| Darrell Urban Black
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| 1964
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| Baumert Strasse 77
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| 60386 Frankfurt
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| Germany / United States of America
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| Phone home : 069-417356
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| Phone mobil :
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The following is from the artist, Darrell Urban Black, born March 25, 1964 in Brooklyn, New York, and living in Frankfurt, Germany from the late 1980s:
The majority of my youth was spent in Rockaway, New York where at the
age of five years I used washroom utensils including clothes pins tied in shoe laces to create what I considered to be spaceships. I continued this activity until my middle teens. What I called the signs of an active imagination my siblings considered the signs of mental illness and suggested that I be institutionalized. My parents pondered this action for sometime but in the end decided against it.
In the summer of 1980, we made the transition to Brentwood, Long Island New York where my interest in the arts continued to develop. It was at this time I moved from creating objects to placing my ideas on paper, which my mom supplied me with from the mental hospital where she was employed. Within a 24-month period I created 500 drawings.
Then in 1982 I joined the National Guard in New York. Upon my return from duty I searched desperately for my drawings and then confronted my mother about what had happened to my works. She just laughed insisting it was a phase I was going through so she had thrown them in the trash. I was devastated and decided never to draw again.
In 1988 I joined the regular army and by chance I found ten photographs I had taken of my earlier work on paper. These photographs helped to inspire me to make a come back. It took me many attempts to create anything satisfactory, but in 1991 I was back and also expanded by creating
paintings and wall hanging sculptures. I live in Germany where I continue
to expand and flourish as an artist.
One reviewer described Black's pen and ink drawings as large and colorful and disturbing in a way hard to classify. "It is urban, quasi graffiti like, cubic themes, and challenges the viewer to intellectually differentiate between artistic fulfillment and failed endeavors of the past. ...Without an open mind, the images are difficult to view and fascinating at the same time. Wasn't the same thing said of Picasso?"
Black has participated in exhibitions in Germany at Bosenplatz Gallery, the International Airport, and the USO in Frankfurt, and at the Kunstkaufaus Gallery in Baden Baden. His work sold successfully at The Elton John Aids Foundation Celebrity Art Auction 2000 in Dublin, Ireland and, a piece, The Invasion, depicting an encounter of Zeppelins much like those in Orson Wells' writing, War of the Worlds, is in the collection of the Zeppelin Museum in Frankfurt/Main Germany.
In April 2001, John Provan of the Zeppelin Museum on behalf of that institution nominated Darrell Black to the German Government "for this year's prize for promising young artists." In the nomination letter, Black was cited for his exceptional abilities in various art works, especially in a piece, The Invasion, created for a Zeppelin Museum exhibition entitled THE ZEPPELIN IN ART, DESIGN, AND ADVERTISEMENT held between May 11 and July 30, 2000. Another piece referenced in this nomination letter was titled The Cosmic Linen, executed with a unique glue and acrylic on linen technique and described as "universally appealing and represents a topic which concerns us all, the universe."
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