Through the language of Social Abstraction, I’m creating metaphors about the Black experience in America. I’m always thinking about how much can be stripped away, piled on, woven into, but then re-imagined and embodied anew, as the marks of the journey become part of the beauty.
About Sharon
Sharon Barnes is a Los Angeles-based artist of African American and Cape Verdean lineage, born in Sacramento, CA, and raised in Los Angeles. She studied at Otis College of Art & Design where she recently returned to complete her MFA in Fine Arts. Barnes has exhibited in galleries, universities, museums and art fairs, including group shows at the California African American Museum, the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Aqua Art Miami, the Los Angeles Tom Bradley Airport and a site installation at the Arco Chato in the Republic of Panama. She has completed residencies at the Ox-Bow School of Art & Artist Residency (an affiliate of the Art Institute of Chicago) in Saugatuck, MI and the Spelman College Art Colony at Taller Portobelo in Panama.
Barnes’ work is part of the permanent collection of the UCLA Ralph Bunche Center for African American Studies as well as private and business collections. Her work has appeared in numerous publications and catalogues, including the International Review of African American Art.
“I consider myself an inter-disciplinary Los Angeles-based artist who uses process and materials to create meaning. Creating hybrid forms of painting and sculptural forms of assemblage, I explore the poetics of materiality using a broad range of found, ordinary, ephemeral and industrial materials that might become fused into my haptic works.
Through the language of Social Abstraction, my work considers the current and historic intersections of culture, race and society using processes that signify struggle and the creation of new realities. Post-Abstract Expressionism, improvisational music, and the traditions of the Black Arts Movement are among my varied influences.”
– Sharon Louis Barnes
sharonlouisebarnes.com
instagram.com/sharonbarnes4702
On display for one week beginning 2.26.21
Helms Design Center at 8745 Washington Boulevard
All artwork is copyrighted work of the artist. All rights reserved. Images not to be used without permission.
