July 15, 2022 - March 19, 2023

New Jersey-based artist Khari Johnson-Ricks creates large-scale cut paper assemblages that depict aspirational and dynamic scenes of Black figures engaged in what he describes as “moving in a state of flow.” He likens that state, that feeling as an “irrepressible urge of the imagination to metabolize, to reinvent, and to transcend.” Much of Johnson-Ricks visual art is about movement and the body. His lifetime as a martial artist and love of Jersey club dance and music, has influenced his art that he describes as “rooted in love, community, relationships, and the body.”

Here, the artist visualizes stretching—it’s an in-between moment, an everyday activity where energy moves through the figures. They move together in a state of flow. Johnson-Ricks describes this artwork as “a metaphor for the mind-expanding act of travel. The more that we experience different societies, the more nuanced and complex our understanding of ourselves will become.”

Visit madebykhari.com.