Miami Is A Beach: Cristina BanBan, María Fragoso and Jarrett Key

@ 1969’s new Tribeca location

39 White Street

(between Broadway and Church)

New York, NY 10013

Exhibition Dates: December 3, 4, 5 (Noon - 5pm) 2020

Where are you?

Every day, we ask this of one another. Easier to ask than to answer, this question can carry the same heaviness as Who are you?

To answer plainly: Cristina BanBan is a 33 year-old Spaniard in Brooklyn, María Fragoso is a 25 year-old Latina in Mexico City and Jarrett Key is a 30 year-old African-American in Providence. All three consider painting their primary media but working and developing across other forms and contemporary influences.

Sometimes, a simple prompt from 1969 can determine what an artist might do for the next few months. Our original intent was to bring new works by the trio to the art fairs in Miami in December. All three locked themselves down into studios with that aim, not necessarily in the city of their choosing. Artists may be our original social distancers but only by will, not imposition. They also miss family and normal daily living. The pandemic has edited so much...

1969 proudly announces a three-day, three-person exhibition in our new gallery space in Tribeca. After four years in the Lower East side, we took a step up and west in expanding to a 2,000 square-foot space and joining the new cluster of contemporary art galleries in lower Manhattan. (Bars love other bars and so do galleries.) Keys in hand on December 1, the installation for Miami Is A Beach consists of 11 paintings, 16 works on paper for what coulda-woulda-shoulda been our biggest and most ambitious art fair presentation to date.

Restaged at the Gallery’s new address (39 White Street), Miami showcases these three artists at their experimental best: BanBan’s familiar bodies newly inhabit domestic situations in her largest works on paper to date, including a debut suite on black paper, depicting figures longing for an escape from mundanity; Fragoso’s figures-at-feast are seductive and alluring in her signature red paintings, but they earn their importance when seen as meditations on love and kinship - her display tables of fruits are mere still lifes about desire, passion and the interior life; and Jarrett Key first building concrete tableaux to paint their oil scenes of Black people at-leisure or flying gain greater weight literally when they are considered equal part memory - they really is from Alabama (“We dare defend our rights” is the state’s motto), they really do wear a blue dress as heroic cape - and part fantasy ... are Black bodies really permitted to go and do whatever, wherever they want? Key’s concrete is transformed into a tombstone for society’s unfulfilled dreams and obligations. Concrete doesn’t go to heaven; it’s our earthly symbol.

When 1969 opened in September 2016, we committed to “going the distance” as a gallery on behalf of our artists, to forsake short-term gain for longer-term posterity and to mount talked-about exhibitions that would grow the audience for contemporary art. Only a cynic or a one-termer would think that most galleries aren’t attempting similar feats everyday, in tandem with art gallery peers worldwide.

Where are you has a question embedded underneath - are you home yet? Answer: I’m at the beach for three days. Find me there.

Cristina BanBan (b. 1987, Barcelona) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Her painting and drawing practice explores the form of the human body, pushing boundaries of proportions with the depiction of voluptuous feminine figures. Reminiscent of 18th century neoclassical paintings and influenced by anime, expressionist aesthetics, pop culture and lived experience, BanBan’s works empower their feminine protagonists by making them feel monumental whether contained in a large canvas or a small work on paper. Harmoniously mixing the real and the imaginary, BanBan creates intimate everyday scenes that speak to the social expectations, norms and societal values surrounding femininity and millennial life in the tech era. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Barcelona and is represented by 1969 Gallery, New York where she has had solo exhibitions in 2019 and 2020. Other recent solo and two-person exhibitions include those at 68 Projects, Berlin (2019); the Dot Project, London (2018 and 2017); Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London (2018). Recent group exhibitions include Auguries of Innocence, Fredericks & Freiser, New York (2020); Extra, The Hole, New York (2019); Forms, Cob Gallery, London (2018); and Griffin Art Prize, Griffin Gallery, London (2017). Other exhibitions include those at Richard Heller Gallery, Los Angeles, Stems Gallery, Brussels, WOAW, Hong Kong, and Albertz Benda, New York (forthcoming). BanBan has also participated in art fairs including Untitled Miami and Volta Basel, and her art is held in many private collections internationally. Her work has received critical acclaim from T-Spain, The New York Times Style Magazine, Vogue Magazine (Spain, Germany), Elephant and other publications

María Fragoso (b. 1995, Mexico City) lives and works in Mexico City. Her paintings depict many aspects of the myriad of coexisting identities in Mexico; celebrating Mexican culture, while also trying to offer a critical look into Mexico’s conception of gender, sexuality, human relations and national belonging. Drawing upon the rich history of Mexican Surrealists, Fragoso’s work carves out a place for itself as a contemporary counterpart to these artists through her use of color and symbolist language. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College Art (MICA) in Baltimore. Her residences include Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Yale Norfolk School of Art, Vermont Studio Center Fellowship and Palazzo Monti. She attended the Studio Arts College International (SACI) study abroad program in Florence, Italy. Fragoso is represented by 1969 Gallery, New York, where she made her debut in Routine Malfunction, curated by Coady Brown and Pat Phillips. Other recent exhibitions include A Very Anxious Feeling: Voices of Unrest in the American Experience (20 Years of the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection), Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, VA; Second Smile, The Hole, NY; New__on the block, Machete, Mexico City; and No Place Like, Field Projects, NY. She was recently nominated for the 2021 Forbes 30 Under 30 in Art & Style.

Jarrett Key (b. 1990, Seale, AL) lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island. They recently received their MFA in painting at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2020. Jarrett grew up in rural Alabama and pursued their fine art practice in New York City after graduating from Brown University in 2013. They have been featured in exhibitions and residencies at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts, La MaMa Galleria, The Columbus Museum, Gallery 67, Swiss House/MGLC, Galerija Kresija, Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art, Caelum Gallery, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, Outlet Fine Art, Former Pfizer Pharmaceutical Factory, Secret Dungeon, La Maison D’Art, Shanghai Theater Academy, and East Meet West Gallery. Jarrett’s work is in the collections of the Schomburg Center, the Museum of Modern Art Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art Library, among other institutions. Jarrett’s Hair Painting Series was featured at the Studio Museum in Harlem and at the Harlem Arts Festival in Marcus Garvey Park.

For sales inquiries, please contact: 

Quang Bao (quang@1969gallery.com)

Madeline Ehrlich (madeline@1969gallery.com)