DARIUS HILL // ROOTS, ROUTES, REVERENCE // A BLACK EXPERIENCE

DARIUS HILL // ROOTS, ROUTES, REVERENCE // A BLACK EXPERIENCE

In his upcoming exhibition, MFA candidate Darius Hill traces his artistic influences to the iconic imagery of 1970s and 1980s African American pop culture, as well as abstract expressionist, minimalist and pop art paintings created by artists Kenneth Noland, Jasper Johns and Robert Indiana. The exhibition is in partial fulfillment of the Master of Fine Arts degree in the Department of Art and Art History at The University of Alabama.
Hill’s MFA exhibition, Roots, Routes, Reverence: A Black Experience, opens Monday, October 20 in the Sella-Granata Art Gallery on The University of Alabama campus. It runs through November 14, 2014.
The public is invited to a reception on Thursday, November 6 from 5-7 p.m. (Art Night).
“The round graphic logo of 1980s rap group Public Enemy was an important influence,” recalls Hill, “something I also used many years ago as a collage element. The design consists of a black male figure, arms crossed, in the crosshairs of a riflescope. That logo design prompted me to do a series of pieces loosely influenced by the work of Kenneth Noland, Jasper Johns and Robert Indiana; work that echoed some of their formal compositions and design elements, using poker chips and concentric circles.”
A Birmingham resident, Darius Hill has served as Chair of the Visual Arts Department at the Alabama School of Fine Arts for more than twelve years. He is an exhibiting artist, participating in shows throughout the southeast including New Vision Gallery in Atlanta and the Crossroads Initiative in New Orleans.
Hill’s work is represented in museum, corporate and private collections. His honors and awards include Operation New Birmingham Best in Show Award at the Magic City Art Connection and an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts. He was one of 13 Alabama printmakers selected to work with the University of Montevallo’s Big Print project. Juried exhibitions include the Red Clay Survey, Huntsville and the Energen Exhibition, Birmingham. His work has been reviewed in Art Papers, Birmingham Magazine, B-Metro Magazine, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Birmingham News. Hill received his BFA degree in printmaking from the Atlanta College of Art.

Photo By: www.jerrysiegel.com