{{Short description|American painter}} {{Use mdy dates|date=April 2018}}
'''Cy Gavin''' (born 1985) is an American artist, in paint, sculpture, performance art, and video,<ref name=sarge>{{cite web | title=Exhibitions: Cy Gavin, At Heaven's Command | website=Sargent's Daughters|date=1 April – 15 May 2016| url=https://www.sargentsdaughters.com/exhibitions/cy-gavin?view=slider | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171115015531/https://www.sargentsdaughters.com/exhibitions/cy-gavin?view=slider | archive-date=15 November 2017 | url-status=dead }}</ref> who lives and works in New York.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.artnews.com/2015/08/27/habitat-cy-gavin/|title=Habitat: Cy Gavin|last=McMahon|first=Katherine|date=27 August 2015|website=ARTnews|language=en-US|access-date=2017-11-14}}</ref> Gavin has often incorporated unusual materials in his paintings such as tattoo ink, pink sand, diamonds, staples, and seeds.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/14/arts/design/review-cy-gavin-employs-unusual-canvas-ingredients-in-overture.html|title=Review: Cy Gavin Employs Unusual Canvas Ingredients in 'Overture'|last=Schwendener|first=Martha|date=August 13, 2015|work=The New York Times|access-date=2017-11-14|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.wmagazine.com/story/cy-gavin-a-young-artist-with-an-eye-for-history|title=Cy Gavin, a Young Artist With an Eye For History|last=Solway|first=Diane|work=W Magazine|access-date=2017-11-14|language=en}}</ref> Gavin is currently represented by Gagosian Gallery.
==Early life and education== Gavin was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and grew up 20 miles south of Pittsburgh in a steel and coal mining town called Donora, Pennsylvania. Both Gavin's mother and father worked in the region's glass factories.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://news.artnet.com/art-world/cy-gavin-1047590|title=How Maverick Artist Cy Gavin Painted His Own Way From Bermuda to the Rubell Foundation {{!}} artnet News|date=August 17, 2017|work=artnet News|access-date=2017-11-13|language=en-US}}</ref>
Gavin graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 2007 and Columbia University's MFA program in 2016.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.wmagazine.com/story/cy-gavin-a-young-artist-with-an-eye-for-history|title=Cy Gavin, a Young Artist With an Eye For History|last=Solway|first=Diane|work=W Magazine|access-date=2017-11-13|language=en}}</ref>
== Work == After graduating from Carnegie Mellon, Gavin moved to San Francisco and worked in post-production for several years before relocating to New York in 2010. In New York, Gavin worked as Associate Producer for avant-garde opera company, Beth Morrison Projects, as Web Content Manager for non-profit gallery PARTICIPANT INC, and served as archivist for Vito Acconci.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.artnews.com/2015/08/27/habitat-cy-gavin/|title=Habitat: Cy Gavin|last=McMahon|first=Katherine|date=August 27, 2015|website=ARTnews|language=en-US|access-date=2017-11-14}}</ref>
'''''Fugue States, Overture, At Heaven's Command, and Rubell Foundation Residency'''''
Gavin's first solo exhibition, ''Fugue States,'' opened at Revision Space ([http://cindylisicagallery.com Cindy Lisica Gallery]) in February 2014, followed by his debut New York solo exhibition, titled ''Overture,'' at Sargent's Daughters in July 2015.<ref name=sarge/> Twelve mixed-media paintings were shown. The works explored the artist's childhood, specifically his relationship with his father, as well as the "double consciousness" of black life in America. Gavin often paints his abstracted figures using a unique combination of paints that render the subject in "ultra-black" and contrasts the figure's austerity with bright, saturated colors for the landscapes and backgrounds.<ref name=sarge/>
The show opened to positive reviews from critics. Martha Schwendener from The New York Times wrote that Gavin makes, "the backgrounds of his paintings as attention-grabbing as the figures. Craggy and sculpted, they conjure the terrain of the islands, but also canvases by Francis Bacon, Gauguin and Cézanne, whose landscapes look as if they were chiseled onto the canvas."<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/14/arts/design/review-cy-gavin-employs-unusual-canvas-ingredients-in-overture.html|title=Review: Cy Gavin Employs Unusual Canvas Ingredients in 'Overture'|last=Schwendener|first=Martha|date=August 13, 2015|work=The New York Times|access-date=2017-12-01|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}}</ref>
Gavin's third solo exhibition, titled ''At Heaven's Command,'' opened at Sargent's Daughters in April 2016.<ref name=sarge/> The show included more of Gavin's hybrid paintings as well as new video works. Gavin spent the previous year in Bermuda and used his time on the island to research his paternal genealogy and the complicated history of the Slave Trade on the island.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://news.artnet.com/art-world/cy-gavin-1047590|title=How Maverick Artist Cy Gavin Painted His Own Way From Bermuda to the Rubell Foundation {{!}} artnet News|date=August 17, 2017|work=artnet News|access-date=2017-11-14|language=en-US}}</ref> The title for the exhibition was taken from the first line of the British anthem "Rule, Britannia," which was written during Bermuda's slave period.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.wmagazine.com/story/cy-gavin-a-young-artist-with-an-eye-for-history|title=Cy Gavin, a Young Artist With an Eye For History|last=Solway|first=Diane|work=W Magazine|access-date=2017-11-14|language=en}}</ref>
Later in 2016, Gavin was included in the group exhibition ''High Anxiety'' at the Rubell Family Collection in Miami, Florida.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://rfc.museum/ha-cy-gavin|title=Cy Gavin|website=rfc.museum|language=en-gb|access-date=2017-11-14}}</ref> Gavin also held a six-month residency at the Rubell Foundation during this time.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://news.artnet.com/art-world/cy-gavin-1047590|title=How Maverick Artist Cy Gavin Painted His Own Way From Bermuda to the Rubell Foundation {{!}} artnet News|date=August 17, 2017|work=artnet News|access-date=2017-11-14|language=en-US}}</ref>
In 2017, Gavin moved his studio from New York City to upstate New York.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://bombmagazine.org/articles/studio-visit-cy-gavin/|title=Studio Visit: Cy Gavin by Ryan Chapman – BOMB Magazine|website=bombmagazine.org|access-date=2017-11-14}}</ref>
Gavin's third solo exhibition, ''Devils Isle'', opened in early 2018 in Paris, France at VNH Gallery.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://news.artnet.com/art-world/cy-gavin-1047590|title=How Maverick Artist Cy Gavin Painted His Own Way From Bermuda to the Rubell Foundation {{!}} artnet News|date=August 17, 2017|work=artnet News|access-date=2017-11-14|language=en-US}}</ref>
On March 3, 2019, Gavin Brown's enterprise opened an exhibition of paintings by Gavin. It was the artist's first show with the gallery and was met with favorable reviews. Poet and critic Shiv Kotecha wrote for Frieze Magazine, " Gavin has painted a suite of five rapturous landscapes that channel the cries of condemned and enslaved bodies under the domicile of empire. Like Gavin’s earlier works, which depict the black body in motion, these are ‘portraits’ of landscape, which is to say that they don't depict their pastoral subjects – a thrashing waterfall, a brimming surf, a dark grotto – as much as they enact the scene of recognition on which portraiture is usually predicated."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://frieze.com/article/painter-cy-gavins-transhistorical-reckoning|title=Painter Cy Gavin's Transhistorical Reckoning|website=frieze.com|language=en|access-date=2019-06-13}}</ref>
On April 6, 2022, Cy Gavin has his work ‘untitled’ shown in the 2022 Whitney Biennial ‘ Quiet as it’s kept’ alongside sixty-three other artists at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The work is a painting that Gavin made during a lockdown.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as It’s Kept |url=https://whitney.org/exhibitions/2022-biennial?section=25 |access-date=2022-06-15 |website=whitney.org |language=en}}</ref>
In 2023, Gavin gained representation with Gagosian Gallery, and he has since exhibited with the galleries in New York (2023), Beverly Hills (2024), Rome (2024), and Hong Kong (2025).
Gavin's blue carpet was [https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/05/06/met-gala-superfine-tailoring-black-style-exhibition-benefit "front and center"] at the Met Gala in 2025.
==Themes== '''Style'''
Many of Gavin's paintings explore ideas of, "identity and disarticulation from one's culture that relate to the artist's own relationship to the United States of America, Africa, Bermuda and the history of slavery that remains institutionally obfuscated on the island."<ref name=sarge/> Gavin often critiques various notions of identity, history, and colonialism and has incorporated complicated themes of land, sexuality, elation and euphoria, trauma, and the African diaspora in his paintings and video works.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.wmagazine.com/story/cy-gavin-a-young-artist-with-an-eye-for-history|title=Cy Gavin, a Young Artist With an Eye For History|last=Solway|first=Diane|work=W Magazine|access-date=2017-11-14|language=en}}</ref>
'''Influences'''
Gavin has stated that his work has been strongly influenced by the writings of historian and activist W.E.B. Dubois, especially his ''The Souls of Black Folk''. Dubois and Nkisi Nkondi, objects infused with spirits and religious idols from the Kongo, were central to his paintings in ''Overture''.<ref name=sarge/>
== Exhibitions == '''Solo exhibitions''' *''Cy Gavin'', Gavin Brown's enterprise, New York, 2019 *''Devils' Isle'', VNH gallery, Paris, France, 2017 *''At Heaven's Command'', Sargent's Daughters, New York, 2016<ref name=sarge/> * ''Overture'', Sargent's Daughters, New York, NY 2015<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.sargentsdaughters.com/exhibitions/cy-gavin5|title=Cy Gavin – Exhibitions – Sargent's Daughters|website=www.sargentsdaughters.com|language=en|access-date=2017-11-13}}</ref> *''Fugue States'', Revision Space (Cindy Lisica Gallery), Pittsburgh, 2014<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://cindy-lisica.squarespace.com/exhibitions#/cy-gavin-fugue-states/|title=Cy Gavin – Exhibitions – Cindy Lisica Gallery|website=cindylisicagallery.com|language=en}}</ref> '''Selected group exhibitions''' * 2022 Whitney Biennial titled "Quiet as It's Kept"<ref name=":4">{{Cite news |last=Mitter |first=Siddhartha |date=2022-01-25 |title=Whitney Biennial Picks 63 Artists to Take Stock of Now |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/25/arts/design/whitney-biennial.html |access-date=2022-01-25 |issn=0362-4331}}</ref> * ''The Lure of the Dark: Contemporary Painters Conjure the Night'', MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA, 2018<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://massmoca.org/event/the-lure-of-the-dark/|title=The Lure of the Dark Contemporary Painters Conjure the Night|website=massmoca.org|language=en-US|access-date=2017-11-13}}</ref> * ''Between the Waters'', Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY 2018<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://whitney.org/Exhibitions/BetweenTheWaters|title=Between the Waters {{!}} Whitney Museum of American Art|website=whitney.org|language=en|access-date=2017-11-13}}</ref> * ''Hecate'', Various Small Fires, Los Angeles, CA, 2017<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://www.vsf.la/hecate/|title=Hecate – Various Small Fires, Los Angeles|date=July 2, 2017|work=Various Small Fires, Los Angeles|access-date=2017-11-13|language=en-US}}</ref> * ''Dirge'', JTT, New York, NY, 2017<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.jttnyc.com/6953,6955,7334,86167|title=JTT / EXHIBITIONS / Previous / 2017.06 Dirge|website=www.jttnyc.com|access-date=2017-11-13|archive-date=December 21, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171221022704/http://www.jttnyc.com/6953,6955,7334,86167|url-status=dead}}</ref> * ''Frame By Frame'', Callicoon Fine Arts, New York, NY, 2017<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://callicoonfinearts.com/exhibitions/frame-by-frame/press-release#|title=FRAME BY FRAME|website=callicoonfinearts.com|language=en|access-date=2017-11-13}}</ref> * ''High Anxiety'', Rubell Family Collection, Miami, FL 2016<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://rfc.museum/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/high-anxiety|title=High Anxiety|website=rfc.museum|language=en-gb|access-date=2017-11-13}}</ref>
==References== {{Reflist}}
== External links == * [http://www.cygavin.com/index.html Artist's Website]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gavin, Cy}} Category:Living people Category:1985 births Category:Painters from New York City