Figuratively Speaking: JOSHUA RAINER at Mott-Warsh Collection

February 14 - August 23, 2025

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MW Gallery is pleased to present Figuratively Speaking, an exhibition highlighting artworks that tell a story.

Art has long been a means of communicating ideas and feelings, including those that may be difficult to put in words. In this exhibit, artists use the human form to communicate identity, social commentary, and shared emotions and experiences. Relying on body language, gestures, and facial expressions, they convey narratives that are fully realized and others with endings to be completed by the viewer.

Figuratively Speaking is drawn from the wide-ranging Mott-Warsh Collection and includes work in a variety of media by acclaimed artists, such as Robert Arneson, Emilio Cruz, Richard Hunt, Ayanna Jackson, Isaac Julien, Titus Kaphar, Jacob Lawrence, Carolyn Mazloomi, Joshua Rainer, Amy Sherald, Mickalene Thomas, and Deborah Willis among others.

MW Black Box Gallery Feature: Kehinde Wiley, Smile, 2001/2016, Video, 90 minutes. Looped.
Smile is a four-channel video artwork Kehinde Wiley began while completing his MFA at Yale University in 2001. The artist revisited the project 15 years later, once again asking young men he found on the streets of New York to smile unceasingly in front of a camera for one hour. Within the video, the young men can be seen stoically submitting to discomfort and humiliation as their expressions distort under the pain and duress of the pursuit to appear happy.