Four Monuments

Tanya Leighton is pleased to present Four Monuments, the third solo exhibition in Berlin by New York–based artist Esteban Jefferson. Jefferson’s practice centres around questions of race, identity, and the legacies of colonialism in public monuments and urban space. Using painting, drawing, photography, and sound installation as forms of documentation, Jefferson depicts the focal points of his compositions in great detail, creating a stark contrast between the subject in focus and the surrounding environment. The paintings are left intentionally unfinished, creating a raw style emblematic of his investigative process. The scale of the works often references the tradition of history painting, where vast canvases enshrine nationalistic narratives and military triumphs. Jefferson inverts this tradition to memorialise and monumentalise the fugitive mark-making of the activist and protestor, whose disruption of the normal flow of the city is erased by the passing of time, yet – perhaps optimistically – can contribute to political change. Esteban Jefferson (b. 1989, New York) lives and works in New York. Jefferson received his MFA in 2019 and his BA in 2011, both from Columbia University. Solo exhibitions include Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, London; Tanya Leighton, Berlin and Los Angeles; and 303 Gallery, New York. Group exhibitions include Centraal Museum, Utrecht; Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art, New York; Uncle Brother, Hancock, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; The Shed, New York; and Museo del Barrio, New York. Jefferson’s works are in the collections of the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York; the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Quebec; the Pérez Art Museum, Miami; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; and the Speed Art Museum, Louisville.

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