Jenkins Johnson Gallery is pleased to present Mixed Messages (Streets & Screens) AOL + Lottery, Kahlil Robert Irving’s first solo presentation in San Francisco. This exhibition revels in all the different media Irving employs within his practice, from the digital space of technology and social media to the use of materials to represent aspects of the built world around us. The artist comes from the post-industrious Midwest of Saint Louis, Missouri, a landscape that informs this installation.

Mixed Messages (Streets & Screens) AOL + Lottery takes place under a digitally rendered sky that reflects on the ground that we walk, the fences that blur the understanding of place, and the opportunities for agency in the here and the now. Oscillating between the digital and works constructed out of physical materials, Irving is constantly negotiating materials and processes within a practice that seeks to question inherited systems and meditate on the possibilities of anew.

Additionally, inside the Minnesota Street Project's atrium is Irving’s mourning flag installation, AT nightfall, a commemoration of people of color and those who have suffered violent acts and murder within oppressed communities across America.

Mixed Messages (Streets & Screens) AOL + Lottery is a continuing installation in Irving’s “Street views” series. Reflective of Irving’s interest in diverse media, this exhibition includes small and large works on paper, digital prints, a light box, small ceramic sculptures, a wallpaper edition, and flags made for this exhibition.

“Mixed messages” playfully gestures toward Irving’s diverse studio pursuits as well as the mixed messages we receive from interactions with and through digital spaces: Twitter, major news sources, memes, fake news, misunderstandings when texting to communicate, and so on.“Mixed messages” playfully gestures toward Irving’s diverse studio pursuits as well as the mixed messages we receive from interactions with and through digital spaces: Twitter, major news sources, memes, fake news, misunderstandings when texting to communicate, and so on.

Kahlil Robert Irving is an artist born in San Diego, California, in 1992, currently living and working in St. Louis. He attended the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Art, Washington University in St. Louis (MFA Fellow, 2017) and the Kansas City Art Institute (BFA, Art History and Ceramics, 2015).

His work has been included in exhibitions at the I8 Gallery, Reykjavik, Iceland; Hiestand Galleries, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio; Mathew Marks Gallery, Los Angeles; and the Law Warschaw Gallery, Macalester College, Saint Paul, among others. In 2018, Irving completed his first major solo exhibition at Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts in Middletown, Connecticut titled Street Matter – Decay & Forever / Golden Age and was accompanied by a full-color catalogue with essays and an interview. Concurrent with this exhibition, Irving’s work is featured in Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019, a collections exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City (November 20, 2019–January 2021). Irving's work is also on view at “Formed and Fired: Contemporary American Ceramics” at Stanford University’s Anderson Collection (March 13-September 28).  Forthcoming exhibitions include “At Dusk” at the Great Rivers Biennial at Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri. Irving’s work is in the collections of the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kansas; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; The RISD Museum, Providence; the Riga Porcelain Museum, Latvia; the Foundation for Contemporary Ceramic Art, Kecskemet, Hungary; and J.P Morgan Chase Art Collection, New York.