Heralds, Kemar Keanu Wynter’s solo exhibition at the Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery in New York, features a suite of nine paintings on paper and considers the artist’s established abstraction of food in reference to his family history. The exhibition recalls the delightful sensory archive of Jamaican heritage in Wynter’s earlier works, now presented in hexagonal frames that reveal fields of abstraction. Partitioned in X, the exhibited works listen for flags, family crests, shields and Tupperware jars filled with dense-textured foods.
Wynter uses heraldry, a system used to regulate coat of arms designs and corresponding family heirlooms, to draw on untold stories about his diasporic Jamaican upbringing in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Its continued inclusion of eyelets in the paper brings tactile materiality to the fore, while sautoir cloisonné frames reinforce a sense of robustness within fragility.
Throughout each work there are four quadrants, two of which contain meandering pastel streaks, bringing the color palettes integral to the harmonious collision at the epicenter of the piece. The blurry nature of the other two sections reconciles these color ingredients by blending them together – almost digest them. Wynter reflexively tests her limits with rebellious brands that glide ever so slightly over the boundaries. This permeability between the sections is particularly notable in “(XX.) Cassava Pone” (2023), where a bright blue serpentine flirts with the neighboring panel, a deep brownish mixture underlined by this same blue.
The artist’s technique – which recalls a familiar scene where the side dishes touch the main course, creating a unique flavor on the plate – gives the exhibition life and alludes to the complementarity of generational memory and the evolution of heritage. In “(IV.) August Fishcakes” (2022), the shades of blue, pink and orange place both the artist and the viewer in a memory of late summer, imbued with the incipient tastes of a dish both inherited and redone.
Heralds, a concoction of Wynter’s signature warmth in varying forms of abstraction, underpins both artistic practice and legacy in an enduring legacy that layers and reinforces by reimagining traditions.
Kemar Keanu Wynter: Heralds continues at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery (87 Franklin Street, Tribeca, New York) through June 17. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
