The Herndon Gallery at Antioch College announces the opening of Schizomaica, an immersive solo exhibition of new large-scale work by Antioch College Visiting Assistant Professor of Visual Art Kamar Thomas, of Port Antonio, Jamaica. The exhibition opens Monday, February 20 and runs through Thursday, March 2, 2017.

The Herndon Gallery will host a reception with the artist on Thursday, February 23rd, from 6:30-8:00 p.m. Thomas will present a gallery talk on his work beginning at 7:00 p.m. The reception and talk are free and open to the public.

Schizomaica (as in Ja-maica) looks at “the artifice of black masculinity through the tradition of portraiture,” writes Thomas in his artist’s statement.  “I make drawings and paintings that combine photography, photo manipulation and painting by physically painting my subject to produce photos that are then altered to make a body of references,” said Thomas. “My interests have coalesced into a wide survey of glitches and inconsistencies within cultural software and the emergent dilemmas of multiculturalism on the formation of individual identity. My creative work broadly concerns black masculinity and its nature and formation within a changing socio-political and cultural milieu.  

“I make large both large drawings and oil on canvas portraits that examine the contradictions, inconsistencies, conventions and fragility of identity inspired by the cultural differences encountered through emigration,” he explained. “I encountered social and cultural differences between what ‘black man’ meant in Jamaica and what it meant here (in the United States), which had implications for how one presents himself and forms an identity. The resulting work explores the dissonances between the corporeal self, the represented self, the internal self and the social self within African American culture and the Caribbean diaspora.”

Thomas is teaching painting, drawing and contemporary art history in the Visual Arts department Antioch during the 2016-17 academic year. He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Connecticut and a bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University, where he became interested in how people present themselves, the masks they wear, and the differences between who/what is presented and how people really are. He enjoys learning through irreverent conversation.

The Herndon Gallery is located in South Hall on the campus of Antioch College, in Yellow Springs, OH. The gallery is open weekdays from noon to 5 p.m., and Saturdays from 1-4 p.m.

For additional information about Schizomaica and the Herndon Gallery, contact creative director Jennifer Wenker at (937) 319-0114 or jwenker@antiochcollege.edu. Visit the gallery online at antiochcollege.edu/herndon and follow Herndon Gallery at Antioch College on Facebook.