McArthur Binion is a Mississippi-born, Chicago-based painter. Inspired by the scale and materiality of Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism, he developed a pared-down visual language that employs strong graphic elements, circles and grids. He makes his marks with a monotonous, task-based approach that speaks to his personal history of manual labor. This history is also explored through his use of personal ephemera, images of his birth certificate and hand–written phonebook, on which he paints. Binion’s paintings are largely symbolic and achieve an expressive resonance that defies the reductive materialism of minimalism. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington D.C. The artist is represented by Galerie Lelong in New York and Kavi Gupta in Chicago, Illinois.
