David Hammons, Untitled, 2017. Acrylic on canvas, tarp. 64 x 46 inches (162.6 x 116.8 cm) (canvas size). Gallery.
Executed in 2017, Untitled is a recent example from this series, which began in 2007 and remains ongoing. In these works, painterly canvases are shrouded in mystery behind tarps, blankets, swaths of fabric, or other materials Hammons finds on the street. In Untitled, energetic strokes of blues, pinks, greens, browns, and oranges peer out from the corners of the canvas. Yet, the full composition is blocked from view by the blue-green plastic tarp tied precariously together with a yellow string directly in the center of the viewer’s field of vision.
“Those pieces were all about making sure that the black viewer had a reflection of himself in the work. White viewers have to look at someone else’s culture in those pieces and see very little of themselves in it.”
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