EXHIBITION OPENING: Saturday, May 26, 5:30-8pm
Exhibition on View: May 26 - June 17, 2018
New Work
Trokon Nagbe
Public Discussion with TROKON NAGBE, Philosopher And Artist A.V. Ryan,
and Artist and Writer Carl E. Hazlewood: June 17, 4pm
As an African-born first generation American, originally from Liberia, Trokon Nagbe is sensitive to various border-crossings, personal transformations, erasures, and the evolution of spirit that is endemic to the immigrant state. He is on a virtual quest for an essential something that was lost in the turbulence of time and history—something he defines as ‘soul’. It remains the conceptual heart of his ongoing project. This ineffable quest has taken various forms and directions while exploring the slippages between experience and desire. The artist employs a wide range of media and processes including ephemeral performances, sound, as well as labor intensive object making. His work is never an exercise in reductive black and white polemics/politics whether racial or conceptual. What results from his shamanistic exploration and manipulation of the visual, is an aesthetic truth infused with the spiritual and the personal. Trokon’s artistic products, however they are achieved, become markers, non-specific but charged power-objects and events along a continuum of discovery. Trokon Nagbe, it seems, is always in search of an authentic spiritual self, or at least an element of ‘soulfulness’ in the aftermath of a traumatic history. - Carl E, Hazlewood
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Born in Liberia, West Africa, Trokon Nagbe immigrated to the United States in the 1980s with his family. He received his MFA from the Savannah College of Arts in 2004 in the Film and fine arts program. Trokon has participated in-group exhibitions in Paris, France, New York City and Savannah Georgia. His work has been written about in Art in America, The New York Times, and in the Village Voice for his installation in the Studio Museum of Harlem “Flow” exhibition.
GALLERY HOURS:
Thursday through Sunday, 1pm to 6pm; or by appointment (718-783-4438 or info@fivemyles.org)
DIRECTIONS:
Take 2, 3, or 4 trains to Franklin Avenue. Walk two blocks against the traffic on Franklin. Walk ¾ block to 558 St. Johns Place. FiveMyles is within easy walking distance from the Brooklyn Museum.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
FiveMyles is in part supported by the New York State Council for the Arts, Public Funds from the New York City Dept. of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Council Member Laurie Cumbo, the Greenwich Collection, The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation, the Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason Foundation. The Public Discussion is made possible thanks to an Action Grant from Humanities New York.