Karma Gallery Presents ‘Get Lifted,’ Curated by Associate Professor Hilton Als

Karma Gallery presents Get Lifted!, a new multi-artist exhibition organized by Associate Professor Hilton Als.

“Get Lifted! is an examination and celebration of how, in dark times and just after, the artist’s creative process can reaffirm life in its effort to describe it,” writes Als in the exhibition’s press release. “In this group exhibition featuring artists ranging from Diane Arbus and Peter Hujar to Louise Fishman and Reggie Burrows Hodges, the viewer is treated to works in a variety of media—painting, film, photography—that, essentially, describe faith: in the transgressive body, in political freedom, in ecclesiastical belief, in sexual forthrightness and desire, in the release from the corporeal to the spiritual and, thus, the ecstatic.”

As Als points out further in the official exhibition statement, it is in this space of the ecstatic that artists can find an opportunity to not only carry themselves, but also their audience, beyond previously accepted forms of art, music, literature, dance, performance.

“Collectively, these seminal artists had a profound effect on American culture from the 1940s on,” Als writes. “Their work is a testament to the ecstatic and to how the ecstatic impulse can change not only art but the society that produces it. The visual artists of Get Lifted! demonstrate how art married to the spirit can lift us up collectively, one at a time.”

The exhibition is on view now until October 2, 2021. Visit Karma’s webpage to arrange your visit and scroll through their virtual gallery.

Recipient of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, Als became a staff writer at The New Yorker in October 1994, and a theatre critic in 2002. He began contributing to the magazine in 1989, writing pieces for “The Talk of the Town.” Before joining The New Yorker, Als was a staff writer for the Village Voice and an editor-at-large at Vibe. He has also written articles for The Nation and collaborated on film scripts for Swoon and Looking for Langston. Als edited the catalogue for the Whitney Museum of American Art exhibition entitled Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art, which ran from November 1994 to March 1995. His first book, The Women, a meditation on gender, race, and personal identity, was published in 1996. His later book, White Girls, discusses various narratives around race and gender. In 1997, the New York Association of Black Journalists awarded Als first prize in both Magazine Critique/Review and Magazine Arts and Entertainment. He was awarded a Guggenheim for Creative Writing in 2000 and the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism for 2002-03. In 2009, Als worked with the performer Justin Bond on Cold Water, an exhibition of paintings, drawings, and videos by performers at La MaMa Gallery. In 2010, he co-curated Self-Consciousness at the Veneklasen Werner Gallery in Berlin, and published Justin Bond/Jackie Curtis, his third book. In addition to Columbia University, Als has also taught at Yale University, Wesleyan, and Smith College, and, most recently, Princeton. He lives in New York City.