Ethan Cohen New York
VOLTA NY 2017

Jeffrey Hargrave exploits academic painting traditions to create a satiric narrative of his own understanding of art history through black culture and sexual identity. In his large-scale paintings and sketches alike, he blatantly positions black culture at the forefront of political in both art and life. His personal experience as a black gay man, accentuates the artist’s awareness of social and cultural stigmas that he challenges with wit and humor. Importance of Hargrave’s body of work was recognized by the Bronx Museum, where he had a solo show in 2015.

Armand Boua confronts his country’s as well as the Western world’s inability and disregard to suffering of children lost in the street violence of West Africa. “Forgotten People” is a haunting series of monumental 2 x 2 meters paintings on recycled cardboard that is found in African ghettos. Smiling, strident faces of children and teenagers come out of the paintings as shadows -- lost to the world, they are retrieved only for an instant through a photographic nature of Boua’s work. The figures mold together, cling to each other almost as deconstructed figures of Picasso and Braque, who developed this technique from African artistic heritage.