Mickalene Thomas: Beyond the Pleasure Principle Exhibitions at Lévy Gorvy Locations

Installation view, Mickalene Thomas: Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Lévy Gorvy New York, 2021. Photo: Tom Powel

From Lévy Gorvy:

Over the past 20 years, Thomas has cultivated a distinctive vocabulary of Black queer aesthetics and thought, both within her multidisciplinary practice and through her often collaborative approach to producing and exhibiting her work. With the sequential premieres of Beyond the Pleasure Principle in the gallery’s locations in New York, London, Paris, and Hong Kong, Thomas sets out to formally, spatially, and philosophically draw attention to the central study of her art: the power and desirability of Black women, and their presence, imprint, and legacy in global avant-garde visual culture.

Beyond the Pleasure Principle is an international exhibition unfolding across Lévy Gorvy’s spaces in four global capitals—New York, London, Paris, and Hong Kong—over the course of fall 2021, unveiling interconnected bodies of new work by acclaimed American artist Mickalene Thomas. This multisite presentation will feature paintings, installations, and video works that expand Thomas’ decades-long exploration of the Black female body as a realm of power, eroticism, agency, and inspiration, as well as a vehicle for reformulating visual idioms of modernism inherited from some of the 20th century’s most influential masters. Presented in uniquely designed environments for each of the four locations, Thomas’ exhibition will also include a video made in collaboration with her life partner and muse Racquel Chevremont, an art advisor, curator, and collector.

The first chapter of the exhibition will be on view in New York through November 12, 2021.

View selected works here.