James Little - Black Stars and White Paintings

 James Little - Black Stars and White Paintings

Kavi Gupta Gallery

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Spangled Star, 2022, 72"x72"

Calculated Risk, 64" x 74", 2022

 

detail

A Review of James Little - Black Stars and White Paintings at Kavi Gupta

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Racial identity currently dominates the artworld in America. You might even say it has done so for the past 300 years - though up until recently it was the white, rather than black, identity being front and center. What’s remarkable about this identity show is that it’s questionable whether the artist ever really intended it to be one. James Little (b. 1952), makes hard edge, geo-form abstract paintings, and he’s explicit about not engaging a concept. He wants to be free from all that and just make paintings as best he can. All his problems are technical - just as with fine cabinetry. A hundred years ago he would have been welcomed into the Bauhaus. His pieces are still probably best seen in the severe minimalism of a Miles van der Rohe interior.

Down in Memphis, the  patterns of colored stripes in his first museum show of the year was typical of his work. They’re as emotion free as a page torn from a book of color theory. There isn’t even a sense of wonder, balance, or humor. Just the pure, unfiltered energy of a technical investigation. 

But when his monumental “Black Stars” are shown beside his perforated “White Paintings”, the game changes. The black stars exemplify the drive and singularity of purpose that’s still required for blacks to rise above the dark legacy of oppression. The rows of regularly spaced tiny windows into his white paintings reveal an apparently limitless variety of colorful, sensual miniatures - like the urban grid of a trendy white neighborhood where every high rent condo shelters someone’s unique opportunity for self gratification. The artist acknowledges this racial binary in this exhibit, but also tells us “That whole racial aspect isn’t any more important to me than trying to paint some emblematic arrangements with two tones of black.” - so this may be the last time he crosses over into racial stereotypes - even though it would not hurt his career. These same black and white paintings were probably what got him into the Whitney Biennial this year - his first appearance ever.

Minimalism and racial conceptual art  appear to have accidentally collided, and the results are far more compelling than either of those genres by themselves. Likewise, the white paintings in this show are more interesting because of the black ones nearby - and vice versa.  Together they tell a story that’s personal, national, and cosmic — all at the same time.  And it does feel more more important than the artist’s less referential work. More seems to be at stake: social harmony instead of the private isolation.

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note: the New City Review tells us that the artist is "deeply committed to portray the challenges, complexities and possibilities of the Black experience, through the expressive capabilities of abstraction" -- but Black identity is more in the mind of the reviewer than the artist.  His own words, as well as his forty year career as an abstract painter, tell a different story..