Torkwase Dyson

Season 8 continues with an intimate, feature-length special episode! Russell & Robert chat with Torkwase Dyson (b. 1973, Chicago, Illinois) from her studio in New York. Dyson describes herself as a painter working across multiple mediums to explore the continuity between ecology, infrastructure, and architecture. Examining environmental racism as well as the history and future of black spatial liberation strategies, Dyson’s abstract works grapple with the ways in which space is perceived and negotiated, particularly by Black and Brown bodies. Explorations of how the body unifies, balances, and arranges itself to move through natural and built environments become both expressive and discursive structures within the work.

​

Dyson builds the abstract paintings slowly, accumulating washes, building surface and configuring minimal geometric elements that lend a productive tension between image and object.  The paint-handling producing various visual qualities using brushwork and other tools is made poetic by a juxtaposition of delicate marks and scored, diagrammatic lines. This compositional rigor imbues the works with an architectural presence and optical gravity.

​

Torkwase's work will be part of the Serpentine Galleries' exhibition 'Back To Earth' in London next year, 2021. Learn more at https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/back-to-earth/

Visit Torkwase's official website www.TorkwaseDyson.com/ and her artist page at Pace Gallery, London & New York. Follow Torkwase on Instagram @TorkwaseDyson and @PaceGallery.

For images of all artworks discussed in this episode visit @TalkArt. Talk Art theme music by Jack Northover @JackNorthoverMusic courtesy of HowlTown.com We've just joined Twitter too @TalkArt. If you've enjoyed this episode PLEASE leave us your feedback and maybe 5 stars if we're worthy in the Apple Podcast store. Thank you for listening to Talk Art, we will be back very soon. For all requests, please email [email protected]

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.