New York-based artist Lyle Ashton Harris presents a new installation comprised of images originally shot in the years 1986-98, including those drawn from his Ektachrome Archive series. Excavated from Harris’s extensive personal archive and exhibited together here for the first time, this diverse collection of evocative imagery captures fleeting moments lived three decades ago by the artist in public and private spaces among his circle of close friends, family and acquaintances.
The Washington Square Windows blow-ups and photographic prints drawn from hundreds of pages of Harris’s journals), against subtle musical refrains (improvised jazz riffs of John Coltrane and plaintive vocals of Roberta Flack), to produce an assemblage that serves not only to memorialize, but also to evoke lived moments at the intersection of the personal and the political, presenting a dynamic experience that re-engages time past to affectively impact the present.
Lyle Ashton Harris (born 1965, New York) has exhibited work widely, including at The Solomon
R. Guggenheim Museum (New York) and The Whitney Museum of American Art (New York)
among many others, as well as at international biennials (Busan, 2008; Venice, 2007; Seville,
2006; Gwangju, 2000). His work is represented in the permanent collections of major museums,
most recently The Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 2014 Harris joined the Board of
Trustees of the American Academy in Rome and was recipient of the David C. Driskell Prize by
the High Museum of Art (Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A.). In 2016 he was awarded the John Simon
Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and was appointed a trustee of the Tiffany
Foundation. Having studied at Wesleyan University, the California Institute of the Arts, and the
Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program, Harris is currently an Associate
Professor of Art and Art Education at New York University.
