Born in rural Conehatta, Mississippi, artist Joe Overstreet (1933–2019) spent six decades expanding the possibilities of abstract painting. His vibrant works break through the four edges of a conventional canvas, leap off the wall, and expand to immense proportions. Unfolding in space like kites, sails, or the patterns of a kaleidoscope, they invite viewers to see and move through paintings in new ways.
Though Overstreet migrated away from the South at a young age, he cultivated a visual imagination there that would ground and propel a lifetime of artistic experimentation in a changing world. When Mississippi became an epicenter of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements in the 1960s, Overstreet and other African American artists grappled with art’s role in societal transformation. Looking for new, unifying models of Black cultural identity and expression, Overstreet joined a larger groundswell of poets, musicians, dramatists, and visual artists that came to be known as the Black Arts Movement.
Surveying the artist’s dynamic contributions to this movement and beyond, Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight tells the story of his life’s work in abstraction. The exhibition brings together three phases of Overstreet’s painting practice: angular, geometric constructions from the 1960s, the sculptural Flight Pattern series from the 1970s, and the large-scale, immersive Facing the Door of No Return series from the 1990s. “Like birds in flight,” as Overstreet described, his paintings embody a restless tendency “to take off, to lift up, rather than be held down.”
Coinciding with the exhibition’s closing, MMA will host a two-day program that explores Overstreet’s work with Kenkeleba House, a community arts organization that Overstreet cofounded on New York’s Lower East Side in 1974. Kenkeleba House: The Last Surviving Downtown Art Collective will connect this important part of Overstreet’s career to Black-led arts initiatives active in Jackson today. Visit msmuseumart.org to learn more and register.
Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight is organized by the Menil Collection, Houston. Its presentation in Jackson is supported by Teiger Foundation, Henry Luce Foundation, Visit Mississippi, and Visit Jackson. The Kenkeleba House Convening is supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art and the Henry Luce Foundation.
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About Joe Overstreet
Joe Overstreet (1933–2019) was a pioneering African American artist and activist who pushed the boundaries of painting through decades of experiments in abstraction. Born in rural Conehatta, Mississippi, he began his artistic journey in the California Bay Area during the 1950s, participating in the Beat scene and exhibiting in local galleries and jazz clubs. In 1958, he relocated to New York, joining a vibrant community of artists who were redefining abstraction. In dialogue with the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1960s, Overstreet made representational paintings as well as abstract shaped canvases, and in the 1970s he removed his works from the wall entirely with his groundbreaking Flight Pattern series. Meridian Fields, a series of paintings on wire mesh from the early 2000s, was partially inspired by the artist’s memories of Mississippi. In 1974, Overstreet’s deep commitment to his creative community in New York led him to co-found Kenkeleba House, a downtown gallery and studio space that supports artists of color to the present day. Overstreet remained an active artist and cultural leader until his passing in New York City in 2019.
Overstreet’s work has been featured in significant recent exhibitions including Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power (2017–20; Tate Modern, London; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Broad Museum, Los Angeles; De Young Museum, San Francisco; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston); The World Goes Pop (2015; Tate Modern); Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties (2014–15; Brooklyn Museum; Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH; Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin); and Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960–1980 (2011-13; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; MoMA PS1, New York; Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA).
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