Titus Kaphar doesn’t quite turn absences into presences, but rather into something in between. His artwork conjures a space somewhere between here and gone, past and present, traditional and contemporary.
Somewhere between a cold crime scene investigator and a surgeon on the fritz, Kaphar turns history, specifically art history, into his canvas, slashing, erasing, stripping and crumpling away the images documenting history as its widely understood. Through his artistic practice, Kaphar exposes the pent up innards inside the pristine images we’re accustomed to seeing, as well as the undocumented presences that loom both above and below.
Stripes, 2014 oil on canvas and nails 59 1/2 x 51 x 1 1/2 inches ©Titus Kaphar. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
For his current exhibition at Jack Shainman Gallery, Kaphar presents a painting show titled “Drawing the Blinds,” along with an extension of his 2011 Jerome Project titled “Asphalt and Chalk.” The former maintain’s Kaphar’s practice of bringing history into the present, and traditional artwork into the contemporary conversation.
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To some degree, all of my work is affected by current events, even the pieces that speak directly to historical moments. I think history is kind of like a sometimes visible, sometimes invisible armature on which the present is constructed. All history becomes interesting when we can see how the past affects our present. There’s a piece in the 24th street space that speaks to this. The Black Power movement of the 1960s was symbolized by a closed black fist. I’m struck by how the current movement of resistance is symbolized by two raised, open hands. In the painting 1968/2014 the simple act of placing these contrasting gestures side by side reminds me that history doesn’t remain in the past.
You’ve said in the past “When I’m working on a portrait of someone, there is often an internal monologue, a narrative I hear.” Was that the case for this exhibition? What was this presence, if so?
It’s a difficult thing to put into words without sounding like I’m talking about something supernatural. But after speaking with many fiction writers about the topic, I now realize it’s quite common to feel that your characters are dictating the story and that you are a scribe. I think this is the clearest way to describe the monologue I have in my head.
Kaphar’s exhibition runs until February 21, 2015 at Jack Shainman Gallery in New York. See our earlier coverage of Kaphar here and here.
