Steve Turner is pleased to present One Way Ticket, a three-person online exhibition featuring recent works by Patrick Alston, Khari Turner and Raelis Vasquez. Each creates paintings that reflect their experiences as young Black men at the outset of their professional careers. While they are all under thirty, they have been singlemindedly on the art road for some time, having moved from city to city to pursue education, experience and self-reflection. Their artistic styles differ–ranging from the gestural abstraction of Alston to the social realism of Vasquez with Turner’s expressive figuration lying somewhere in between—but they all seek to represent their struggles, those of their community and those of their forebears with clarity and nuance. As a group, they well represent the current moment, demonstrating that identity shapes work, but also that work can shape identity.

Patrick Alston (born 1991) grew up in the South Bronx before moving to the midwest to get a BFA at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana (2013). He lives and works in the Bronx.

Khari Turner (born 1991) grew up in Milwaukee before earning his undergraduate degree at Austin Peay State

University in Clarksville, Tennessee. (2019). He is currently an MFA candidate at Columbia University (Class of 2021).

Raelis Vasquez (born 1995) moved to North Brunswick, New Jersey from the Dominican Republic with his family when he was seven years old. He earned a BFA at the Art Institute of Chicago (2018) and currently is a MFA candidate at Columbia University (Class of 2021).