McArthur Binion Opens First Galerie Lelong Exhibition Today

Over a forty year career Chicago-based artist McArthur Binion has developed a visual language that fuses his decidedly Minimalist paintings with a deeply personal narrative. Binion's use of wax crayon results in layers and textures blending the expressive capabilities of color and form with the tactile qualities of his medium. Galerie Lelong will inaugurate its 2015 fall season with the artist's first exhibition at the gallery, opening today, September 10.

McArthur Binion's "DNA" series explores, as Binion states, the "under conscious" of his practice. Employing remnants of his past, including photocopies of his hand-written address book and his many contacts hailing from the 1970s New York art scene, as well as his Mississippi birth certificate, Binion works autobiographical documents into collaged, geometric forms. One of Binion's first inclusions in a group exhibition was at Artists Space during its inaugural year in 1973. During this period he became a powerful voice in the New York art scene through combining a distinctive use of narrative in his work with an individual take on abstraction, bringing expression rather than the reductive Minimalist practices of the period to the forefront of his artmaking.

Binion's laborious and refined process of pressing crayons into the painting's surface involves a physicality that is connected to the narrative of Binion's personal history. Born in 1946 in Macon, Mississippi, Binion lived in Mississippi, Detroit, and Chicago throughout his youth, and he became the first African American to graduate from the Cranbrook Academy of Art with a Master of Fine Arts.

In 2012, the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, Texas, hosted a solo show of Binion's work. His most recent solo exhibition, DNA Study, was held at Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, in 2014. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions including Prospect.3 in 2014, and his work is included in multiple museum collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Binion lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. He has taught as a professor of art at Columbia College in Chicago since 1992.

In addition to Galerie Lelong, McArthur Binion is represented by Kavi Gupta, Chicago.

To learn more about McArthur Binion, visit their website.

Photo Credit: Stella Binion