Palo Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Atlantic aurora by Deanio X at 21 East 3rd Street in New York City. This will be the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery and will feature a series of ten new artworks completed during the past year. Atlantic Aurora will open with a public reception on Friday, November 15 from 6 to 8 PM, and will be on view through Saturday, December 21, 2024.
Atlantic aurora is an evocative exhibition that explores the Atlantic Ocean’s role as a powerful and complex conduit for the transmission and interchange of cultures. With this new series, Deanio X returns to the roots of his visual language, depicting people, places, and scenes from hidden histories. The exhibition reflects on the ocean’s central role in the violent and chaotic birth of modern nations through enslavement, bordering its vast expanse, whose histories are steeped in colonialism, forced migrations, and the relentless flow of capital and bodies. This turbulent legacy has left deep scars on societies, producing enduring social imbalances, as well as contributing to the destruction of both climate and natural environments. Through his artwork, Deanio X explores the role the Atlantic Ocean played in the burying and loss of families' histories during their passageways to America and the United Kingdom, where the artist and his family are based.
With a professional background and teaching degree in literature, Deanio X references various time periods and written histories as inspirations for his works and explorations of the other side of the tale. Unique to Deanio’s practice is the freedom in his process, as he does not have a specific theme, rather allowing himself to create works of varying themes and messages during his development of the pieces. The artist’s use of paper allows him to manipulate, rip, and ripple his works from the numerous layers of painting and water; these imperfections in his works are crucial to his practice in creating visual cues of the invisible obstructions of taught history. His use of various pigments and vibrant colors allow for the abstraction of skin color and meaning of his subjects, offering the audience the opportunity to be transported back in time to his scenes and to create their own narrative of his works.
This exhibition will also feature one collaborative piece, Atlantic aurora, between Deanio X and his brother and fellow artist, Nathan Bowen. Deanio X and Bowen individually explore how their work can bring positivity and light to people’s everyday lives. Focusing on large format works and murals, the two have collaborated on works before, but this will be the first time one of their collaborative paintings will be exhibited in New York City.
Atlantic aurora invokes the aurora as a metaphor for hope, symbolizing daybreak and the possibility of new beginnings. Through a diverse range of artworks, including improvised portraits, landscapes, and abstract compositions, the exhibition alludes to concealed narratives, mythologies, and forgotten figures. Each piece serves as a reflection on both the devastation wrought by the Atlantic’s history and the quiet resilience of the human spirit, offering a glimpse of a future that, while uncertain, carries with it the potential for renewal.
Deanio X (b. 1989) graduated from the University of Kent with a degree in American Studies (History & Literature). He has since sought to create visual narratives built from research, observational drawing and imagination to stretch conceptualizations of popular history. Interested in redefining tales that surround the contemporary experience of Africans in Europe and beyond, Deanio X accepted a scholarship to the Royal Drawing School in 2018 to build on his self-developed practice and further explore the transformative potential of visual art. After graduating in 2019, he has since undertaken commissions and work from the Royal Drawing School, the Royal Museum Greenwich and London South Bank University. In 2022 he was awarded the Hanover Grange Jamaica Residency by the Royal Drawing School. In 2023, Deanio X was one of ten artists commissioned by His Majesty The King to create portraits of pioneering members of the Windrush Generation. The project, which marked the 75th anniversary of the arrival of HMT Empire Windrush, was featured in the BBC documentary ‘Windrush: Portraits of a Generation’. The works will be exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in October 2023.
