Spring 2022 Quarterly #221

Juxtapoz is excited to announce our Spring 2022 Quarterly, featuring our cover story on Derek Fordjour, in conjunction with this solo show in Los Angeles in the coming months.

Our Spring Quarterly hums more quietly, and yet at the same time, it pulsates with such humanity. There’s introspection, an observational theme from each artist, but a release too. I feel it should be noted that, as we completed this issue, the Whitney Biennial announced their 2022 theme, Quiet As It’s Kept, as if there is a feeling in the air, that after all this time of separation, we need to explore the quiet together, collectively. It was definitely on my mind these past few months. And so we start this issue with a quote from the great portrait painter, Alice Neel, who is honored this spring with an exhibition at the de Young museum in San Francisco in a show called People Come First. She observed her subjects with a sense of sensitivity and passion. Her subjects held a powerful pose, an elegant grit, something real and yet hushed. In a memorable interview when Neel appeared with Tonight Show host Johnny Carson in 1978, she remarked, “Well, so many of us are damaged, aren’t we?” Such often unspoken honesty, that brutal quiet truth, resonates in 2022 as much as it did over 40 years ago, positioning Neel as the perfect artist to study and honor.

Spring features stories on Derek Fordjour, Alice Neel, Patrick Martinez, Woody de Othello, Joy Labinjo, Aryo Toh Djojo, Matt Bollinger, Kim Dacres, Kristina Schuldt, Anna Park, Naive John, Peter Saul, Jim Henson, Hein Koh, Javier Ruiz, Angela Anh Nguyen and more!