“I paint and make art because I like doing it,” the late Barkley L. Hendricks told this magazine in 2016, on occasion of his second solo show at Jack Shainman Gallery. “The subject matter I’m involved with, though, has always been seen as suspect, given the screwed-up culture we live in…. How many white artists get asked about how their whiteness plays into their work?” Hendricks’s art has always bristled against the boundaries of categorization, and it does so particularly in this exhibition. Space is the Place calls it Afrofuturist — a movement defined by scholars that centers contemporary concerns for people of African descent and engages with history, technology, and destabilizing racial power structures to create a better future for Black people and humanity at large — but the work itself makes a more compelling case that Hendricks was a distinctly iconoclastic visionary.
The exhibition features works on paper, paintings, and photography Hendricks created between 1968 and 2016, and its title references the 1972 film of the same name by Afrofuturist jazz composer Sun Ra. In the film, the musician returns to Earth after discovering a new planet, inviting Black people in Oakland, California to resettle in his new utopia, but faces challenges from fellow Black people and White NASA scientists.
Some of these works do flirt with Afrofuturism. Motifs of shoes, the moon, and pyramids are prevalent throughout the show, highlighting a contemplative cycling between the earth-bound mortal and the limitlessness of the cosmos, with the pyramids acting as the agent shuttling between the two realms. This is particularly evident in many of the works on paper including “No Moon at all for Phineas” (1981–84) and “Somewhere Over the Pyramids” (1979). In the former, a pair of legs in high heels stand contained in a semicircle under a ribbon of colors and a crescent moon that resembles an upside-down pyramid. In the latter, a plane glides over a pyramid towards cushiony clouds that break to reveal a patch of blue sky. The title and work are a clear homage to the song “Over the Rainbow,” sung by Judy Garland in the escapist 1939 fantasy epic The Wizard of Oz.
A more compelling referent for even these space-related works, however, is the Old Masters, particularly paintings such as “Lunar Halo for Dad and Lou” (1997) and “Untitled” (1971) which underline Hendricks’s remarkable prowess as a painter. In “Lunar,” an approximately 16-by-16-inch circular landscape painting, streaks of speeding light converge onto the dark shadows of the earth while a full moon radiates a halo around a canvas. Its density of detail recalls that of the round mirror in Jan van Eyck’s “The Arnolfini Portrait,” but the outdoor setting spotlights Hendricks’s unwavering ability to capture the ever-changing night sky. In conjunction with “Untitled” (1971), an eight-by-five-foot painting of planetary cycles in hues of brown on a moss-colored background with strips of gold and silver, viewers get to experience both the immensity and intimacy of Hendricks’s superb command of the canvas.
There are few portraits in this show, and where they exist, figures’ eyes are obscured with glasses or gold bands. Three photographic self-portraits — “Untitled (Self-Portrait)” (1975), “Untitled (Self-Portrait)” (n.d.), and “Untitled (Self-Portrait)” (c. 1968) — are the only time viewers are confronted with a pair of eyes, and they are Hendricks’s own. In this trio of works, the artist captures himself only via mirror or window reflections, denying the viewer a direct or shared vision of Hendricks’s perspective. Unlike Sun Ra’s cosmic community, or even the Afrofuturist inclination of a shared ideal for a better future, Barkley’s vision was completely his own.
Space is the Place is a well-curated show, underscoring Hendricks’s proficiency of multiple mediums, but its title, and its Afrofuturist connection, is a misnomer. As with his 2016 quote, this show is less about a declaration of a “subject matter” or particular cultural movement, and moreso a showcase of his ingenuity across mediums and time. As Hendricks said, he made art because he liked doing it — that dogged commitment to his craft eclipses its curatorial container in this exhibition.
Barkley L. Hendricks: Space is the Place continues at Jack Shainman Gallery (513 West 20th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan) through February 22. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
