Mcarthur Binion

(b. 1946, Macon, MS; lives and works in Chicago, IL) combines collage, drawing, and painting to create autobiographical abstractions of painted minimalist patterns over an “under surface” of personal documents and photographs. From photocopies of his birth certificate and pages from his address book, to pictures from his childhood and found photographs of lynchings, the poignant and charged images that constitute the tiled base of his work are concealed and abstracted by grids of oil stick. The complexly layered works, from a distance, appear to be monochromatic minimalist abstractions that have led many to compare his work to that of Jasper Johns, Robert Ryman, or Brice Marden. However, while his contemporaries focused more on materiality, abstraction, and in some cases the social and political climate of the time, Binion’s works are intensely personal and deeply dedicated to the rigorous process of making a painting. Upon closer inspection, these monochromatic abstractions come into focus: the perfect grid becomes a series of imperfect laboriously hand-drawn lines, behind which emerge intimate details of Binion’s identity and personal history. Binion’s gridded compositions impose rational order to the layers of personal history, allowing only fragments of information from his birth certificate to be read, or details of his mother’s face to be identified—but never enough to be immediately legible. Having begun his career as a writer, Binion is highly influenced by language and music, as can be seen in his titles and the ways in which he layers information to be “read” rather than simply seen. The tension that exists between the grid and the artist’s visible gestures is not unlike that of jazz music, which merges improvisation with the order of a musical composition. Binion received his B.F.A. from Wayne State University, Detroit, MI in 1971 and his M.F.A. from the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI in 1973. Select recent solo exhibitions of his work have been organized at the de la Cruz Gallery at Georgetown University (2025); Library Street Collective, Detroit, MI (2023); Museo Novecento, Florence, Italy (2020); the Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI (2018); Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX (2012); and the University of Maryland University College Gallery, Adelphi, MD (2010). Recent group exhibitions featuring his work include , Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, Paris, France (2025); , Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN (2023); , K11 Musea, Shanghai, China (2023); , Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, TX (2022); , Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL (2022); , Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA (2019), traveled to Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC (2019), Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, MI (2019), Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA (2020); Frye Museum of Art, Seattle, WA (2020); and Utah Museum of Fine Art, Salt Lake City, UT (2020); , Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Boston, MA (2019); , Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL (2018); , McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX (2018); , Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, MI (2017); , Museum of Contemporary San Diego, San Diego, CA (2017); , New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA (2017); , National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, D.C. (2017); , Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2016); , New Orleans, LA (2014); , Studio Museum, Harlem, NY (2014); and , Contemporary Art Museum Houston, TX (2013). Binion’s works were also featured prominently in the 57th Venice Biennale, (2017). Binion’s work is in numerous public and private collections including the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA; Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art at Rollins College, Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Winter Park, FL; Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH; Ariel Mutual Funds, Chicago, IL; Art Bridges Foundation, Bentonville, AR; Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan, Detroit, MI; Children's Hospital of Michigan, Detroit, MI; City of Detroit, Detroit, MI; Cook County Hospital, Chicago, MI; Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; De Paul Art Museum, Chicago, IL; Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit, MI; Fidelity Investments Art Collection; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL; Joyner Giuffrida Collection; Kemper Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO; McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, MS; Morehouse College, Atlanta, GA; Mott Warsh Collection, Flint, MI; Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, FL; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA; Phillips Collection, Washington, DC; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), San Francisco, CA; Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Strauss Family Collection, Santa Fe, CA; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH; Wayne State University, Detroit, MI and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.