Duane Slick

Chiaroscuro welcomes back to the gallery, Duane Slick (Meskwaki/ Ho-Chunk Nations). We showed his work for years in the early 2000's, and are presenting a series of ten paintings from his Coyote Mask series.

Duane Slick’s acrylic paintings blend the subjects of oral and visual Native American traditions with a focus on trickster strategies and modernist/post-modernist painting histories. His black and white series of American flag based paintings (2010-2012) titled; The Untraceable Present, explored the contradictions and legacies of Native American identity in the grand narratives of American history. He is the recent recipient of a research grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation with collaborator and Wash U Alum (2000), Martin Smick. A collaboration described as partnering with a third and silent partner: Museum collections specific to Native American culture. Their Mellon project is titled: My Teacher is a Lizard; Decolonizing Curatorial Practice.
Duane Slick's most recent solo exhibition at Chiaroscuro is on view August 12 - September 10, 2022. Slick’s narrative abstraction is direct and personal.The paintings slowly and clearly speak to deeply ingrained Native American storytelling. Combining geometric abstraction and representative images of coyote heads, corn and wheat stalks, rabbits and birds, the work connects not to the specific figures, but to a state of mind, a direct connection to something larger than us.

Slick was born in Waterloo, IA, and is of Native American descent, a member of the Meskwaki Nation of Iowa and his mother is from the Ho-Chunk Nation of Nebraska. He earned his BFA from the University of Northern Iowa, an MFA from the University of California, Davis, he also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He has taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe NM and is now a Professor of Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design. He is the recipient of grants from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the School of Advanced Research on the Human Experience in Santa Fe, NM.

Slick has lectured at colleges and universities across the US and his work has been exhibited widely – most recently in a national touring exhibition titled; “Native Art NOW!” organized by the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis and “Stretching the Canvas: Eight Decades Of Native Painting at the National Museum of the American Indian. His work is included in collections at The Des Moines Art Center,The Decordova Museum, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the RISD Museum among many others.

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