Juan Logan

2011-10-08T21:26:00.002-04:00

Truth Be Told, 2011
mixed-media on panel, 7' x 8'

Biographical Info

2011-10-05T13:42:00.001-04:00

Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Juan Logan now lives and works in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Logan’s artworks address subjects relevant to the American experience as a whole. At once abstract and representational, his paintings, drawings, sculptures, installations, and videos address the interconnections of race, place, and power. They make visible how hierarchical relations and social stereotypes shape individuals, institutions, and the material and mental landscapes of contemporary life. For instance, the silhouette of a head, which appears in many of his works, confronts the viewer to implicate him/her in the politics of social space, even in galleries and museums. He has shown extensively nationally and internationally, has had numerous solo exhibitions, and executed many private and public commissions. Logan’s works can be found in private, corporate, and public collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Gibbes Museum of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Memphis Brooks Museum, the Zimmerli Museum of Art, and the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. Logan’s awards include fellowships from the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, the North Carolina Arts Council, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper, the Carolina Postdoctoral Scholars Fellowship, and the Phillip Morris Companies. Logan received an M.F.A. from the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Recent Prints

2011-10-02T23:36:00.000-04:00

The Other City I, 2011
Archival Pigment Print
40" x 40"

The Other City II, 2011
Archival Pigment Print
40" x 40"

Touch and Follow, 2011
Archival Pigment Print

40" x 40"

Southern Constellation, Hand and Ring, 2011
Archival Pigment Print
36" x 36"

Juan Logan - Welcome Home

2010-09-30T15:04:00.000-04:00

Recent Exhibitions

2010-09-29T14:03:00.014-04:00

The Narcissism of Minor Differences, catalogue
Maryland Institute College of Art, Decker and Meyerhoff Galleries, Baltimore
December 9, 2010 – March 13, 2011
Artists: Jane Alexander, William Anastasi, Jonathan Borofsky, Mary Coble, Patricia Cronin, Sam Durant, Melvin Edwards, Maria-Theresa Fernandes, Francisco de Goya, Leon Golub, Philip Guston, Juan Logan, Stephen Marc, Jaune Quick-To-See-Smith, Rigo 23, Roee Rosen, Karina Aguilera Skvirsky
Curated by: Gerald Ross and Christopher Whittey

Mixing Metaphors: the Aesthetic, the Social and the Political in African American Art
Works from the Bank of America Collection, catalogue
Howard University Art Gallery, Washington, DC
August 14 through December 17, 2010
Jimmy Carter Presidential Library & Museum, Atlanta, Georgia
March 19 through July 11, 2011
Artists: Romare Bearden, Dawoud Bey, John Biggers, Sam Gilliam, Jacob Lawrence, Juan Logan, Whitfield Lovell, Julie Mehretu, Faith Ringgold, Robert Sengstaacke, Chuck Stewart, James VanDerZee, Lorna Simpson, Carrie Mae Weems, Fred Wilson, Ernest C. Withers, among others.
Guest Curator: Deborah Willis

On The Mark: Contemporary Works on Paper
The Baltimore Museum of Art
July 3 - September 12, 2010
Artists: Astrid Bowlby, Annabel Daou, Tara Donovan, Ann Hamilton, Ellsworth Kelly, Juan Logan, Vik Muniz, Gerhard Richter, Koo Kyung Sook.
Curated by: Ann Shafer
Assistant Curator, Prints, Drawings & Photographs

Recent Paintings

2010-09-21T10:32:00.007-04:00

Sugar House, 2010
mixed media on canvas, 6' x 16'

2010-09-20T21:57:00.003-04:00

Mark Haven Beach, 2010
mixed media, 4' x 5'

2010-04-05T21:39:00.003-04:00

Wasting Away, 2010
mixed media on canvas, 6' x 8'

2010-02-06T23:08:00.002-05:00

Help Me, Save Me, Love Me, 2009
mixed media on panel, 5' x 16'

2010-02-06T23:04:00.001-05:00

Help Me,Save Me, Love Me, 2009 (detail)
mixed media on panel, 5' x 16'

Recent Public Art Projects

2010-02-05T09:14:00.018-05:00

Lynx Blue Line Light Rail System, Old Concord Station, 2010-2016
Charlotte Area Transit Systems (CATS), Charlotte, North Carolina

North Carolina Freedom Monument, 2006-2011 (granite, bluestone, water, plant material (200’ x 290’) Raleigh, North Carolina

Grounded Here, 2010 (granite, sandstone, plant material, 1.5’ x 15’ x 18’) Warnersville/Ashe Street Project, Action Greensboro, North Carolina

Horizon Lines, 2009 (Two LED programmable lighting installations, each 8’ x 34'), Juan Logan and Susan Harbage Page, Raleigh Arts Commission, City Plaza, North Carolina

Intersections, 2008-2009 (granite, plant material, 30’ x 30’) Gantt Center for African American Arts and Culture, Charlotte, North Carolina, (Commissioned by Wachovia/Wells Fargo)

2010-02-04T23:37:00.000-05:00

Intersections, 2009
Granite, 30' x 30'
Commissioned by Wachovia/Wells Fargo for the Gantt Center for African American Arts and Culture, Charlotte, North Carolina

2010-02-04T23:21:00.000-05:00

Intersections, 2009, (detail)
Granite

2010-02-03T15:01:00.003-05:00

“Horizon Lines”, 2009 (Two LED programmable lighting installations, each 8’ x 34’) City Plaza, Raleigh Arts Commission, North Carolina

Leisure Space

2009-03-24T23:21:00.009-04:00

Juan Logan
Leisure Space

In the formally beautiful paintings that comprise the series “Leisure Space” by Juan Logan content and form are inextricably bound. The artist deploys a seemingly abstract visual vocabulary to grapple with how race and power have shaped, and continue to shape, the physical, cultural, and political landscapes of America. Titles like Chicken Bone Beach, Inkwell Beach, and Chowan Beach (all from 2008) indicate the origins of the forms and divisions in each: they map African American waterside resorts of the Jim Crow Era in relationship to areas reserved for whites. Others, like Dim Sum Trading (2008), visualize routes that serve in the consumption of other cultures. Logan’s paintings picture the racialization of space and leisure as much as how difference is commercially exploited. Divisions in his works mark the boundaries that maintain social hierarchies. Presented from an aerial perspective, as in Lake Pontchartrain (2008), these works engage with how, for example, under the rule of “separate but equal,” recreational segregation correlated water lines to those of “race.” Despite constricted size and demonization by outsiders, resorts for blacks could be oases and spaces of cultural resistance. Although some thrive and a few linger on, most have been privately developed by entrepreneurs who profited from desegregation, implementing policies of “renewal” and “revitalization,” supported by social stereotypes.

In works like Chowan Beach (2008) and Highland Beach (2008) dark flat shapes seem to menacingly encroach upon brighter and lighter areas. Created from grids of wall papers these backgrounds refer to leafy landscapes, but also the home: that bastion racists sought to “protect” from miscegenation, just as they tried to keep the water of swimming pools and beaches pure of “contamination.” Iconic, almost cartoonish, shapes, as in Inkwell Beach (the name of a 200 square foot bit of sand in Santa Monica) from 2008, that appear in various sizes, colors, and configurations in Logan’s works, suggest caricatures of African Americans that emerged during Reconstruction, as much as the modernist experimentation and fragmentation of form that began to develop at the same time. Featureless silhouettes, which have dominated Logan’s work for several years, float through these paintings as the imaginary, fantastical Other. These and the other provocative shapes that appear in the paintings of “Leisure Space” interrogate the viewer to implicate us all in the politics of space in a society still unequally divided along the lines of race, class, and gender.

Laurel Fredrickson

2008-06-30T15:55:00.038-04:00

The Black Pearl, 2009
acrylic and collage on panel, 48" x 60"

Fox Lake, Angola, 2009
acrylic and collage on panel, 48" x 60"

Black Eden, 2008
acrylic and collage on panel, 48" x 60"

Highland Beach, 2008
acrylic and collage on panel, 24" x 30"

Sag Harbor, 2008
acrylic and collage on panel, 30" x 42"

Idlewild Lake
acrylic and collage on panel, 30" x 42"

Gulfside UMA, 2008
acrylic and collage on panel, 24" x 30"

Ink Well Beach, 2008
acrylic and collage on panel, 48" x 60"

2008-06-30T15:55:00.035-04:00

Lincoln Beach, 2008

acrylic and collage on panel

48" x 60"

2008-06-29T13:13:00.000-04:00

Lake Pontchartrain, 2008

acrylic and collage on panel

48" x 60"

2008-06-29T13:11:00.002-04:00

Chowan Beach, 2008

acrylic and collage on panel

48" x 60"

2008-06-29T13:09:00.001-04:00

Paradise Lake, 2008

acrylic and collage on panel

48" x 60"

2008-06-29T12:45:00.001-04:00

Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mosé, 2008

acrylic and collage on panel

48" x 60"

2008-06-29T12:42:00.001-04:00

The Help, 2008

acrylic and collage on panel

36" x 48"

2008-06-29T12:07:00.001-04:00

The Margins III, 2008

acrylic and collage on panel

36" x 48"

2008-06-29T12:00:00.003-04:00

Contested Space, 2007
acrylic on canvas
36" x 48"

The Margins, 2007

acrylic and college on panel

42" x 60"