JAMES ALLISTER SPRANG

James Allister Sprang is a multidisciplinary artist who creates immersive audiovisual installations and complex woven two-dimensional works. "I make sensory poems for the spirit," he says. Similarly to how he weaves genre and instrumentation together when composing and producing musical scores, he weaves prints and watercolor into dimensional, textural works of abstraction that celebrate the sensory experience of Black life. His first exhibition with Dowling Walsh Gallery, Each of Us Are Several is a multimedia installation that includes sound, elements of text, and wall-based work. In its varied forms, Sprang's work fosters connections between the tangible and intangible nature of being human in this ever-spinning world, between past and present, the known and the unknowable.

Sprang was born in Miami, FL, and received his BFA from The Cooper Union, New York, NY, and his MFA from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. He is a 2022 Knight Foundation Art + Tech Fellow, a 2023 Pew Fellow, and a 2024 YoungArts Fellow. He has been an artist-in-residence at The Kitchen, New York, NY; the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine, Philadelphia, PA; Baryshnikov Arts Center Space, New York, NY; and the Fountainhead, Miami, FL. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the ICA at Maine College of Art and Design, Portland, ME; the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA; Knockdown Center, New York, NY; and The Cooper Union, New York, NY, as well as in group exhibitions throughout the United States, including at the Aldrich Museum, Ridgefield, CT; Jacob Lawrence Gallery, Seattle, WA; Emerson Dorsch Gallery, Miami, FL, and David Nolan Gallery, New York, NY. His work has been reviewed in Artforum, Art in America, and Art Papers, among others. He lives and works in Portland, ME.

Each of Us are Several

July 5 – September 15, 2024

Selected Works

Installation Views

Press Release