Russell Craig

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Malin Gallery is pleased to present Dark Reflections - an exhibition of new paintings by the Brooklyn-based artist Russell Craig. The show consists of twelve large scale paintings rendered on fragments of leather handbags that the artist has sewn together, along with three self-portraits on wood panel. Dark Reflections is the artist’s first show with the gallery.

The Dark Reflections works employ an eclectic mixture of visual references rooted in art historical and pop culture genres, including rap music, comics and science fiction, yet the paintings all feature a latent autobiographical quality with implicit narratives built around Craig’s life experiences. Craig employs visual idioms rooted in cinema and mass advertising to create dynamic narratives characterized by alternating moods of frenetic action and still contemplation. Although the overt subject matter varies, the Dark Reflections works are uniformly characterized by allegorical allusions to Craig’s experiences spending twelve years incarcerated in the juvenile and the adult criminal justice systems. While many of the works are intensely personal, they also wield implicit but vigorous critique regarding the system of mass incarceration in America.

The black bags that Craig used to create his leather-backed paintings were all acquired from an inmate acquaintance who devoted himself to crafting handmade handbags while in prison. Subsequent to his release, Craig acquired a large number of the bags in an effort to support his friend. Although the intention was to use them as art materials, Craig experimented with the bags for several years before deciding how to incorporate them into his artwork. In the Dark Reflections works, Craig has deconstructed the bags and then hand sewn the fragments together to create supports for his paintings. He draws an analogy between material and subject matter by defining the black leather surfaces as representative of Black skin (and thus the Black body). Craig considers his interventions with the material - cutting, flattening, reconstituting - as evocative of the violence inflicted on Black bodies throughout American history in various epochs: slavery, Reconstruction, the Civil Rights era and mass incarceration. He incorporates the hardware from the bags, including buckles, zippers and fasteners, into the works, with the forms serving as powerful signifiers of restriction or confinement.

The subject matter in the Dark Reflections paintings all derives on some level from Craig’s personal experiences living in foster care and on the street and his subsequent incarceration. However, Craig frequently contextualizes those personal experience within the broad sweep of American history, with particular focus on continuities between slavery and the current paradigm of mass incarceration in the U.S. The title Dark Reflections refers to Craig’s perceptions regarding the persistent legacy of slavery and the ongoing recapitulations slavery-related practices and beliefs in contemporary society and its institutions.