Arthur Jafa: BLACK POWER TOOL AND DIE TRYNIG

52 Walker is pleased to announce its eleventh exhibition, which will feature  work by Los Angeles–based artist Arthur Jafa (b. 1960). Lauded for his achievements as a filmmaker and cinematographer as well as a visual artist, Jafa has developed an incisive, chameleonic practice, through which he seeks to unravel the cultural significance and strictures ascribed in tandem upon Black existence in the Western world. Spanning the length of the gallery will be a site-specific installation—a plexiglass structure that Jafa refers to as a “picture unit”—whose interior will be covered from floor to ceiling in the artist’s characteristically potent imagery, drawing the viewer through its labyrinthine halls.

Jafa's paintings, sculptures, and film will also be installed around the gallery, their forms and colors reflected onto the picture unit’s exterior in a charged and destabilizing kind of visual doubling. In BLACK POWER TOOL AND DIE TRYNIG, Jafa will invoke the body’s personal, political, and industrial guises in one fell swoop, deftly interweaving images and objects to create a forceful and maximal space that beckons toward engulfment and revelation alike.

Image: Arthur Jafa, Work in Progress, 2024. © Arthur Jafa.