Featured Artworks:
Shikeith (American, b. 1981)
grace comes violently, 2022
5-channel video & Plywood
60” x 42” (152.5 x 106.5 cm)
Unique
(Shk.23155)
Shikeith (American, b. 1981)
Hunter, 2019
Two Archival Inkjet Prints on Canson Infinity Plantine
Left Element: 37” x 30” (94 x 76 cm)
Right Element: 24” x 16” (40.5 x 61 cm)
Overall, framed: 37 3/4" x 47 3/8” (96 x 120.5 cm)
Edition of 5 plus 2 artist's proofs
Want to see new art in New York this weekend? Start in Chelsea with Shikeith's evocative blown-glass sculptures at Yossi Milo. Then head to the East Village for Walter Pfeiffer's career-spanning survey at the Swiss Institute. And don't miss Ebony G. Patterson's riotously colored collages at Hales New York in SoHo.
There are three sculptures in Shikeith's New York gallery debut, most notably a shoulder- high brown wooden cross, pierced with five peepholes to reveal flickering blue video screens, that gives the show its title, "grace comes violently." There's also a glass balloon, a tipped-over glass head and a delicate glass crib surrounded by hanging orbs, all using a color that this young Pittsburgh-based artist (whose name is pronounced like "shy Keith") calls "haint blue," a reference to the indigo paint that African-American Gullah Geechee people once used to ward off malevolent spirits.
Surrounding these are a series of large photo portraits of Black men, against black backgrounds, in black frames. They're all frankly homoerotic, but sometimes the artist also tilts their nudity, or semi-nudity, in different directions. In one, two men extend their hands over the arching, sweat-beaded torso of a third, possibly blessing or exorcising him. Another shows a tattooed man in a gold chain and do-rag licking his lips. Closing his eyes, he seems at once present and remote, not fully captured by the camera.
It's the evocative but never overly revealing way Shikeith portions out all this information, his combination of intimacy and inaccessibility, that makes the overall show so memorable. His practice may not yet be fully rooted - I don't know whether "grace comes violently" is a photo show with sculptures, a sculpture show with photos or a single installation - but I'm excited to see where it goes.
