Rashaad Newsome: Running
Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture and
San Francisco Art Institute
THIS PERFORMANCE OCCURRED
ON JANUARY 17 AND 18, 2020.
To celebrate the opening week of Rashaad Newsome’s To Be Real, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture (FMCAC) and San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) presented Newsome’s immersive performance, Running, on January 17 and 18, 2020. In this abstract portrait of soul, composed for light and voice, three singers explored the “vocal run:” a musicology term for a rapid series of ascending or descending musical notes, usually improvised and sung in quick succession. With vocalists Kyron El, Aaron Marcellus, and Devin Michael from its New York City premiere, Running features an original score composed by the artist, incorporating samples of vocal runs by Aretha Franklin, Patti LaBelle, Whitney Houston, Marvin Gaye, B.B. King, James Brown, and Kelly Price, among others.
Running was presented on January 17 and 18, 2020 at 7:00 p.m. in Gallery 308. Tickets were $20/$15 for seniors, students, and members. After the Saturday (January 18) show, guests were invited to stay for an artist talk with Newsome.
Open concurrently with Running and To Be Real, the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD)’s presentation of Newsome’s STOP PLAYING IN MY FACE! and Icon was on view September 4, 2019 through March 1, 2020. The exhibition focused on video works inspired by the origins and continued dynamism of Vogue, a dance phenomenon that emerged from Harlem’s queer ballroom scene. For more information, please visit MoAD.
About the Artist
Rashaad Newsome is a multidisciplinary artist whose work brings together collage, sculpture, film, music, computer programming, and performance to form an altogether new field. He pulls intuitively from the world of advertising, the Internet, and Black and Queer culture to produce counter-hegemonic works. Using diasporic traditions of improvisation and collage, Newsome crafts compositions that walk a tightrope among intersectionality, social practice, and abstraction.
Newsome lives and works in New York City. He has exhibited and performed in galleries, museums, institutions, and festivals throughout the world, and his work is in numerous public collections including The Studio Museum in Harlem (NYC); Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC); The Brooklyn Museum (NYC); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (CA); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (CA); and The National Museum of African American History and Culture (DC), among others.
