Image: Cedric Michael Cox, City by the River No. 2, 2016, acrylic on canvas
This exhibit opens on March 17, 2017 at the Taft Museum of Art:
Cincinnati-based artist Cedric Michael Cox’s bright, lively, and often playful paintings offer abstract twists on traditional painting subjects. For this exhibition, Cox will present a new series of paintings inspired by works in the Taft collection. Working under a broad range of influences, including mythology, music, film, architecture, nature, and the urban environment. Cox encourages viewers to re-examine the world around them. His abstractions range from the geometric to the curvilinear, and look back to the fragmented forms of Cubism, the biomorphic shapes of Surrealism, and even the atmospheric colors of Tonalism.
Cedric Michael Cox regularly exhibits his work locally, regionally, and nationally. In the Cincinnati area, he has had solo exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts Center, the Carnegie Center for Visual and Performing Arts, the Weston Art Gallery in the Aronoff Center for the Arts, and Northern Kentucky University. His paintings have also appeared at FiveMyles Gallery in Brooklyn, New York, and Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, among other venues. The City of Cincinnati has awarded Cox an Individual Artist Grant and a Congressional Award for Entrepreneurship. In 2015, he served as the Yeck Artist-in-Residence at the Dayton Art Institute. Cox teaches art at St. Francis Seraph School, and is the Cincinnati Public Schools Artist-in-Residence for Woodford Paideia and Chase elementary schools. He has led public mural projects in several neighborhoods around Cincinnati and is currently working on murals at Taft and Western Hills high schools and Talbert House.