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Kahlil Robert Irving

He // Him // His

Sculptor

St. Louis, Missouri

A man standing in a studio space wearing a patchwork silk top made from several different patterned fabrics, turtle-shell glasses, and curly-hair afro. Around him are sculptural works and digital prints of different collages he composed on the computer. 

Photo by Andrew Castaneda. 

“I believe in the linked dualities of materials and emotions simultaneously existing as static, dynamic, heavy, light, political, anarchic, old and new. The intention in my practice is to break the cultural rules that have been developed by colonialism. My aim is to navigate and challenge those constructs through materials, their form and performance.”

Kahlil Robert Irving was born in San Diego in 1992, but spent most of his youth in St. Louis. Irving attended the Kansas City Art Institute where he received his BFA, and earned his MFA from the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Art at Washington University in St. Louis. His work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions at the Gagosian Gallery, the Whitney Museum of American Art, MASS MoCA, MoMA, and the New Museum.  Currently, he is working on a commission for MONUMENTS, an exhibition co-curated by The Brick and The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles for the fall 2025. He recently presented two major concurrent exhibitions: AnticKS & MOdels + My theater to your eyes at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (Overland Park, KS) and Archeology of the Present at the Kemper Art Museum (St. Louis).

Irving works in multiple media, including sculpture, painting, and collage. He gathers different pieces of digital material, ranging from photographs he takes to items he sees online, to assemble his artworks. While appearing chaotic at times, he uses this method to subtly describe how to navigate being Black in the United States. Irving’s range of ideas and materials shine through his art — as he combines contemporary memes with ancient earth sculptures, he shows how different materials can be interpolated and pieced together. Throughout his practice, Irving focuses on Black joy while also shedding a light on violent white people and their ideologies.

Donor -This award was generously supported by Good Chaos.

This artist page was last updated on: 01.30.2025

Visual Art
An installation shot in a white gallery space. On the back wall, directly facing us, is an enormous mixed-media painting installed with the bottom of the canvas resting on the floor. The horizontally-oriented work features a crisp blue sky filled with scattered clouds. Superimposed on top of the sky are scattered boxes of images and text that resemble pop-up windows on a computer screen. A few of the "pop-up windows" float off the canvas and onto the white wall.

Installation view of Projects: Kahlil Robert Irving exhibition, 2021–2022. Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Photo by David Almeida.

An abstract mixed-media sculpture that looks as if it were made of man-made objects. At its solid base, materials have been lumped together, stacked, crumbled, and collaged to create a tactile texture resembling the sides of urban buildings. The base made of its many materials continues to climb, rising vertically and splitting into tendrils that stand up and curl down.

Construct-ING(MASS_withedges&Chimney) ManyMEEN’INGS+/Remnants=Black by Kahlil Robert Irving, 2021.

Photo courtesy of the artist.

A flat rectangle-shaped sculpture lies flush on a shallow white platform, raised only a few inches from the floor. The sculpture resembles a patch of filthy gray stone tiles splattered with dirt, garbage, and bird droppings.

Installation view of Projects: Kahlil Robert Irving exhibition, 2021–2022. Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Photo by David Almeida.