This exciting retrospective styled solo art exhibition and lecture series will be at the Corvus Gallery of the stately Gordon Parks Arts Hall at the University of Chicago's Laboratory School.
Onli makes the Rhythmistic practice point of "Black Male Mojo" in this unique showcase of his Visual Art created from 1994 until the Summer of 2021.
This production is Onli's homage to the namesake of stately Parks Arts Hall which is named after the legendary Film Maker and Photographer, Gordon Parks.
Onli, like Parks spent critical early career growth and practice at the National Treasure designated South Side Community Art Center and both later freelanced for Playboy Magazine and Johnson Publishing when both publications were the top of the magazine supply-chain in status, pay scale, design, editorial respect and social impact.
Parks was a celebrated pioneering Photo-journalist while Onli was an innovative major-market illustrator. A nexus of Black Male mentoring or scaffolding. Talk about Black Male Mojo!!
Selected works from various thematic collections illustrate how Onli has expressed his artistic life as winning the peace.
Dr. Onli thinks of it as, "being free from the need to be free", has facilitated his 5 decades long Visual Arts practice.
The above Rhythmistic painting was completed in July 2021. "NOG Emerges", oils on wood is a follow up to NOG being featured mural sized in the Summer / Fall 2021 blockbuster group exhibition, "Chicago comics: 1960 Until Now" at the important Museum of Contemporary Art, curated by Dan Nadel.
Nadel was bold and righteous enough to include Onli's Rhythmistic work instead of following the arts' world's orthodoxy of excluding Onli and Rhythmism in favor of lesser yet celebrated artist and their works or the trending genre that was named for Blacks by a person who was not Black.
Curious how systems oppress by overlooking the true power of self-determination in the Visual Arts. Only its White-Euro elites and designated folks are allowed or recognized for launching or naming a Visual Arts genre. Well the truth is Onli brilliantly launched Rhythmism and all of its Future-Pritimif potential in the early 1970s.
"Rhythmism Lives!"
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