In a show of works by the late artist, an homage to Sun Ra and the liberatory vision of the cosmic divine.
Barkley L. Hendricks: Space is the Place, installation view. Courtesy Estate of Barkley L. Hendricks and Jack Shainman Gallery. Photo: Dan Bradica Studio. © Barkley L. Hendricks.
Barkley L. Hendricks: Space is the Place, curated by Elisabeth Sann, Jack Shainman Gallery, 513 West Twentieth Street, New York City,
through February 22, 2025
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Beautifully curated by Elisabeth Sann—and taking its title, Space is the Place, from the premiere Afrofuturist 1972 film by avant-garde jazz musician, philosopher, and poet Sun Ra—Barkley L. Hendricks’s current show at Jack Shainman is prescient and revelatory. This selection of the late artist’s works on paper, combined with painting and photography, and featuring a curated playlist by Soul Jazz records playing in the back room (and available via QR code, including the likes of Alice Coltrane, Parliament, Gil Scott-Heron, and more), pays homage to Sun Ra. Mr. Ra, as he is sometimes humorously and deferentially referred to in his part-sci-fi, part-documentary, part-concert film, is considered to be the father of Afrofuturism: a cultural and social movement that employs science fiction, fantasy, and history to explore themes of African American identity, freedom, and agency. With equal weight and gravitas, Hendricks, like Sun Ra, explores the celestial, the cosmos, the limitlessness of space, and the divine as an escape from the racial and class oppression faced by Black people on Earth.
Barkley L. Hendricks: Space is the Place, installation view. Courtesy Estate of Barkley L. Hendricks and Jack Shainman Gallery. Photo: Dan Bradica Studio. © Barkley L. Hendricks.
Hendricks (1945–2017) was a renowned contemporary painter who made a significant contribution to portraiture (with him, constellations of dozens of artists enter the room: David Hammons, Kehinde Wiley, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Wangechi Mutu, and the late Pope L., to name a few). He was an important figure in the Black Arts Movement. Here, it is captivating to see him seamlessly dance, like Muhammad Ali, between forms, collage, painting, mark-making, and the use of materials like glow sticks, graphite, gold leaf, and oil. An undercurrent of mischief runs throughout the exhibit. There are pop-culture references, cupids that suddenly appear, women’s feet, and inverted pyramids that resemble feminine pubic areas. (All of this points to not just cosmic but also sexual ecstasy.)
Barkley L. Hendricks: Space is the Place, installation view. Courtesy Estate of Barkley L. Hendricks and Jack Shainman Gallery. Photo: Dan Bradica Studio. © Barkley L. Hendricks. Pictured, far left: Lunar Halo for Dad and Lou, 1997.
A landscape painting at the gallery’s entrance grounds Space is the Place. Its oval shape represents a portal. There is an indication of a porch that provides a perch, so one’s feet do not touch soil. A landscape painting at the entrance is important, as it embeds a layer of history. African slaves were brought to America to provide labor on plantations. For them, the landscape represented both terror and a pathway to liberation. The painting is titled Lunar Halo for Dad and Lou (1997), entwining the personal and political. This brings to mind another historical and political layer in Eclipse Series #1 (1979). The head of Marcus Garvey is penciled in under the orb, rendered so lightly it’s easy to miss.
Barkley L. Hendricks: Space is the Place, installation view. Courtesy Estate of Barkley L. Hendricks and Jack Shainman Gallery. Photo: Dan Bradica Studio. © Barkley L. Hendricks. Pictured, left: A Cute Little Melon, 2016.
Related is the painting titled A Cute Little Melon (2016), depicting a large round watermelon, known as a staple and stereotype of the Black community. It also symbolizes, in a contemporary context, Palestinian resistance. The oblong green fruit is swathed in gold and elevated to resemble a symbol of religious iconography. In another painting, Untitled (1971), from Hendricks’s Basketball series, a sequence of round shapes details the stages of an eclipse. It is the shape of another object closely associated with Black people, cleverly doubling as the moon and sun.
Barkley L. Hendricks: Space is the Place, installation view. Courtesy Estate of Barkley L. Hendricks and Jack Shainman Gallery. Photo: Dan Bradica Studio. © Barkley L. Hendricks. Pictured, far left: Untitled, 1981. Far right: Untitled, 1971.
In this context of critical fabulation, futuristic world-building, and a quest for Black utopia and/or transcendence, what if the full-length untitled nude self-portrait (1981) by Hendricks that appears later in the show—with antlers, telltale birds like a red cardinal, and a plant leaf covering his genitals—were some sort of reimagined or reconfigured Adam of the biblical variety? Enjoying a cocktail and half smiling, he sports an Afro and sunglasses that could only be described as the visor-like ones worn by LeVar Burton’s character in Star Trek: The Next Generation. He dons a collar once worn by Medieval or Renaissance kings or jesters. He occupies the canvas, a Black man in his skin, fully at home, in freedom, enjoying his own art of self-creation, set against a futuristic silver background.
Barkley L. Hendricks: Space is the Place, installation view. Courtesy Estate of Barkley L. Hendricks and Jack Shainman Gallery. Photo: Dan Bradica Studio. © Barkley L. Hendricks. Pictured, far right: Eclipse Series #1, 1979.
The drawings in the final gallery, from Hendricks’s Eclipse series, which employ glow sticks and are illuminated under a black light, are brilliant, but what if the exhibit culminated in the painting titled Full Moon (1982), where the show shifts from the selections of individual self-portraits to a communal gathering? The work depicts a group of four Black men wearing gold sun visors and flowing white shirts. In certain African religious ceremonies, white is worn by the worshippers. From a distance, the white blends together. Two men are touching a seated man’s shoulders. One stands back, with his arms uplifted. His shirt resembles a minister’s robe. In the presence of the moon’s light, something is illuminated. They are partaking in worship that is sacred and holy.
Barkley L. Hendricks: Space is the Place, installation view. Courtesy Estate of Barkley L. Hendricks and Jack Shainman Gallery. Photo: Dan Bradica Studio. © Barkley L. Hendricks. Pictured: Full Moon, 1982.
Several of the works on view were made during the 1970s. It was a tumultuous time, when America faced the aftermath of the civil rights movement, the de-escalation of the Vietnam war, the energy crisis, Watergate, breakthroughs in space travel, and more. We are fortunate to receive this work at a time when America is at another crossroads, with the rise of a right-wing government, increasing climate catastrophes, and gun violence; and when crimes against women, immigrants, Brown and Black people, and trans and queer people are accelerating. Notably, Afrofuturism, the subject of Space is the Place, is currently in the hearts and minds of many artists and writers. If Sun Ra is the father of Afrofuturism, Octavia E. Butler is the literary mother. Her 1993 science-fiction novel Parable of the Sower predicted the recent and devastating Los Angeles fires of this year due to climate change and other factors. She also predicted an authoritarian regime that would come to power under the auspices of “making America great again.” What I find compelling at this moment is not only Butler’s prophecies. I am interested in the young Black protagonist, Lauren Olamina, at the center of the novel, who, to survive emotionally and spiritually in a dystopian landscape, creates a religion she calls Earthseed. Like the visionary work of Barkley Hendricks, it is a balm, an antidote to surrounding corruption and despair, and it teaches us once again to dream.
Pamela Sneed is a poet, performer, visual artist, and educator. She is the author of Funeral Diva (City Lights, 2020). She teaches across disciplines in Columbia University’s visual arts MFA program, and is a guest faculty member in the Whitney ISP.