December 4, 2014

The Leonard Pearlstein Gallery will open its winter exhibition of artist Chakaia Booker’s work on January 13, 2015. Are We There Yet? features Booker’s complex assemblage sculptures of discarded tires. The exhibition will run through March 8, with an opening reception and artist’s talk on January 15 at 5:00pm in the Gallery (3401 Filbert Street).

An artist who fuses formal training with life experience, Booker gained international acclaim at the 2000 Whitney Biennial with It’s So Hard to Be Green, her 12.5 x 21 foot wall-hung tire sculpture. Booker is a recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and she has exhibited in group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally.  Her works are in numerous public collections including at The Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Orleans Museum of Art; The Studio Museum, Harlem, NY; Queens Museum of Art, Queens, NY; Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY; Laumeier Sculpture Park and Museum, St. Louis, MO; Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, NY; Newark Museum, NJ; Bronx Museum of Art, NYC; and the Birmingham Museum of Art, AL.

Booker weaves ecological concerns with explorations of racial and economic difference, globalization, and feminism. “She addresses these issues through visual metaphor, utilizing both abstract and recognizable elements that draw from the contemporary landscape, including graffiti and those ubiquitous discarded tires by the side of the road.  But her works are deeper and more mysterious than these obvious references. They are powerful images that command attention, at once fanciful and solemn. Her works stand as testimony to art’s transformative impact, pushing us to ask significant questions about the world around us,” said J. Susan Isaacs, curator of the show and Professor of Art History and Curator of the Department of Art Galleries at Towson University, where the exhibition originated.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune said of Ms. Booker’s recent exhibition Eradication: A Form of Obsession, “Booker's work is perfect in the public sphere. The brilliance of her style is that it communicates with everyone. How often can you say that about abstract modern sculpture? Booker's work symbolizes American self-identity. We are the car country after all, the tire country, the road trip country, the petroleum country and the country with piles and piles of industrial history. Booker takes all of that past, slices it, dices it and reassembles it into a jagged, harshly beautiful present.”

For more information about the exhibition please contact the Gallery at gallery@drexel.edu.