Paul Stephen Benjamin
New Black is Beautiful, 2020
Silkscreen on Arches paper
15” x 18” [sheet], 11” x 14” [image]
Edition of 50 + 5 AP’s
Hand silk-screened in Atlanta, GA.
If you are an institution, gallery or museum, please contact [email protected] before purchasing.
This limited edition print titled New Black is Beautiful was generously created by artist Paul Stephen Benjamin to benefit Burnaway in light of the continued economic pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic. This print draws from Benjamin’s signature large-scale installations and murals forming delicate patterns out of repeated phrases, often using barely discernible black-on-black motifs. Benjamin embraces blackness not only as a color but also as a potent and multivalent signifier of culture and history. The artist is known primarily for large-scale multimedia installations that draw on the legacies of icons such as Marian Anderson, Billie Holiday, and Aretha Franklin, who wrote about Burnaway at the time of her passing. New Black is Beautiful represents a rare opportunity to support Burnaway while also acquiring artwork by this world-renowned Atlanta-based artist at an accessible price point.
Paul Stephen Benjamin (born 1966, Chicago) is one of the fifty-one artists included in the forthcoming Prospect.5 in 2021 in New Orleans. His work has also recently been included in Compositions in Absolute Black, Hudgens Center for Art and Learning, Duluth, Georgia (2020); State of the Art 2020, Crystal Bridges Museum and The Momentary, Bentonville, Arkansas (2020); Great Force, Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, (2019); Pure, Very, New, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York (2019); and Reinterpreting the Sound of Blackness, Telfair Museums, Savannah (2018).