"Clintel Steed believes every painting has the potential to be a portal into another time and dimension. It's a bold assertion, but one that somehow rings true, as he invites us to step through the looking glass in his new series of paintings. Different Time Zones, Different Dimensions explores a future consumed and experienced through augmented reality, juxtaposed against a more naturalistic past, when humanity was devoted to wild beasts and powerful deities."
"Displaying an almost visionary prowess for divining his imagery, Steed's works feel incredibly prescient as they relay imagined paths backwards and forward in time. His instinctual ability to dissect picture planes and reconfigure scenes has never felt more urgent, as he processes complex visions of time travel, floating orbs, AI embodiment, cannibalistic astronauts, shamanistic rituals, UFOs, and even the CERN super collider."
"Allowing viewers to become time travelers through painting is an impressive feat, and Steed aims to take us back to simpler times before it is too late. The artist is quick to point out that his paintings are not about Black futurism. The works are instead about spirituality and time, and how a better understanding of our past and not-so-distant future may help us to make sense of the complexities of today."
Clintel Steed creates paintings that act as portals between eras, juxtaposing an augmented-reality future with a naturalistic past of ritual, beasts, and deities. The series imagines time travel, AI embodiment, cannibalistic astronauts, shamanistic rites, UFOs, and collider imagery rendered in thick oil and angular color blocks. Steed depicts Black men immersed in virtual mainframes alongside masked tribal ceremonies making offerings to gods and hovering spaceships. The works emphasize experiential, dystopian visions that pulse visually and thematically. The paintings foreground spirituality and time as tools for understanding present complexities rather than promoting Black futurism.
Read at Juxtapoz
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]