'Elements' Exhibition Opens at MOCRA
04/05/2019
Saint Louis University's Museum of Contemporary Religious Art (MOCRA) presents a new exhibition, Gary Logan: Elements, featuring the work of the Trinidadian-American artist who explores our unique relationship with the Earth and its elements through dramatic lighting, atmospheric ambiguity, vivid colors and rich textures.
Gary Logan: Elements is open now and continues through Sunday, June 30. Regular museum hours are Tuesday through Sunday, 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Admission is free, though there is a suggested donation of $5, or $1 for students and children.
As part of the exhibition’s run, Logan will talk with SLU art historian Olubukola Gbadegesin, Ph.D., about his work and the exhibition at 2 p.m. on Sunday, April 14. A reception will follow the talk. Visit MOCRA or call 314-977-7170 or for more information about the artist talk and the exhibition.
About the Exhibition
Through dramatic lighting, atmospheric ambiguity, vivid colors, and rich textures, Trinidadian-American artist Gary Logan’s work explores humanity’s relationship with Earth and its elements. Logan finds visual and conceptual inspiration in two rich sources that utilize landscape as a means of exploring the human condition. He is drawn to the Taoist emphasis on observation and reverence of nature, as well as Taoist principles such as the harmonious interplay of universal opposites. And like Romantic painters of the nineteenth century, he paints to evoke a sense of the sublime, expressing mystery, grandeur, and raw emotion.
Drawing visual and conceptual inspiration from both Taoism and the Romantic tradition in painting, Logan’s work evokes a sense of mystery, raw emotion, and the sublime. His landscape imagery is a means of navigating the complex terrain of identity and human nature, in order to speak to universal concerns such as oppression, freedom, race, sexuality, healing and renewal.
Describing his work as Neo-Romantic, Logan situates himself in a line of artists who utilize landscape painting to evoke powerful emotions, spirituality, signs of conflict, and the complexity of the human condition. He also uses landscape imagery as a means of navigating the complex terrain of human nature and identity. As an artist of Afro-Caribbean descent and as a gay man, various aspects of his racial and cultural heritage and his sexuality are regularly interwoven into his images. These aspects encompass fraught themes and psychological demons, but also embrace and celebrate Blackness, gay identity, survival, healing, and renewal. “My work,” he says, “is about the Earth and its elements, as much as it is about us — the human element.”
About the Artist
Gary Logan was born on the island of Trinidad in 1970 and raised in the United States. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts in Painting from Boston University. During his time in Massachusetts, he also developed a career in education while initiating his artistic profession. He relocated to New York and New Jersey, working as an art educator in various public schools. Logan subsequently lived in São Paulo, Brazil, where he advanced his art career while exploring Brazil’s diverse landscape and culture. He currently resides in Miami, Florida, and devotes his time to painting, teaching and directing a visual arts program at a school for the arts. Along with individual and group exhibitions in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, São Paulo, and South Florida, his artwork has been highlighted in periodicals such as Bostonia Magazine, and the literary journals Callaloo and AGNI. In 1999, he and poet Eric McHenry were awarded The Phillip Guston Prize for their artist collaboration featured in AGNI.