Matéria Gallery

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Matéria Gallery

Contemporary Art and Design Gallery. Matéria Eastern Market (EHXIBITIONS), Matéria Cass Corridor (OFFICE)

Opening in October 2008, Simone DeSousa Gallery was born as a physical reminder of art’s connectivity to community and social transformation, a space designed to channel inspiration in the form of some of the best manifestations of contemporary art today, and cultivate a new culture of art collecting in Detroit. Simone DeSousa Gallery was formerly known as Re:View Contemporary Gallery.

08/31/2026

We love this first image of Robert Sestok’s sculpture “New Gold Standard” (2014), anodized aluminum, 120 x 36 x 36 inches, just installed at its new permanent home in downtown Franklin, MI ✨✨✨🖤🔥

Thank you .commons for the amazing images!

The second image is another moment with Bob installing, of course, and the third image is a throwback to the time the work was installed in front of Materia’s Cass Corridor location in 2023-2024.

Congratulations, Robert Sestok! 💫

.commons

08/29/2026

Matéria’s Publications Available! ⭐️📖📙As we settle into our new location in Detroit’s historic Eastern Market, we wanted to note that Matéria Gallery publications are now available for purchase at the new gallery location! If you don’t spot them right away, just ask a friendly gallery team member 🖤

And of course, you can also access our publications on the gallery’s online shop:
➖LINK to GALLERY SHOP Online:
https://www.materia-art.com/shop

These publications designed and published by the gallery under our former name, Simone DeSousa Gallery, are a beautiful documentation of some of our projects and also the history of the different spaces we have activated in the past fifteen years! 🙌🏾

08/28/2026

What a treat to see art collector Steve Shane in Detroit today ✨ We were able to share a preview of Olayami Dabls’s exciting solo exhibition “Iron, Rocks, Wood, and Mirrors. Looking Back,” which opens to the public on Friday, Sept 11, with a reception with the artist from 5-7 pm! Not to be missed if you are in Detroit! 🔥🔥🔥

Matéria Gallery is thrilled to present Iron, Rocks, Wood, and Mirrors. Looking Back, an installation of nine new paintings by celebrated Detroit artist, storyteller, and cultural historian Olayami Dabls.

Part of the artist’s ongoing series of Iron, Rocks, Wood, and Mirrors works, the group of nine wall pieces in the exhibition titled Looking Back were created outdoors throughout 2025 and 2026, and incorporate materials found locally, operating as both painting and sculpture. The works reflect Dabls’ signature visual language present at the site of MBAD African Bead Museum—founded by the artist in Detroit’s West side in 2004—and in his mural projects across high the city.

🙌🏽 LINK to FULL PRESS RELEASE: https://www.materia-art.com/dabls-looking-back

The exhibition will be on view through October 31 at Matéria Eastern Market 💫 Presented in collaboration with Century Partners.

OLAYAMI DABLS (b. 1948, Canton, MS) is the founder and curator of the MBAD African Bead Museum and Dabls African Bead Gallery in Detroit, Michigan. He established the museum to return art to its original purpose in African culture: not for entertainment or profit, but as a tool for emotional and cultural healing. Located at the intersection of Grand River and West Grand Boulevard, the museum and its surrounding installations invite visitors to explore the deep connections between material, memory, and identity.

Olayami Dabls’ work was recently presented in his first museum retrospective, *Detroit Cosmologies*, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) from April 25 through July 12, 2026. Dabls is the 2022 Kresge Eminent Artist, honored for his transformative work as a visual storyteller, muralist, and cultural place-maker in Detroit.

08/26/2026

Preparations continue for the opening of Olayami Dabls’s solo exhibition “ Iron, Rocks, Wood, and Mirrors. Looking Back” 🔥🔥🔥 The installation opens to the public on Friday, September 11, with a reception with the artist from 5-7 pm! Not to be missed if you are in Detroit!

Matéria Gallery is thrilled to present Iron, Rocks, Wood, and Mirrors. Looking Back, an installation of nine new paintings by celebrated Detroit artist, storyteller, and cultural historian Olayami Dabls.

Part of the artist’s ongoing series of Iron, Rocks, Wood, and Mirrors works, the group of nine wall pieces in the exhibition titled Looking Back were created outdoors throughout 2025 and 2026, and incorporate materials found locally, operating as both painting and sculpture. The works reflect Dabls’ signature visual language present at the site of MBAD African Bead Museum—founded by the artist in Detroit’s West side in 2004—and in his mural projects across high the city.

🙌🏽 LINK to FULL PRESS RELEASE: https://www.materia-art.com/dabls-looking-back

The exhibition will be on view through October 31 at Matéria Eastern Market 💫 Presented in collaboration with Century Partners.

OLAYAMI DABLS (b. 1948, Canton, MS) is the founder and curator of the MBAD African Bead Museum and Dabls African Bead Gallery in Detroit, Michigan. He established the museum to return art to its original purpose in African culture: not for entertainment or profit, but as a tool for emotional and cultural healing. Located at the intersection of Grand River and West Grand Boulevard, the museum and its surrounding installations invite visitors to explore the deep connections between material, memory, and identity.

Olayami Dabls’ work was recently presented in his first museum retrospective, *Detroit Cosmologies*, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) from April 25 through July 12, 2026. Dabls is the 2022 Kresge Eminent Artist, honored for his transformative work as a visual storyteller, muralist, and cultural place-maker in Detroit.

Olayami Dabls
Dabl's African Bead Gallery

Matéria Gallery

08/23/2026

Matéria’s very first eco-friendly organic tote 💚 👜 Constantino approves….A very short run, in both cases! ☺️🤎

08/15/2026

MARK YOUR CALENDARS 💫OPENING SEPT 11💫
Matéria Gallery is thrilled to present Iron, Rocks, Wood, and Mirrors. Looking Back, an installation of nine new paintings by celebrated Detroit artist, storyteller, and cultural historian Olayami Dabls.

Part of the artist’s ongoing series of Iron, Rocks, Wood, and Mirrors works, the group of nine wall pieces in the exhibition titled Looking Back were created outdoors throughout 2025 and 2026, and incorporate materials found locally, operating as both painting and sculpture. The works reflect Dabls’ signature visual language present at the site of MBAD African Bead Museum—founded by the artist in Detroit’s West side in 2004—and in his mural projects across the city.

The exhibition opens to the public on Friday, September 11, with a reception with the artist from 5-7 pm at Matéria Eastern Market 🔥Presented in collaboration with Century Partners.

⭐️ LINK to Full Press Release: https://www.materia-art.com/dabls-looking-back

IMAGES:
1- Olayami Dabls, Looking Back #1 (2025-2026) Acrylic, mirrors, aluminum, wood, on wood panel, 48 x 48 inches x 4 inches. Photo by Tim Thayer.

2- Olayami Dabls, Looking Back #1 (2025-2026) Detail. Photo by Tim Thayer.

3- Olayami Dabls, Courtesy of The Kresge Foundation. Photo by Patrick Barber.

OLAYAMI DABLS (b. 1948, Canton, MS) is the founder and curator of the MBAD African Bead Museum and Dabls African Bead Gallery in Detroit, Michigan. He established the museum to return art to its original purpose in African culture: not for entertainment or profit, but as a tool for emotional and cultural healing. Located at the intersection of Grand River and West Grand Boulevard, the museum and its surrounding installations invite visitors to explore the deep connections between material, memory, and identity.

Olayami Dabls’ work was recently presented in his first museum retrospective, *Detroit Cosmologies*, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) from April 25 through July 12, 2026. Dabls is the 2022 Kresge Eminent Artist, honored for his transformative work as a visual storyteller, muralist, and cultural place-maker in Detroit.

07/27/2026

An exciting fun afternoon today transporting Robert Sestok’s sculpture “Traffic” (2019), steel, 75 x 18 x 19 inches, to its new permanent home 🤎💚 The journey of course started at the artist’s studio in Detroit’s Cass Corridor ✨

Thank you DUO for the expert art handling work!

07/24/2026

Wishing Cass Corridor artist Brenda Goodman a Happy Birthday week!💫

We’re celebrating by sharing this wonderful work on paper from 1990, currently on view in Detroit✨🧡

Image:
Untitled, 1990
Oil on paper
19 x 24 inches

Brenda Goodman (born 1943, Detroit, Michigan) received her BFA from the College of Creative Studies. Her career began as a member of the famed Cass Corridor Movement in the 1960s, and her work has been the subject of over forty solo exhibitions. Goodman’s work is included in the public collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; the Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan; the Museum of Contemporary Arts, Chicago, Illinois; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York. Goodman lives and works in Pine Hill, New York.

Matéria Gallery

07/18/2026

We love seeing this Shirley Woodson work, “Red Star w/ Silhouette (diptych)” 1995, Oil Pastel, 54 x 40 inches (framed) in its new permanent home ✨✨✨
Swipe for some details.

SHIRLEY WOODSON
Shirley Woodson, (b. 1936, Pulaski, TN) known for her brilliant and intense color paintings, has developed over her long career many themes that reflect her perspective on African American culture and the diaspora. In 2022 Woodson received the Anonymous Was A Woman Award—awarded each year to 15 gender non-conforming, and trans artists over the age of 40 at a critical junction in their career—and in 2021 was named an Eminent Artist by Kresge Arts in Detroit. In December 2021, Woodson’s solo exhibition entitled Shield of the Nile Reflections opened at the Detroit Institute of Arts and ended in June 2022. Woodson’s residencies include MacDowell Colony Fellowship, Peterborough, NH; the Fabric Workshop and Museum and the Brandywine Printmaking Workshop in Philadelphia; and the Heritage House Museum in Detroit, MI.

Woodson’s works are in many public and private collections including the Detroit Institute of Arts; Studio Museum of Harlem; Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, Wayne State University, Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Art, Boston, MA; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NY; Florida A and M University; African American Library, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.; Fayetteville State University, Fayetteville, NC; the Williams Museum, Scripps College, Claremont, CA; the Mott Warsh Collection of Contemporary Art, Flint, MI. Woodson received a BFA and MA in painting from Wayne State University including graduate studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in painting and art history.

07/17/2026

Fortuitous timing yesterday as we visited artist Kathryn Brackett-Luchs’s studio right before the hazardous air conditions moved in.

A beautiful view from outside the barn studio 💙

Address

1343 E. Fisher Freeway
Detroit, MI
48207

Opening Hours

11am - 5pm

Telephone

+13138339000

Website

http://www.materia-art.com/

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