About
Cy Gavin’s paintings are metaphorical interpretations of sites that have been shaped over time by human intervention and geological or cosmic phenomena. Composed with fluid, gestural brushstrokes in striking colors, they are at times monumental in scale.
Born in Pittsburgh in 1985, Gavin grew up in Donora, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 2007 and earned his MFA in 2016 from Columbia University. In 2016 he relocated to New York’s Hudson Valley, where he currently lives and works.
In 2015, a few years after the death of his father, Gavin traveled to his ancestral homeland of Bermuda to research his family’s genealogy and the island’s history. The paintings he made during this period depict the historically significant sites of Gibbet Island, Crow Lane, and Tucker’s Town. The latter is the location of an enclave of Black Bermudans that was destroyed in 1920 to develop an exclusive golf resort. These works are marked by the legacies of enslavement, colonialism, and resistance, visualizing the creation and maintenance of similar power structures in the United States.
Fairs, Events & Announcements
Art Fair
Art Basel Hong Kong 2024
March 27–30, 2024
Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre
www.artbasel.com
Gagosian is participating in Art Basel Hong Kong 2024 with a selection of works by international contemporary artists. The works on view, which embrace a dizzying variety of subjects and approaches, see the participating artists identify fresh ways to disrupt established histories of abstraction and figuration, and instill sculptural and painterly representations of the natural world with complex cultural significance.
Sarah Sze, Turning and Turning, 2024 © Sarah Sze. Photo: Maris Hutchinson
Art Fair
Frieze Los Angeles 2024
Social Abstraction
March 1–3, 2024, booth D13
Santa Monica Airport, California
frieze.com
Gagosian is pleased to announce its participation in Frieze Los Angeles 2024 with Social Abstraction, a diverse selection of paintings and sculptures rooted in the exploration of historic qualities of abstraction and contemporary social realities. The first in a sequence of three presentations organized by Antwaun Sargent, Social Abstraction at Frieze Los Angeles will be followed by exhibitions in Beverly Hills this summer and in Hong Kong this fall.
The intergenerational group of Black artists in Social Abstraction—Derrick Adams, Theaster Gates, Cy Gavin, Lauren Halsey, and Rick Lowe—operates beyond purely formal concerns to create artworks that move between and beyond figuration and abstraction. They push shape to become landscape, color to reveal people, and texture to map the totality of experience.
Gagosian’s booth at Frieze Los Angeles 2024. Artwork, front to back: © Lauren Halsey, © Cy Gavin, © Theaster Gates. Photo: Ed Mumford
Award
Cy Gavin
Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize 2023
Cy Gavin has been named the winner of the Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize, awarded by the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. Presented each year at the museum’s fall gala, the prize recognizes and honors the artistic achievements of an African-American artist who demonstrates great innovation, promise, and creativity. It was established in 2006 by philanthropist George Wein to honor his late wife, Joyce Alexander Wein (1928–2005), a longtime trustee of the Studio Museum and a woman whose life embodied a commitment to the power and possibilities of art and culture.
Cy Gavin, Untitled (Crossroads/meadow), 2022 © Cy Gavin. Photo: Rob McKeever
Museum Exhibitions
Closed
Whitney Biennial 2022
Quiet as It’s Kept
April 6–October 16, 2022
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
whitney.org
The Whitney Biennial was established in 1932 by the museum’s founder, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, to chart developments in art in the United States. The 2022 Biennial presents dynamic selections that take different forms over the course of the exhibition: artworks—even walls—change, and performance animates the galleries and objects. With an intergenerational and interdisciplinary roster of sixty-three artists and collectives at all points in their careers, many of whom work with an interdisciplinary perspective, the Biennial surveys and presents the art and ideas of our time. Work by Harold Ancart, Ellen Gallagher, Cy Gavin, and Rick Lowe is included.
Harold Ancart, The Guiding Light, 2021, installation view, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York © Harold Ancart. Photo: Ryan Lowry
Closed
Cy Gavin
March 30–July 11, 2021
Aspen Art Museum, Colorado
www.aspenartmuseum.org
This exhibition features recent paintings by Cy Gavin depicting natural surroundings both close to home and at a distance. The movements alluded to in these canvases could be thought of with regard to migratory patterns, such as the dispersion of people from one country to another. The show examines the way in which the changing political landscape redefines citizenship.
Installation view, Cy Gavin, Aspen Art Museum, Colorado, March 30–July 11, 2021. Artwork © Cy Gavin
Closed
Dreamweavers
February 13–April 13, 2019
UTA Artist Space, Beverly Hills, California
utaartistspace.com
Dreamweavers contemplates the surreal in society against a vigorously shifting twenty-first century. The group exhibition examines the paradox of fact and fantasy through the lens of artists who operate from a deeply imaginative, often provocative, psychological space. Kasseem “Swizz Beatz” Dean has collaborated with UTA Artists Space and curator Nicola Vassell to present the show. Work by Cy Gavin and Nathaniel Mary Quinn is included.
Nathaniel Mary Quinn, You Ought to Be With Me, 2018 © Nathaniel Mary Quinn
Closed
The Lure of the Dark
Contemporary Painters Conjure the Night
March 3, 2018–March 10, 2019
MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts
massmoca.org
For centuries, painters have been drawn to the mysteries and marvels of the night and its perceptual and poetic possibilities. This exhibition is about night and the light that illuminates the darkness. It features paintings that illustrate the ways in which the hours of darkness continue to provoke the contemporary imagination. Work by Cy Gavin and Alexandria Smith is included.
Installation view, The Lure of the Dark: Contemporary Painters Conjure the Night, MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts, March 3, 2018–March 10, 2019. Artwork © Cy Gavin. Photo: David Dashiell