Black Experience Celebrated In Artist's Exhibit At USF Art Museum

TAMPA, FL — The USF Contemporary Art Museum, part of the Institute for Research in Art in the USF College of The Arts, is presenting "Rico Gatson: Visible Time" through July 29.

For more than two decades, Brooklyn-based artist Rico Gatson has been celebrated for his vibrant, colorful and layered artworks. Inspired by significant moments in African American history, identity politics and spirituality. His oeuvre includes images of protests and longstanding injustices—touching on subjects like the murder of Emmett Till, the Watts Riots and the formation of the Black Panthers—as well as dynamic abstract geometries that celebrate Pan-Africanist aesthetics and Black cultural and political figures.

In late May, Gatson transformed the walls of the USF Contemporary Art Museum with a kaleidoscopic, life-size image of Zora Neale Hurston — author, anthropologist, filmmaker and Florida resident — along with a large-scale abstract composition.

USF students were invited to paint alongside the artist to help complete the installation inspired by the author of "Their Eyes Were Watching God." While "Visible Time" also includes important paintings and works on paper by Gatson, the exhibition will additionally feature a mini-survey of the artist’s video works from 2001 to the present.

Gatson, born in Augusta, Georgia, in 1966, has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues such as The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Essl Museum, Vienna, Austria; and The Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.

In 2019, Gatson completed an important commission for New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority titled "Beacons." It consists of eight permanent large-scale mosaics of prominent Black figures installed in the 167th Street Subway station in the Bronx. His work is also featured in the permanent collections of The Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Denver Art Museum, The Cheekwood Museum, The Kempner Museum and The Yale University Art Gallery.

Gallery hours are Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thursday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Saturday from 1 to 4 p.m. and closed on Sundays.

All exhibitions and events are free and open to the public.