Jarrett Key: BlueBirds

Exhibition Dates: June 20 - July 27, 2024

Opening Reception: Thursday, June 20th @ 6PM-8PM

39 White Street, Tribeca

Click for Exhibition List

1969 Gallery is pleased to present Jarrett Key: BlueBirds, an exhibition of recent narrative paintings on wood panels and cast concrete. Mixing autobiographical and mythological elements, Key imagines scenes of collective liberation and personal transcendence through the metaphor of flight.

The theme of human aerial flight is ubiquitous in folktales and songs of the African diaspora throughout the southern United States and the Caribbean. Partly influenced by West African narratives of spirit flight, generations of enslaved Africans expressed their longing for freedom through stories about flying and in embodied performances of flight, such as the ring shout —a testament to the symbol’s enduring power. As Henry Louis Gates Jr. writes in The Annotated African American Folktales (2018), “Stories about flying Africans deliver a utopian message about nostalgia, solidarity, song, and a collective return home.”

This positive message of  “home” can be a fraught notion for LGBTQ+ communities, who have long been excluded from heteronormative definitions of marriage and family. As a queer Black artist, Key extends the metaphor of “flying home” beyond the realm of biological family, and even literal geography, to encompass the inner freedom, comfort, and ecstatic joy discovered through processes of interpersonal connection. Whether through dancing and physical intimacy or the communal support of a chosen family, there are moments in life when the boundaries between self and others dissolve, restrictive social conditioning falls away, and the liberated soul takes flight.

In their paintings on panels, Key presents a linear but open-ended narrative that speaks to the intergenerational desire for freedom, from a grandmother’s story quilt to motifs of bird wings to images of community solidarity and collective effervescence. Between the panels, figures in shaped concrete float and soar across the gallery walls, their visual weightlessness contrasting poignantly with the earthbound connotations of concrete as a material. Referencing the history of fresco painting, a tradition often associated with European classicism, was originally practiced by artisans in East Africa. Through their imagery and materials, Key draws connections across time and place, taking inspiration from ancestral voices while expanding on what freedom means today. 

For Inquiries, please contact
Alexander Browngardt | e: alex@1969gallery.com

Jarrett Key (b. 1990, Seale, AL) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Jarrett grew up in rural Alabama and pursued their fine art practice in New York City after graduating from Brown University in 2013. They received their MFA in painting at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2020. Jarrett is represented by 1969 Gallery in New York, where they had their first solo exhibition, From the Ground, Up in March 2022. In 2023, Key completed a 40ft mural commission for HMTX Industries in Norwalk, CT. One of their hair performance paintings was also the NYC Pride Grandstand Backdrop at the 2023 Pride Parade. Recent exhibitions include Full and Pure: Body, Materiality, Gender, curated by Mara Hassan, Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, TX; Wade, Friends Indeed Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Freedom Dreams, Dorsky Museum of Art, New Paltz, NY; New England Triennial, deCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA; out, co-curated by Jarrett Key and Jon Key, 1969 Gallery, New York, NY; Young, Gifted and Black, The Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; and This is America, Kunstraum Potsdam, Berlin, Germany. Their work was also included in Untitled Miami Beach in 2021 and 2022. They were one of Forbes 30 under 30 for Art and Style 2020. Key’s work is in the collections of the the Green Family Art Foundation, HMTX Industries, New York Historical Society, The Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection, the Columbus Museum, Brown University, RISD Special Collection, the Schomburg Center, the Museum of Modern Art Library, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art Library, among other institutions.

About 1969 Gallery

Founded in September 2016, 1969 is a contemporary art gallery in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood. Through solo / group / external exhibitions and art fair presentations, the Gallery has cultivated the careers of its represented artists and a broader community of artists primarily devoted to painting.

Follow 1969 Gallery on Instagram via @1969gallery.