Frieze New York 2018
The works by Strauss Bourque-LaFrance (b. 1983, Poland Spring, ME) continue the artist’s exploration of hybrid forms—wherein painting, drawing, and object coalesce into graphic, collaged abstractions. Formally, the constructions call to mind American craft practices, cartoon forms, and analogue approaches to graphic design. Bourque-LaFrance mounts the pieces to recessed stretcher bars, emphasizing their tactile nature by leaving the natural edges of the cut canvas visible. The titles of the works act as narrative containers, bringing cultural references, personal psychologies, comedy, and poetry into the purely formal compositions.
The lush mélanges of color, pattern, and texture within the paintings of Shara Hughes (b. 1981, Atlanta, GA) come together to form fictional yet evocative landscapes. In Hughes’ most recent paintings, she experiments with acrylic, oil, and vinyl-based paints, combining manual and airbrush techniques. Stylistic affinities with her work can be found with Fauvist color palettes and Surrealists articulations of the unconscious. Hughes is currently featured in The Lure of the Dark: Contemporary Painters Conjure the Night at MASS MoCA (North Adams, MA). She will unveil a mural commissioned by the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy in Boston on May 23, 2018.
Heavily influenced by his experience of growing up in a Trinidadian household in Canada, the work of Curtis Talwst Santiago (b. 1979, Edmonton, Alberta) explores issues of transculturalism, memory, and ancestry in the contemporary Diasporic experience. In his most recent body of work, Santiago reimagines the history and story of the Black Knight that figured in several Renaissance paintings and literary accounts, such as the one depicted in the painting Chafariz d'el Rey, c. 1570-80 (artist unknown). Santiago works in an array of media, crafting contemporary tableaus of spray paint, oil, charcoal, and pastel on canvas along with miniature dioramas in reclaimed jewelry boxes and an assemblage of colorful handmade armor. By Sea, the artist’s second exhibition with the gallery, is on view at Rachel Uffner Gallery from April 28 to June 24, 2018. Santiago is also the subject of the solo exhibition Minimized Histories II currently at the Eli and Edyth Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University (East Lansing, MI) and his work will be included in the Exile Pavilion of the upcoming Biennial de Dakar (Dakar, Senegal).
