Jerrell Gibbs (b. 1988; Baltimore, Maryland) opposes deceptive perceptions of Black men by questioning master narratives and their connection to a muted visual history. Gibbs’ paintings are acts of resistance, asserting power over visual stereotypes. He paints the Black male figure with adornments, such as flowers, and contextualizes them in moments of peace, rest, and solitude. These gestures function to dismantle the visual misrepresentation of violence, trauma, and pain.

Gibbs is committed to creating paintings that are both authentic and truthful, and he reveals Black men as God-fearing, husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons. His paintings highlight joy, beauty and the mundane, all components within the vastness of Black life. The compositions, which are often taken from his family archive, focus on placement, size, proportion, as much as they do on mark-making and painterly gestures. His assertions of legacy highlight the performative nature of heritage and displaces an audience unaccustomed to more extensive and wide-ranging portrayals of Black life. 

Gibbs received his M.F.A. from the LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD. His work is in the permanent collections of the Brandywine Museum of Art, Chadds Ford, PA; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; U.S. Capitol, Washington, DC; CC Foundation Shanghai, China, and x Museum, Beijing, China. He has had recent solo exhibitions at Easy Does It Curatorial Space, Los Angeles, CA, and Mariane Ibrahim Gallery in Paris, France, and Chicago, IL, and more than thirty group exhibitions across the United States, Europe, Mexico, and Korea. Gibbs has been an artist-in-residence at Mare Residency, Baltimore, MD, and has received awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Maryland Institute College of Art. He lives and works in Baltimore, MD.