Brandon Tellez & Marc Andre

Black Wall Street Gallery (NYC) proudly presents a two-person exhibition in the form of two separate solo exhibitions of new works by Brandon Tellez and Marc Andre. The exhibition, which is titled Candyland/Banned from the Gallery, is curated by Dr. Ricco Wright.

In this exhibition, two New York-based emerging artists will present bodies of work in visual conversation with each other. In Candyland, Brandon Tellez uses lucid, almost hallucinogenic colors to transport viewers to verdant lands reminiscent of a paradise and a candy store. Yet the sugarcoated earnings of Tellez do not completely distract viewers, as his emotional pathos of Expressionism lacks sentimentality. Deeply influenced by fearless iconoclasm of Vincent van Gogh, Tellez expresses a profound longing for the simplicity of the gone time of his childhood. His six siblings still hold hands in a peaceful harmony. Tellez invites us into his immersive world of organic forms, where humans and animals form one interconnected system. Another strand of his practice is the artist’s engagement with Catholicism. Religion played an important part in his upbringing and today he continues to explore its core ideas of sin, sacrifice, and redemption.

Marc Andre uses a vastly different approach. Through striking color combinations of red, yellow, blue and black, Andre uses an abstracted and formalized approach to accessing his African roots. Banned from the Gallery is a metaphor of how Andre feels regarding his position in the art industry. He rebels against it, but also wants to challenge the status quo by putting forth his striking mark-making. Andre remembers tribal ceremonies he observed as a child when traveling with his mother to Equatorial Guinea and Benin. Marrying emotions with color, Andre uses his minimalistic canvases as another medium to express his ideas from hip hop and other musical genres. Tribal masks are part of his vision, but so are humor, dynamism, and theatricality.

Brandon Tellez (b. 1996) is a self-taught Mexican artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Raised in a small town in Florida, his artistic career was cultivated in his late teens as he traveled to art events in Miami, Naples, Fort Myers, and Atlanta, Georgia. He began painting in 2016 and had his first solo exhibition curated by Denis Leon in Southampton, NY in 2020. Tellez is now represented by Black Wall Street Gallery, New York City. Specializing in oil portraits, most of Tellez’s work is presented on large scale canvases. He is inspired by images that have sparked his interest and curiosity from brief, special moments in history. Tellez creates in different mediums as a way to express his current emotions or states of being.

Marc Andre (b. 1991) was born in Toulouse, France and spent much of his childhood in Paris traveling the world and frequenting museums with his mother, primarily visiting exhibitions featuring Pan-African artists and had a profound impact on his creative practice. In his latest body of work, Andre harnesses his love of painting and drawing to bring his vision of the African aesthetic to the contemporary art world at large. Andre lives and works in New York. Since his first year of painting, Andre has been featured in Westside Gunn, Tim Okamura and Julia Lang collections. After his first solo exhibition African Inferno at Doordoor gallery in Brooklyn he was invited to the Hamptons Art Fair. Andre is also a musician, a rapper, producer, and a model. Andre meditates on the moments when we step out of our comfort zones. Infused with neo-expressionist influences and demonstrating a figurative approach akin to the portraits and sculptures of Benin infused with a refreshing wave of energy. By channeling a playful flirtation with mark-making, Andre shows us that childhood creativity is “as pure as it gets.”