Primary is pleased to present My Future is Your Future, a solo exhibition of new paintings and sculptures from the artist and cultural historian Joe Minter. Opening Saturday, March 9, the exhibit will remain on view through April 6, 2024.

There is a profound spirituality in the realm of human connection. An unseen energy guides us to intersect with specific individuals. And our role is to embrace these moments with unwavering faith, recognizing the unique resources within our grasp. We contribute to a larger, divine design by acting compassionately and utilizing our strengths. In these moments of connection, we trust that the universe will unfold the rest, allowing us to be channels of positive change in the lives of others.

Joe Minter is best known for his sprawling didactic artwork African Village in America, which he built on the land adjacent to his home and the Shadow Lawn Memorial Gardens. The environment is constructed almost entirely from discarded elements, a direct symbolic gesture reflecting his belief that African Americans have themselves been discarded throughout American history.

The late curator, collector, and founder of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, Bill Arnett, once said, "If you look at the great art of any civilization, It stands for what the civilization stands for, a diary of a culture," which he considered Minter as exemplary.

Joe Minter, 81, is clearly at the height of his powers. Exhibiting "abstract rhythm thought statements" in the form of twelve paintings and one sculpture, a sampling of his dedication to recognizing the many who have been and continue to be disregarded. His is an ongoing focus that Minter describes as "the truth and conclusion of a journey of a people."

Opens
Saturday, March 9, 2024
5 PM

Joe Minter (b. 1943, Birmingham, AL) has recently exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, Blum and Poe Gallery in Los Angeles, CA, Mana Contemporary, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Alabama Contemporary, Atlanta Contemporary, James Fuentes Gallery, LA, March Gallery, NY, Tops Gallery, TN. He was featured in the 2019 Whitney Biennial, curated by Rujeko Hockley and Jane Panetta.

His work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., the Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA, the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA, the New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA, the Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL, and the Minneapolis Museum of Art, Minneapolis, MN, among others.

In February of 2024, Joe Minter was the inaugural recipient of a Ruth Award, $100,000.00 of unrestricted funding from the Ruth Foundation for the Arts.

Primary. (Est. in 2007) is a context & research-driven curatorial collective with a focus on public arts. Located in Little River, Miami, our private residence explores modern ideas on the subject of live/work, connecting new voices in contemporary art with growing audiences & collections.

For further information, please contact info@thisisprimary.com