黑料不打烊

Curated by Basquiat scholar Dieter Buchhart, the exhibition is the first concentrated examination of the extraordinary body of work that the artist created using Xerox photocopies as his principal medium and compositional focal point. The series will be captured by more than 20 historic works鈥攎any of which have rarely been exhibited publicly鈥攁nd will be accompanied by a trove of his earliest Xeroxed postcards. Presented together, the distinct selection of works unearths a practice rooted in conceptual complexity and striking prescience.

Basquiat鈥檚 first foray into Xerox art was a series of small, colorful collages created in 1979 with Jennifer Stein that incorporate paint splatters, scrawled text and found detritus (from candy labels to newspaper clippings), which they photocopied, mounted and sold as art postcards on the streets of New York. It wasn鈥檛 until 1983, however, when collage became a defining element of his practice, that Basquiat began to extensively use the photocopier as a tool to create paintings. The process of photocopying became so integral to his practice that he eventually invested in his own color Xerox machine for his studio. He called upon the cut-up technique popularized by Beat Generation writer William S. Burroughs to assemble cut-and-ripped photocopies into large-scale compositions that he overlaid with text, symbols, drawings and found objects.