Back of Our Hands

About

(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 Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art’s the Momentary. In this immersive installation, Griffin considered the question: How can I paint this room without actually painting it? This resulted in panels, objects, mirrors, and pictorial works that form a bridge between painting and sculpture. 

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 he lives in, Boyle Heights, on the eastside of Los Angeles. Using an industrial sewing machine and polyester thread Medel’s craft is slow and meticulous depicting snapshot-like scenes. Medel depicts through this medium his own experiences as well as those of his family and his community. The resulting works convey his strong sense of identification with and care for his environment. 

Kendell Carter was trained as a sculptor and as an environmental designer and holds a BFA from The Atlanta College of Art, Atlanta, GA, and a BA in Environmental Design from Art Center College of Design. He received his MFA from California State University, Long Beach. Carter has had solo exhibitions at the UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Edward Cella Art & Architecture, Los Angeles, CA; Monique Meloche, Chicago, IL; The Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, CA; Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA and Mark Moore Gallery, Culver City, CA. Group exhibitions include the California African American Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; Krannert Art Museum, Champagne, IL; Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, CA and Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA. In 2012 he received an Andy Warhol Foundation Fellowship, and his work is included in such public collections as Fundacao Sindika Dokolo, Luanda, Angola; Compound, Long Beach, CA; Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; and SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA. 

Salvador Dominguez was born in 1985 in Zacatecas, Mexico, and grew up in Pomona, California. He now lives and works in Chicago, Illinois where Dominquez received a BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago in 2008. Salvador Dominquez’ work has been exhibited at Walker Art Gallery, Garnett, KS; National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, IL; Carroll University, Waukesha, WI; DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, IL; Lubeznik Center for the Arts, Michigan City, IN among others.

Rashawn Griffin was born in Los Angeles, California and received a MFA from Yale University. Griffin was an artist in residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2006. Since then, his work has been exhibited widely, including the 2008 Whitney Biennial, a two-person exhibition at the Studio Museum with artist Senga Nengudi, “Freeway Balconies” at the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin, Germany, curated by Collier Schorr, and “THREADS: Textiles and Fiber in the works of African American Artists” at EK Projects in Beijing, China, curated by Lowery Stokes Sims. Griffin was the subject of the solo exhibition “A hole-in-the-wall country” at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Overland Park, Kansas, as well as participating in the exhibition “Minimal Baroque” at Rønnebæksholm in Næstved, Denmark. Recently, his work was featured in “Lux et Veritas,” a historical survey exhibition of artists of color who graduated from Yale between 2000 and 2010 at the NSU Fort Lauderdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Florida. He also participated in “The Regional,” a biennial of Midwest-based artists at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City. He exhibited a solo project entitled “We no longer recognize the backs of our hands” at Crystal Bridges “The Momentary” in Bentonville, Arkansas. His work is in the permanent collections of the Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, MO, as well as several important private collections. He lives and works in Kansas.

Gaby Collins-Fernández is an artist living and working in New York City. She holds degrees from Dartmouth College (B.A.) and the Yale School of Art (M.F.A., Painting/Printmaking). Her work has been shown in the US and internationally, including at Anonymous Gallery, New York; Peter Freeman, Inc.; the Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama; and el Museo del Barrio, NY. Her work has been discussed in publications such as The Brooklyn Rail and artcritical, and on the video interview series, Gorky's Granddaughter. She is a recipient of residencies at Yaddo (Saratoga Springs, NY), The Marble House Project (Dorset, VT), and a 2013 Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Art Award. Collins-Fernandez is also a writer whose texts have appeared in Cultured Magazine, The Miami Rail, and The Brooklyn Rail. 

Erick Medel was born in Puebla, Mexico in 1992 and lives and works in Los Angeles. He holds an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Recent exhibitions include Mariachi, Rusha & Co., Los Angeles (2023, solo); Strings of Desire, Craft Contemporary Museum,  Los Angeles (2023); Dirty Realism: Otra noche en L.A., Veta Galeria, Madrid (2023); With Us at Ojiri Projects, London (2022, solo); Unseen Threads at Martha’s Contemporary, Austin (2022); a solo presentation at Zona Maco in Mexico City with Rusha and Co. (2021); Hustling De Sol A Sol at Martha’s Contemporary, Austin (2021, solo); The Human Scale at Rochester Art Center (2021); and Breakfast in America at Rusha & Co. (2021).