YALE MFA 25’
Erol Scott Harris is a multidisciplinary artist who creates identity-based work. Currently living in Chicago, Illinois, he is a farmer boy who was born in the north suburbs in Waukegan, Illinois. Harris studied painting and comes from a music background, having played cello for many years. Collaboration is a big part of his work and combining painting and performance has also become increasingly important to him, as have curating and art advising.
For Harris, painting/art is an arena in which to uncover how he can work with the body—his own and others’.His painting process involves setting up a series of potentials in which he becomes free to move with them by performing, by using his physical form. He also incorporates photography as a way of maintaining the presence of his body through time and space. His interest is in what is left after his body is no longer performing. Once the paint has absorbed his energy, what remains are traces of his body; the remnants are relics that still breathe.
“I’ve come to realize that while I continue to exist and develop as an individual, my whole self, or soul, has such vast potential, that it can never be expressed fully through a lifetime. My work is to intimately document the multitudinous array of myselves falling into subjecthood, as they dissolve, evolve and reverberate in my imagination.”
Exhibitions
Upcoming: Group Show London TBD
2024 1st Year Show, Yale University, New Haven, 2024
2023 Newcity Breakout Artist, Chicago, IL
2023 HUM, Site Specific Installation, in collaboration with Jay Carbo, Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL
2023 CABAZA, Site Specific Installation, Blind Barber, Chicago, IL
2022 Nubes Art Fair, Heaven Gallery, Chicaog, IL
2022 SKIN +MASK, Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL
2022 LORE. Solo Show, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Chicago, IL
2021 The Other Art Fair, AMFM, Chicago, IL
2021 TODAYNOW Group Show, Silent Funny, Chicago IL
2021 Strawberry Moon, Baby Blue Gallery, Chicago, IL
2018 The Alchemical Trace: Transformation and Resilience, Ray Hernandez-Duran,Sanitary Tortilla Factory, Albuquerque, NM
2017 In-View, Gabriella Rousso, TheArt Center Highland Park, IL
2017 Pineapple Ribbon, Raven Munsell, ACRE, Chicago, IL
2016 Outsider, Nicholas Zahn, Degenerate Art Gallery, Chicago, IL
2016 The American Dream: The (W)holy Grail, Tricia Van Eck, 6018 North & Flat Studios, Chicago, IL
Press
Artist Erol Harris Details His Studio Practice
Reflecting on the Legacy of Black Identity: A Review of Vic Mensa’s SKIN + MASKS at Kavi Gupta
2022 Bad At Sports Top V.
516arts The Alchemical Trace
Resume pdf