"Everything that surrounds the skin is colorful, or at least stark. A black and white houndstooth print, for instance, lacks color but has a starkness that contrasts against the soft grays with which she treats flesh. Hats, objects, backgrounds, everything is brightly colored. And yet it's a testament to Sherald's craft that the prismatic surroundings only serve to draw us into the face, the eyes."
"And in the moment that we sink into the character's eyes we feel like they become a person. Race is an experience that society curates, a roadmap for living that culture tries to force on us and enforce at scale. The people in Sherald's paintings are Black, but their Blackness is not their beginning, their end, or their definition. They are boundless, unburdened. They are real and they are inquisitive and they dream."
Sherald juxtaposes colorful or stark patterned surroundings with soft gray-treated flesh to concentrate attention on faces and eyes. Bold prints, hats, objects, and backgrounds create prismatic contrast that pulls viewers inward. The painted figures exhibit deep, inquisitive interior lives that are not defined solely by race; Blackness appears neither the beginning nor the end of their personhood. The subjects read as boundless, unburdened, real, and dreaming. Titles operate as musical, poetic companions—puns, literary quotations, and original lines that clarify stance and gesture. Titles reference Lucille Clifton, include original lines like "Try on dreams…", and play on works such as A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Wizard of Oz.
Read at Hi-Fructose Magazine - The New Contemporary Art Magazine
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