Knowledge Bennett | Orange is the New Black

Joseph Gross Gallery is pleased to announce Orange Is the New Black, a new body of work from LA-based artist, Knowledge Bennett. This exhibition will be Bennett’s first solo exhibition in New York.
Consisting of large scale hand-pulled silkscreen and acrylic paintings on canvas, this latest series explores the African diaspora, critiquing the treatment of the Black American Community by the American government throughout history. Images of historical figures such as Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and J Edgar Hoover, appear on “ prison jumpsuit orange” canvases, chronologically identifying and offering a critique of unjust practices dating back as early as the 1930’s, through to present day.
Bennett describes the work as acting like “a magnifying glass, placed directly over the long term relationship between the American Gov’t and the Black Community. A relationship where corruption, oppression, and systematic disenfranchisement is all too familiar.”