Gallery

In Dawoud Bey’s work — seen in Providence, Rhode Island — the four girls and two boys killed in the 16th Street Baptist Bombing in Birmingham, Alabama are given adult analogs. Their adult selves serve as their own buddy cop to their childhood selves. They are here to speak, but they don’t have to speak. The light can come in through the windows all it wants. The sounds of the city can pass as much as it wants. They are the photographs on the wall. We stop. We stare. The security guard observes those observing the work. A nearby sign says, ‘NO SHIRT, NO SHOES, YOU’RE PROBABLY RICH.’

Another image in another place: Sam McKinnis’s Northern Lights stands opposite Night Texter, as if to say, “It’s no big deal, you know — we see the Northern Lights every night. We see those deep purple swaths of night. We see the skin glow orange.”

A painting entitled American Idol — where the idol stands just on the verge of looking like Lana Del Ray — stands near TM Davy’s Portrait Of Darkness, and it begins to look like the two are on the verge of singing a duet together. Erwstwhile…