“If I met my ancestors at the edge of the ocean, would I bring flowers?”
Memories ebb and flow through soulful, meditative canvases.
Khari Turner’s impressionistic paintings set their obscured Black subjects adrift in waves of memory. Water is a major source of inspiration, especially its relationship to the African American experience: recalling the transatlantic slave trade, racially segregated swimming pools of the mid-20th century and the artist’s own childhood on the shores of Lake Michigan. It is depicted stylistically through textured drips and swirls of colour, but also present physically - Turner mixes water collected from places of personal and historical significance into his pigments. The sodium levels of differ...
Bio
Khari Turner (he/him) was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1991, and now lives and works in New York.
Exhibitions
Turner held his first New York solo-show, Breathing Water to Air, at Ross-Sutton Gallery in the summer of 2021. In 2022 his work will be presented at the Venice Biennale.
Did you know?
Water collected from places of personal importance is mixed into Turner's paint, including the Milwaukee River, the Hudson River and the coast of Senegal.
