“Beyond Seeing” by Nichole M. Christian
“The exhibition’s revelation isn’t in any one work alone, but in the collective invitation that these seemingly straightforward paintings and drawings present, a chance to suspend the known, and to test the possibility of seeing beyond what’s seen, as artists do.”
Revelations
January 8 - February 4, 2022
Beyond Seeing
By Nichole M. Christian
The finished work of almost any artist is at least a partial optical illusion, a trick between the viewer’s eye and the artist’s mind.
You, the viewer, look. You wonder. You think you see a sliver of the artist’s aim.
The questioning, the mystery, is equal to that of the artist, who playwright Anna Deavere Smith insists, in her book Letters to a Young Artist, must liken themselves to “an explorer…after something that does not yet exist.’’
Yet even after that something morphs from a nascent idea into being, its existence does not complete the story, not until the viewer joins the journey, willing to look, and look again, in search of some revelation, much like the artist, including the discovery and the acceptance that, “A thing is never seen,’’ as German painter Josef Albers said, “as it really is.’’
At first glance, the paintings and drawings featured in the group exhibition Revelations are exactly as they appear, vividly executed oils and acrylics, portraits, self-portraits, and still lives, all seemingly void of any distinct connected narrative. The range of techniques on display is reason enough to gather, and to be satisfied. Revelations is after all a roll call of ten fine artists in full command of their chosen forms; rising young stars such as Cydney Camp, Cailyn Dawson, and Joshua Rainer sharing the spotlight with master mark makers and art educators like Richard Lewis, Sabrina Nelson, Senghor Reid, Rashaun Rucker, and Don Kilpatrick. The prolific, and ever surprising, Sydney G. James unveils still another dimension of her skill. Painter Alicia Brown lights up the walls with a portrait probing her Caribbean roots and its layered connections to nature and colonial rule.
The exhibition’s revelation isn’t in any one work alone, but in the collective invitation that these seemingly straightforward paintings and drawings present, a chance to suspend the known, and to test the possibility of seeing beyond what’s seen, as artists do.
SEE HOW THEY SEE
RICHARD LEWIS
“The self-portrait has been done over and over again, but in terms of the way I make paintings, I see it as a political statement. When I paint my sisters, or I paint myself, my mother or my grandparents, anybody, not only am I painting portraits of them, I’m fighting images of racism with normal images of people. I’m painting people the world often ignores, and the world makes policies that are directly against their survival. I paint them so that you have to confront them as people, their personhood.”
ALICIA BROWN
“There’s a lot of statements that people can get from the painting—political and social and cultural—but when you pare it all down, here’s this woman, this person who looks like somebody you just saw on the street, and she’s adorned with what seems a collar, but it’s wasp nest and other elements of nature. More than seeing, I want viewers to feel how we all connect as a form of nature. It doesn’t matter the gender or skin color of the figure. Human connection, one person to the next, it’s there, if you choose to see it.’’
RASHAUN RUCKER
“These drawings look like they’re just about my family and personal history, but they’re also me overcoming fear, finding courage. I’ve always been scared of painting, and I don’t ever use color. Sometimes, as humans, we get really good at something, you don’t want to try anything else because you don’t want to fail. But really, the only true way to live is to have adaptability and the willingness to try things. This is me exploring. I can’t live in fear of paint and color the rest of my life.”
CAILYN DAWSON
“It’s easy to get caught up in projecting yourself perfectly and all put together. But when I’m painting myself, I have freedom to explore, to be vulnerable. I like to imagine I’m the one shining the spotlight on myself underneath a microscope and taking the time to really understand who I am. I think looking is a form of self-care. Everyone should be in touch with themselves, just be willing to look.’’
CYDNEY CAMP
“I tend to discover the painting as I’m creating it. I started with the idea of giving a woman her flowers and a very loose image but then conceptually, I was surprised by this extreme contrast of beauty with stoicism, and a more sinister element. I don’t think this piece is particularly sinister, but it does hold this stoic reverence and dark contrast. You’ve got this woman, she’s looking at you really square in the face with this very serious expression. It makes you wonder like, she’s surrounded by these flowers, all this beauty, why isn't she smiling? What’s the disconnect ?”
SABRINA NELSON
“I haven’t done a nude painting in over twenty something years. I'm 54 now. Then, I was all in my ego, but here I’m not talking about how sexy I am. I’m painting openness, and anguish. I’m in this Wonder Woman stance, but I’m also in this protective stance, and you can imagine me having a machete in my hand, something besides feathers but the feathers are my children and black and brown children that have been lost in our communities. My body is weeping for them, for the mothers. I’m vulnerable, I’m growing older, and I’m starting to look at myself as a reflection of God, as medicine, as a protector, and I’m saying, ‘Don’t fuck with my kids.’”
SENGHOR REID
“I’m always trying to create a visual experience that is unprecedented in one way or another, even though the viewer and I can never have the same experience of the painting. We’re not even really looking at the same work because the painting that I end up with, I couldn’t have made it if I hadn’t gone through the process of making ten other paintings and sketches they’ll never see, but they all came together to get to this one. And even as the artist, I still won’t always know the full meaning until there’s a viewer. The work of art is to create that discourse, not just a beautiful object or experience.”
SYDNEY G. JAMES
“I’m a planner, but I don’t go into the work knowing. People think it’s all intentional, the hardness, the softness, but oftentimes it’s not. I can’t plan the execution because that’s where exploration, the feeling, comes in. When I’m sitting and painting or drawing, whatever mood I’m in is going to come through the piece. Sometimes it’s in the eyes or facial expression, period. It’s me in the moment and that feeling. That’s the part that’s private, that’s quiet, really sometimes a surprise for me.”
JOSHUA RAINER
“It used to be that my chief goal in making work was for it to be aesthetically pleasing, everything else would be secondary. The work wouldn’t have a deeper meaning or speak to anything except a really high level of photo realism. These works show how after going back and forth with myself, I resolved that if I’m painting something, I want it to accomplish something more than just looking good. I want my work to speak to something important to me, Judeo-Christian themes, something I hope the core of can be seen by viewers, even if they don’t understand or relate.’’
DON KILPATRICK III
“I’m really trying to discover something for myself as a viewer, and as someone who does a lot of street photography and is drawn to the cityscapes, really urban centers like Detrot, New York, Tokyo. But when I’m using these images as references, I’m looking at the abstraction before I build up on top of it, really trying to look beyond representation to see the design patterns, the shapes, the visual language, the shapes and patterns that we see every day but somehow forget how to see. I’m always looking.’’
Nichole M. Christian is a writer and veteran journalist. She has worked as creative director, editor and lead writer for the Kresge Foundation’s annual eminent artist monograph series. The titles include: A Palette for The People (2021), honoring painter and educator, Shirely Woodson; Wonder and Flow, (2020) honoring ceramicist Marie Woo, and A Life Speaks, (2019) honoring poet and activist Gloria House. Nichole was also coauthor of Canvas Detroit. Her writing also appears in the poetry chapbook, Cypher, summer 2021; Portraits 9/11/01: The Collected Portraits of Grief from The New York Times; the online arts journal, Essay’d; A Detroit Anthology, and Dear Dad: Reflections on Fatherhood.
She is currently co-director of We exChange, a year-long arts project with Signal-Return letterpress, pairing six writers and six visual artists in a collaborative exploration of the meaning of change in a time of chaos — its limits and its unexpected possibilities. The project will culminate in an exhibition in late 2022.
