OPALKA'S TERRIFIC 'SHIFTING GAZE' EXHIBIT TACKLES VIEWERS’ PERCEPTI
A full, balanced show features Southern, Caribbean artists
The subtitle of the new Opalka Gallery show is loaded: “A Reconstruction of the Black & Hispanic Body in Contemporary Art.” First, there is that blurring of Black and Hispanic identity—both groups extend beyond what might first be attached to the labels. And there is the specific focus on “body.” Then there is that word reconstruction, which relates to the active verb in the actual title to the exhibition: “Shifting Gaze.”
“Shifting Gaze” is a terrific show, and the art and artists, many from the South and the Caribbean, will be largely unfamiliar. I assume the artists are mostly Black or Spanish speaking (or both), but the point is more about Black and Latinx subjects, and therefore about the gaze of the viewer and the responsibility in that.
A great entry point is “Reflect 6,” a painting by Nathaniel Donnett almost hidden in the back of the gallery. In it, a young Black woman gazes into a mirror in her hands, and her reflection appears as a rather reddish head, as if she doesn’t, or can’t, see her true self. This scene is painted in simple, broad strokes on a background of actual brown paper bags, pointing to the historically freighted notion of judging shades of brown, of deciding skin color might be lighter or darker than a brown paper bag.
Other works activate a confronting gaze, as with the large woven photographic portrait of an unnamed Black subject by Kyle Meyer that shimmers in a loosely configured grid. The brown and black layers of somewhat ambiguous heads by Toyin Ojih Odutola are not quite portraits, and they demand that the viewer understands skin color as a subject detached from any singular personality. The imposing, clear photograph of a woman staring at us with authority by Wanda Raimundi-ortiz is certainly all about the gaze, back at you.
The notion of the “gaze” in the arts acquired popular proportions with John Berger’s innovative 1972 book, “Ways of Seeing.” Berger illustrated the point we now often take for granted—art was usually made for the male viewer (the typical art goer) and made by men (white men at that). Exceptions? Of course, but it rang true, especially in the 1970s. Since then, how we look at art has been debated and enlarged.
Seeing a reclining full body view of a Black woman in a painting by Mickalene Thomas (who has been featured recentl might see a depiction stra that owes a lot to Black m Bearden. But we can also portraits of women reclin Manet to Morimura (incl “Patchwork Quilt”). The i many fine art assumption the viewer is set back eno selves, or to grapple with tions about the Other. It’s satisfying for a viewer to the subject is convincing, ful!”
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in part because the autiful indeed, and there is material, physical exuberance everywhere. There are many works that are not figural, and they also work through the same themes of body, social identity, and contextual invention. For one example, the elegant grayish cloud of rubbed graphite on a large piece of white paper by Nate Young is encased in a heavy dark oak cabinet, suggesting both worldly history and celestial holiness, referring, maybe, to the elision of meaning.
This is a surprisingly full and balanced show, the artworks coming from the collection of Dr. Robert B. Feldman. There is a lot to work with and to simply enjoy. In the end you realize that maybe we can and do look at art and artists—and this changing world of ours—in newly empowering ways.