting stay-at-home restrictions, Delaware’s art community is working to reignite the beauty and creativity of the world around us this summer.
The Delaware Contemporary art gallery is hosting an Art Escape Drive-Thru event, where attendees can admire a variety of works—all at a safe distance. Originally set for June 5, the event is now postponed to June 19.
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INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT
This program is partially funded by a grant from the Delaware Humanities, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
This program is supported, in part, by a grant from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts. The Division promotes Delaware arts events on www.DelawareScene.com.
Banners produced and installed by Precision Color Graphics.