Aristotle Forrester

Aristotle Forrester is a black painter and printmaker, originally from the South Side of Chicago and currently based in New York. He received his Bachelor of Fine Art degree from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2016, and his Master ...

Aristotle Forrester is a black painter and printmaker, originally from the South Side of Chicago and currently based in New York. He received his Bachelor of Fine Art degree from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2016, and his Master of Fine Art from Columbia University, New York in 2024. Recent exhibitions include such venues as LatchKey Gallery (New York), Thierry Goldberg (New York), Frederic Snitzer (Miami), Storage Gallery (New York), M Fine Arts Galerie (Boston), the Inside Out Museum (Beijing), the Obama Foundation Democracy Forum (New York). His work can be found in the permanent collection of Harvard University (Boston). Forrester’s work unearths personal and historical evidence of racial injustice. Through deconstructing symbols such as the horseman, the flag, the mask and the fugitive, Forrester questions the racial constructs and power structures of intimidation that have defined his experience and that of so many other people of color living in America. By extending the traditions of quilting, collage, printmaking, pigment, and language, Forrester subverts the colonial pillars of visual culture and highlights the duality of imprisonment and freedom personified by these symbols. He presents his perspective on the human experience to viewers through the emotive power of pigment and gestural mark-making. Forrester creates these moments for viewers to stretch their subconscious, to push their understanding of imagery conjured through abstraction.