Meet October’s Artists-in-Residence
Curtis Santiago, Gerald Lovell and Xavier Scott Marshall
Curtis Santiago
In partnership with Atlantic Art Fair
Curtis Santiago was born in the winter of 1979 to Trinidadian parents who emigrated to Alberta, Canada to work in the oil and gas industry. His home was white suburbia and his influences were his older brothers. He was a nocturnal kid, never wanting to sleep and finding inspiration on the walls of his bedroom. His mom would bring home newsprint rolls from the Journal and put sheets of paper up by his bed for him to draw on until he fell asleep. He is still given to all-night sessions in his studio gleaning imaginings from quiet places. His parents and family are ever present in his work and his pursuits. His quest to discover his own ancestry has taken him to Portugal to learn about the Moors and the African influence in art. He spent time in residence in South Africa where he learned to bead with the Beaders’ Guild and experienced a beautiful interconnectedness with local families and art professionals alike. His nomadic existence has dramatically informed his work. He is immersive and doesn’t just visit, but lives where he is, whether 30 days or months.
He has exhibited internationally at venues such as The Drawing Center and The New Museum in New York; The Eli and Edythe Broad Museum at Michigan State University; the Institute of Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University; The Pérez Art Museum Miami; and others. His works are in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the Kadist Foundation, the Studio Museum of Harlem and the Nevada Museum of Art, among others. He is currently based in Munich.
Gerald Lovell
For Gerald Lovell, painting is an act of biography. Combining flat and impressionistic painting with thick daubs of impasto, Lovell’s monumental portraits depict loving scenes often lost to the abyss of memory. Lovell’s portraits refuse the notion that all Black figures put down on canvas are somehow political. Rather, his work records a deep commitment to fostering alternative community narratives by imbuing his subjects with social agency and self-determinative power, while also revealing individualistic details that lay their essential humanity bare.
Born in Chicago to Puerto Rican and Black parents, Lovell began painting at the age of 22 after dropping out of the graphic design program at the University of West Georgia. He has exhibited at P·P·O·W, New York; Jeffrey Deitch, Moore Building, Miami, FL; Anthony Gallery, Chicago, IL; Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; The Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture, Charlotte, NC; and MINT, Atlanta, GA, among others. Lovell’s work was recently on view in What is left unspoken, Love at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA.
Xavier Scott Marshall
Xavier Scott Marshall is a first-generation Trinidadian-American artist born and based in New York. Xavier’s images reflect upon the colonial history of image-making to question and draw parallels between history and the black condition. While taking cues from modern black life and using Pan-African religiosity as a vehicle, Xavier traces the lines of the past to create a new perspective devoid of the post-colonial reality we occupy. Xavier’s work has been featured in i-D, Aperture, and Vogue Italia, and has been exhibited at the Chrysler Museum in Virginia and at galleries in London and Milan. He is currently based in New York.
