For the 2023 edition of FOG Design+Art, Andrew Kreps Gallery and Casemore Gallery present significant historical works by Oakland based artist, Raymond Saunders.
Since the 1960s, Raymond Saunders has developed a singular practice defined by an improvisational approach, as he culls eclectic ephemera, signage, detritus, and other materials from his daily life which reflect his living environment. A cult-like figure in the Bay Area art scene, Saunders’ paint- ings and installationbased works are loaded with rich swaths of paint, interwoven with found materials and his own notational marks, and whitepencil drawings. Blackboard surfaces, left visible through a heavy accumulation of marks and material, tie Saunders’ works inextricably to his role as an educator, as he handwrites simple equations, lettering, and childlike notes onto the work’s surface. Like Jazz, dissonant at first, Saunders’ works cohere upon closer view, employing diverse elements to address the dualities present within life, plight, and renewal, lack and abundance, innocence, and despair, as well as the individual and the community. Interweaving his own personal experience and anecdotes, Saunders aims to teach the full reality of the modern environment, the losses and victories, as well as the splendor that exists within the everyday.
Saunders work was recently featured in the exhibition, Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces at MoMA, New York. His work was also recently included in the traveling exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in The Age of Black Power, 1963 – 1983, organized by London’s Tate Modern. He was also included in the traveling exhibition Now Dig This!: Art and Black Los Angeles, 1960 – 1980, organized by the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. Saunders works are included in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Museum Brandhorst, Munich, Howard University in Washington, DC, Walker Art Museum in Minneapolis, Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles, Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, SFMOMA in San Francisco, Oakland Museum of California in Oakland, and the Berkeley Art Museum in Berkeley, among others
