Opening Reception & Artist's Talk

Friday, September 17, 2021, 8:00 pm

exhibition continues through October 29

Through nineteen paintings, Hallwalls is pleased to present the work of Niagara Falls artist Jay Carrier (Wolf Clan, Onondage/Tuscarora nations, born 1963). Beginning with two Monet "homage" paintings from 1979, 1980, when the artist was still a teenager, the exhibition tracks a path to the present day and works completed in 2020 and 2021. By no means a comprehensive survey, Free To Roam presents the expressive and poetic gestures that comprise Carrier's work through a presentation that relies predominantly upon large-scale paintings and—in Hallwalls' compact space—the rapturous cacophony they create when situated together.

Carrier's work emphatically reflects the hybrid nature of his identity and worldview. Born Native yet raised off the reservation, Carrier's palette often demonstrates Native motifs and colors, though just as frequently utilize modernist motifs, fields of abstraction, text, or pop culture references. His works wander between worlds—sometimes sociopolitical, sometimes philosophical, sometimes more akin to a dream state in which all worlds collide. If anything is dominant throughout Carrier's paintings, it is the natural world—its colors, textures, and often the explicit material substance of the natural world mixed with painting media. Acrylic, oil, chalk, paint sticks, spray paint, pencil, and graphite combine themselves naturally with rust, sand, leaves, ashes, and wood. Carrier makes no hard distinction between materials, as he makes no hard distinction in his own identity and the work he creates—it is the hybrid identity and its expression that predominates the work.

Carrier's experience of the world—a Native man coming of age in a small city on the edge of waterfalls, gorges, and forests—becomes an emotional autobiography he is documenting throughout his work. Family history plays a part, but so does art history. Dreams are potent cues, but so is the actual environment. The ideas Carrier expresses are not didactic because the spirit that creates the work is wide and not narrow, open to a deep experience of the world and not proscribed by singular visions. Carrier's visions are free to roam.

Jay Carrier is a visual artist born on Six Nations to Onondaga and Tuscarora parents, who currently lives and works in Niagara Falls, NY and holds a B.F.A. from the University of Illinois-Champlain. Carrier studied painting at The College of Santa Fe, New Mexico As well as participating in the MFA program from the University of Illinois. Carrier has exhibited in many solo and group exhibitions including Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo, NY, The Castellani Art Museum, Niagara Falls, NY, The Wheelwright Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, The Institute of American Indian Arts Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Fenimore House Museum, Cooperstown, New York,  Burchfield Penney Art Center, Buffalo, New York,  Woodland Cultural Center Museum, Brantford, Ontario, Canada, Chautauqua Center for Visual Arts Gallery, Chautauqua, New York and the Everson Museum in Syracuse, New York. His work can be found in numerous private and public collections.

This exhibition and catalog have been made possible in part by generous underwriting support from Dome Art Advisory.