Rising New York art world star Walter Price debuts solo show at Walker Art Center

New York-based artist Walter Price decided to paint the walls black instead of keeping them the standard white for his first solo exhibition at the Walker Art Center.

“The white walls at galleries are meant to disappear and kind of give a platform for the work,” Price said. “But when you add color or black, it absorbs the room in a way where the viewer becomes almost enmeshed in this world … the black being like your mind or your eyes being closed, like when you’re trying to meditate.”

Taking the viewer into his world is what Price does with his colorful, vibrant paintings that, with an added black background, feel like they’re popping off the wall. The work in this show is from only a five-year period, but Price, 35, packs in a lot, with painting that sits somewhere between abstraction and figuration, form and formlessness.

There are Black female athletes in motion, the buzz of New York City streets, the energy of a pandemic-era grocery. And then there’s a series titled “Dancing With Whiteness,” a reflection on time spent in cloud-filled London.

His solo exhibition “Walter Price: Pearl Lines” opens Thursday at the Walker. It’s the same title he has used for many other exhibitions, because he is fascinated by repetition.

“He talks about the effective magic of repetition and sort of thinking about repetition as a ritual incantation or a DJ playing on repeat a song during the summer,” said Curator Rosario Güiraldes, who met Price when she worked at a nonprofit exhibition space, the Drawing Center, in New York. “So ‘Pearl Lines’ also speaks to his love of drawing and lines, and the significance of drawing in that practice, and pearl lines as this idea of continuity.”

Price’s interest in repetition came first from life, specifically from serving in the U.S. Navy, after which he went to art school on the GI Bill. He got the idea to join the Navy after he saw a photo of artist Jacob Lawrence, known for his portrayals of African American subjects, wearing a sailor uniform and standing beside his paintings.

Price’s paintings are rife with color and energy, inviting people into these created worlds. “Pleasure the false God,” 2018, one of the three portrayals of Black women athletes in motion, is a sort of hallucination of a woman running, her feet kicking up orange dirt against a maroon and blue sky.

Paintings of urban scenes have constant cars in them, but each one has a hidden text, too. In ”The things that horse ourselves for uncertainty,” 2018, there’s an orange and red scene rife with urban buildings in the background and in the foreground a car that seems to dissipate into the horizon. On a storefront window, the text “Think Slowly” seems to fade in.

In other work the color blue rules, like in “It got uncomfortable, immediately!” 2022, a blue-doused painting with a group of figures — some just outlines in pink, others with shadowy blue heads — shoved together in a grocery store. But the energy of it is reminiscent of Archibald Motley Jr.’s iconic 1943 painting “Nightlife,” of a jubilant, crowded cabaret scene on Chicago’s South Side filled with dancing bodies.

Before Price got into visual art, he was captured by the energy of music and movement, growing up in Macon, Ga.

“Most of my family members were into music, so there was a lot of dancing and card playing, I saw a lot of gestural movements and a lot of energy, that at a lot of times whether it was anger or rejoicing, it was a lot of movement,” he said. “I think I was influenced by people and seeing bodies move.”

Although Price has shown internationally and his work is in collections at the MoMA New York, Tate Museum in London, Studio Museum in Harlem and many others, this is his first time having a show in the Midwest, and his most in-depth exhibition to date.

While here, he may end up at the Mall of America, but not for shopping. He’s considering going to ride the roller coasters. At this point in life, he’s trying to challenge himself to new things, push himself out of his comfort zone.

“I got on a roller coaster and closed my eyes, and I was like ‘Oh, this is the most thrilling, happiest!’” he said. “It’s like what I’ve been told about skydiving, that when you skydive you experience light totally different, it’s like new awakening, exhibiting. Roller coasters are the closest I can get to that in a short period of time. Now, I love roller coasters. I love the thrill.”

When: Ends Dec. 8.

Opening night: Thu. 6 p.m.

Where: Walker Art Center, 725 Vineland Place, Mpls.

Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wed., Fri.-Sun., 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Thu.

Cost: $2-$18.

Info: walkerart.org or 612-375-7600.