The Artsy Vanguard 2020: Kahlil Robert Irving

Kahlil Robert Irving’s distinctive approach to ceramics—formally adventurous and infused with personal meaning and political resonance—has brought him a devoted and growing fan base since his first solo show with his New York gallery, Callicoon Fine Arts, in 2017. His tabletop works are rich assemblages of sculpted forms, often including casts of found objects (bottles, cans, takeout containers) overlaid with glazes and found or customized decals. His larger-scale sculptures resemble tiled floors and astronomical maps, pairing constellation-like shards with renderings of crushed bottles and crumpled newspapers. The forms are familiar, but their details are profoundly unexpected. His works tend to poetically foreground the violent legacies and realities that shape our daily environments, from the everyday detritus found on city streets to the aggressive forces that police them and the vitriolic responses that ensue on social media.

In recent solo shows—including his first institutional exhibition, at Wesleyan University in 2018; his second exhibition with Callicoon in 2019; a large-scale project that opened in February at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati; and a new show at Jenkins Johnson Gallery in San Francisco—Irving has incorporated other media into his practice, including prints and flags. Most distinctive may be his series of riotous digital collages that incorporate memes, pop culture ephemera, screenshots of social media posts and articles, and more. As in much of his work, some of these elements address issues of identity and racial violence directly; others are more ambiguous.

Irving’s work is featured in the Whitney Museum’s “Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019,” and this fall, he’ll be one of three artists featured in the Great Rivers Biennial at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis.

The Artsy Vanguard 2020