So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth. (Revelation 3:14-22)
Titus Kaphar vomits history. He tars, feathers and tears it up. He peels it off, like sunburned skin. He allows it to leak through surface paint slathering, first eyes, then mouth: the white behind the black and the black behind the white, the racial stew of our collective story.
Seen in reproduction, his paintings can pass for tricks. First he makes copies of the past, then he destroys them. In person, however, the intensity of his paint handling shines through its violations.
If the past awoke and walked down the street, we’d bar the door, but portraits that survive to represent various times and places tend to be lovely.
We study the lace at her throat, the sword at his hip, the polished furniture behind them.
Kaphar honors this house by burning it down. He upends it. We see it, finally, painfully, through the lens of the present, what we know about the old and the new, not just figureheads standing in the boat but the muscle at the oar.
I’m not sure how I found your site but I loved what you had to say about the work! Thanks.
Titus