Key Insights
The exhibition of new, large-format paintings and amassment sculptures, “40acres (of TREEs| to a 40oz_Bricks),” will open Thursday, Oct. 22, with an artist talk and reception.
Image: Kahlil Robert Irving, "ToolBar|SKYCHEST_ [Mass+rebar&Mysoda_ash](Tender Memory)GRASS," 2023-25, glazed and unglazed ceramic, personally constructed image transfers (decals), metallic enamel, colored enamel (no found objects). Courtesy of the artist. An exhibition of new and recent works by artist Kahlil Robert Irving will be presented by the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts.
“Kahlil Robert Irving: 40acres (of TREEs| to a 40oz_Bricks)” will open Thursday, Oct. 22, with an artist talk and reception from 5-7 p.m. Beginning at 5:15 p.m., Irving will be in conversation with Lauren Haynes, executive director of Atlanta Contemporary. The events are free and open to the public.
The exhibition will be on view through March 13, 2027.
AEIVA is part of the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Center for the Arts. AEIVA is open from noon to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Visit uab.edu/aeiva or call 205-975-6436.
Irving, born in 1992 in San Diego, California, lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri. For the AEIVA exhibition, Irving will show a series of new, large-format paintings and amassment sculptures that confront the legacy of historical broken promises and political mixed messaging in his hometown and across the United States. Through work combining digital imagery and references to his surrounding environment, Irving’s exhibition stages an encounter between the web of media and the web of materials, producing a record of experience in which the street and the screen are equally present forums for public life.
Recently, Irving’s work was included in “MONUMENTS,” a group exhibition curated by Hamza Walker, Bennett Simpson and Kara Walker at the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Brick, both in Los Angeles. In 2023 to 2024, Irving’s work was the subject of solo exhibitions at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City; the Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and in 2021, his work was presented as part of the Projects series at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. He has exhibited work in group exhibitions at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, and in the 2022 New Museum Triennial, “Soft Water, Hard Stone,” curated by Jamillah James and Margot Norton, among many others.
Irving has received numerous fellowships and awards, including the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant (2019), the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant (2020) and the United States Artist Fellowship (2025). His work is in the collections of the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art; the RISD Museum, Providence; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, among others.