Back Of Our Hands

Kendell Carter
Salvador Dominguez
Gaby Collins-Fernández
Rashawn Griffin
Erick Medel

June 17 – July 29, 2023
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 17, 2023

Back Of Our Hands
Kendell Carter, Salvador Dominguez, Gaby Collins-Fernández, Rashawn Griffin, and Erick Medel
June 17 – July 29, 2023

(Los Angeles, CA) de boer is pleased to announce Back of Our Hands, a group exhibition presenting work by Kendell Carter, Salvador Dominguez, Gaby Collins-Fernández, Rashawn Griffin, and Erick Medel. This exhibition draws focus to unique materials and techniques that transform the idea of paintings and wall reliefs. Exemplifying non-traditional techniques through the introduction of new materials, and recontextualizing the familiar and traditional.

The exhibition title references Rashawn Griffin’s exhibition We No Longer Recognize the Backs of Our Hands, that took place in 2022 at The Momentary, the contemporary satellite of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. In this immersive installation, Griffin considers the question: “How can I paint this room without actually painting it?" This resulted in "panels and objects, including mirrors, wooden frames, and pictorial paintings, that form a bridge between painting and sculpture."-The Momentary

Gaby Collins-Fernández work is printed on chiffon, beach towels and double sided sequins that are sewn, stretched, and painted on with oils and acrylics. Often profiling herself by utilizing self portraiture that intertwines with historical motifs from painters such as, Titian and Guston, Collins-Fernandez works ask viewers to consider the parts of speech where the conflation of text, imagery, and human existence merge into abstraction where the folds fill the mind with sensuality, discovery, and undoing.

For first-generation Mexican immigrant Salvador Dominguez language is an important aspect to the works he creates. By arranging compelling materials and imagery through so-called blue-collar trade practices, Dominguez builds environments where craft is understood as a currency and the physicality of his artworks morph into luxurious iconographies of the working class.

Kendell Carter has utilized the idea of creating environments from the beginning of his career where race, gender, history, politics and consumer culture acknowledge the rapidly integrating nature of today’s visual culture. Carter’s use of latex as a substitute for traditional canvas of paintings as well as the use of spray paint suggest a subversion which Carter uses to point out the continually negated role of artists of color.

Erick Medel’s embroidered denim works take inspiration from his Mexican American heritage and the community in which he lives, Boyle Heights on the eastside of Los Angeles. Using an industrial sewing machine and polyester thread Medel’s craft is slow and meticulous. Medel’s snapshot-like scenes depict through this medium his own experiences as well as those of his family and his community.

Selected Works

Installation Views