Thank You For Being Here!
CPM Gallery
November 22, 2024 - January 11, 2025
Through fictive reimagining Devin N. Morris’s multidisciplinary art practice critically engages with systems of value and the tropes of domestic prosperity, as well as the social mores of race, sex, and sexuality. He creates works that combine painting, drawing, and photography with found objects, detritus, and ephemera discovered on daily walks through New York, Baltimore City and beyond. The material memory and emotional charge of these objects’ past lives, when activated within Morris’s complex arrangements, take on a linguistic character. Pieces of discarded clothing and furniture, moldings, liquor bottle caps, butterfly wings, plastic bags, and other objects become words, form sentences, and speak in image form.
The title of the exhibition, Thank You For Being Here!, is taken from the ubiquitous American grocery bag. Here, however, the word “Shopping” is replaced with “Being”—exchanging the energy of consumption with an exclamation of gratitude. This sentiment also refers to symbiotic transit : life to death, lost to found, truth to myth. This show, in large part, considers the monumentality of death, love, family legacy, and how our traversal of these planes generates the nutrients upon which the future grows.
The floor space of the gallery will display several 7ft tall freestanding works that incorporate collage, painting, assemblage, and mixed media, on substrates of USPS mail truck doors, which are repurposed as folding screens and picture frames, revealing familial scenes and material artifacts from the artist’s life. While he was growing up in Baltimore, Morris’s family had a contracting business with the United States Postal Service which has made these objects particularly sensitized. The walls of the gallery will display a group of large, curved and irregularly shaped works that improvise between personal and political environments, and surreal scenes of kinship between friends, family, and romantic partners.
and sometimes Y, 2024 | “A E I O U”, color pencil, willi smith dress, oil pastel, collage, carpets, oil stick, graphite, miniature liquor bottle top, acrylic, oil, vinyl sticker, curling ribbon, wood veneer, wooden frame, plastic bag, “&”, ribbon, spiral wrist coil, charcoal on USPS folding truck door 90.25 x 28 x 7 in.
Petty Change, 2024 | The break, oil pastel, lottery tickets, collage, oil stick, acrylic, tempera, graphite, charcoal, color pencil,wood veneer, corbels, roofing shingles, tongue and groove wood panel, bike seat, spray paint, fabric bows, "petty change", chair legs, tongue and groove wood wall panel, pastel, butter knife, spoon, seconds hand, moldings, photo frame, wood dowel on USPS truck folding door - 90.25 x 50 x 11 in
8 Wings clapped for a name unknown, yet I search strenuously through all things that crack, shard, shirr, and disperse as sand, 2024 | Oil, acrylic, watercolor, oil stick, oil pastel, spray paint, miniature bottle caps, lemongrass, thread, yarn, tree bark, whispers, color pencil, pastel, cinnamon bark, crayon confetti, resin, her immortalized flowers, pencil shavings, high grass drips, ink, collage, flowers, plywood, wood stain, Marcus Garvey Park, immersion, graphite, puzzle pieces, beads, fig leaf, metal wire, echoes, dried acrylic and oil mediums, matchsticks, flutters on paper on Euca board on wood on wall 49 3/4 × 80 1/2 × 27 inches
No Rouge Stain Above the Door Will Do, 2024 | Charred wood, house paint, acrylic, wood stain, threshold, lacquered chair leg, shattered side view mirror, ladder back chair, wrought iron fencing, willi smith slip dress, hair pin, steak knife, door knob, keys, keychains, wood siding, petrified hair brush, hanger, on wood panel 125 x 99 x 6.5 inches
Wreath, 2024 | Her flowers, candle wax, resin, wreath bows, love, wreath holder 60 x 35.5 x 24 inches
The end is the beginning at the end of a beginning that is bound to end, 2024 | Oil pastel, acrylic, watercolor, pastel, gasoline, nail polish bottle, metal bottle top, broken glass, dangerous flowers, oil stick, acrylic rods, nails, oil, collage, nails, "thank you", "Here", steel birds, "thank you for", "I love freedom" on panel, on door
99.5 x 45 x 2.75 in
No Place for Haints, 2024 | Oil pastel, wood veneer, charcoal, acrylic, house paint, oil, NY Yankees hat, Maria D's, felt, color pencil, Federal Hill, Harlem, takeout cups, advertising poster, "One Way" vinyl sticker, pencil shavings, cashed matches, spray paint, paint skins, collage, graphite, yarn, lemongrass, screen door, cabinet door, toys, Haint Blue on canvas 80 x 63 x 25 in
My mother is the greatest artist. My mother is your mother, too. I weep, 2024 | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, wood blocks, metal wire, keys, paper, collage, army patch, frayed bank cards, NY state insurance card, pearls, playing cards, plastic comb, broken ceramic vessel, "house by house", ebt card, her flowers, resin, netting, curling ribbon, rope trim, lanyard (gimp), shoulder pads, "D", remnants of dollar bills, iron candle holder, deflated balloons, Die, dominoes, ribbon bow, water color, puzzle pieces, halved side table, glass vase, nails on USPS truck folding door 90.25 x 28 x 7 inches
The Clovers' in the Crack’s, 2024 | Wood veneer, oil pastel, color pencil, litho ink monotype, moldings on paper, on wood floor panel 26 x 18.5 x 1.75 inches
Threshold (Suspended in the Between, Through and Over), 2024 | Resin, her flowers, ribbon, gold watch, earrings, deflated balloons, wood earring, ground cds, curling ribbon, collage, dice, pigment powder, her bracelets, ribbon, faux flowers, crayon confetti, beaded bracelet, bows, pailletes, broken pencil, portal, metal bird, hair clip, Corelle plate, suspended in the round 40 inches diameter
Thank You For Being Here (Dress), 2024 | Reusable shopping bags, spray paint, color pencil, metal hanger, thread 63.25 x 24 inches
