Tony Lewis

Private Collection, Europe

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is warmer in the original. The catalogue illustration also fails to convey the shiny nature of the small patches of coarse, crystalline graphite visible in the original. Condition: This work is in very good and original condition. The sheet is floating. The vertical edges are deckled. There are artist's pinholes in all four corners. All surface irregularities are inherent to the artist's working process.
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Building on the investigations into racial issues in vernacular culture by artists like Glenn Ligon, David Hammons and Rashid Johnson, whilst exploring the mechanics of language through painting and drawing in the tradition of Ed Ruscha and John Baldessari, Tony Lewis has recently gained increased critical acclaim and institutional recognition. Despite his very young age, his work has already been included in the Whitney Biennial in 2014, was recently the subject of a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Cleveland, and has been shown in an impressive number of gallery exhibitions.

The present work Cocoa is a great example of the artist’s graphite drawings on paper, which constitute the basic material components of this practice. Executed as large-scale wall-drawings, floor installations, sculptures, small works on paper or large sheets pinned to the wall, Lewis’ ideas are expressed through the messy, physical language of graphite that constantly leaves behind traces of the artist’s presence. As Kevin Nance observes: "The graphite [in Lewis's drawings] spreads everywhere and the work’s conceptual underpinnings, the interrogation of race, is metaphorically conveyed in the material contamination (…)  nothing is clean, crisp, nor clear in his large-scale drawings. And nothing is absolute in contemporary racial politics" (Michelle Grabner quoted in: Kevin Nance, Chicago’s Young Artists: What Does the Future Behold, Chicago Gallery News, May-August 2013).

The racial component of Lewis’ works is left deliberately ambiguous: the words are appropriated from texts about race, which only becomes apparent when the occasional word color appears in his works. Refusing to elaborate on the context from which they emerged, the artist forces the viewer to consider both the content and formal appearance of the texts, which is often emphasised by fluid lines that connect the letters to guide one’s reading of them. As with Cy Twombly, one becomes acutely aware that writing and drawing go hand in hand in the construction of meaning – but also that language, an essentially communicative medium, can obscure as much as it can reveal. In the present work, the language literally works against itself, covering up half of the text through a clever reversal of its appearance, thus taking on the same function as any drawing: purely formal. Yet one can’t help to read the origins of the text into the work, or the title Cocoa that evokes instant racial interpretations. This synthesis of content and form, of the material and the political, makes Tony Lewis’ graphite works amongst the most fascinating and interesting of his generation.