Join us for a screening & discussion of POST ATLANTIC: The Art of Dewey Crumpler (2024, 29 mins) with filmmakers Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman. Artist Dewey Crumpler will be in attendance, as well.

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About the Film

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What is a political artist? In POST ATLANTIC, artist Dewey Crumpler struggles with these issues and reveals the evolution of his thinking in beautiful, often abstract paintings that explore slavery, Black liberation, globalization, and pop culture. A crucial figure in the Black Arts Movement from his youth working with the Black Panther Party to his teaching young luminaries like Kehinde Wiley and Adrian Burrell at the San Francisco Art Institute, Dewey has challenged orthodoxies, exclusions, and foregone conclusions. His message of resistance and persistence is immediately relevant to our current moment.

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POST ATLANTIC: The Art of Dewey Crumpler tells Crumpler’s story and follows him in his studio, at home, at the Oakland port, and at a recent high-profile opening of his new work - “Post Atlantic” - at a New York gallery. The film is not hagiography, but an encounter with what it is to be a working artist with a conscience in a society experiencing turmoil and backlash.

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About the Filmmakers

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Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman have been making documentary films for more than thirty years, taking on major social issues from intergroup relations, battles over controversial art, the corporate seizure of water supplies, drone warfare, and worker organizing in Silicon Valley. www.snitow-kaufman.org

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About the Artist

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Dewey Crumpler (b. 1949, Arkansas) is a Bay Area artist and educator creating surreal experiences that merge traditional painting techniques with video, mixed media and sculpture. His work examines themes of race, capitalism, and the history of oppression, which continue to transcend boundaries. Crumpler has long been preoccupied with how objects serve as sites for exploring what it means to be Black, shedding light on the aesthetic freedom that contributes to Black liberation. Crumpler’s body of work addresses the idea of subjugation in America and the way this condition was transformed into a state of cultural self-fulfillment and spiritual development.

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This program is presented in conjunction with Downtown First Thursdays and the current exhibition Dewey Crumpler: Sonic Lineages on view through May 30, 2027. 

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