I exhibited six paintings in a three-person show at DIMIN in Tribeca, June 7th – July 12, 2024. Many of these works originated during a two-week residency at The Macedonia Institute in Chatham, New York last fall, and reflect the colors of the environment– the turning leaves from green to yellow to orange to red, the pink skies illuminated by the setting sun, and the frothy green-blue water of the Hudson River.
When I returned, I fell back into my life routine and left one of the larger paintings undone. The small Femme with Knife (study) was an exploration of color and gesture that I used to resolve some formal issues of its larger counterpart. As you can see, it’s only loosely based on the study because I improvised many of the elements and tried to incorporate other characteristics sourced from previous works.
Here’s some text provided by the gallery:
Working across drawing, painting, and ceramic media, Whit Harris concentrates on representations of the dissolute experience through disjointed depictions of the human body. Figures stretch, recline, wriggle, twerk and otherwise contort themselves in exaggerated expressions that oscillate between naturalistic and cartoonish forms, and recall the DuBoisian premise of “double consciousness” underlying contemporary Black identity. These figures become metaphors for the artist’s psychological adaptation to unpredictable and hostile environments born out of sexist and racist social structures, reflecting the tenacity and ingenuity of Black femme imagination as political resistance. The paintings in Unfeigned Mysteries come out of a contemplative space she experienced during a recent residency in upstate New York. In seeking the sublime in everyday encounters, Harris depicts different cloud formations as a metaphor for the possibility and limit of human imagination when confronted with things outside of one’s control – much like the weather. Portraying a female nude climbing a hill in the rain, Femme with Piss Rain recalls the rites and rituals of the ancient Mysteries, offering sexual and symbolic gestures to the gods in search of enlightenment. As Harris explains; “I’m interested in the ambiguity of perception, and I enjoy playing with innuendo and double meaning as metaphors for larger truths about human identities.”