REGGIE BURROWS HODGES (B. 1965)

In Black Ground: In the Service of Others, Reggie Burrows Hodges—one of the most important figurative painters working today—creates an intimate world of peerless optimism and humanity. Measuring nearly five feet across, the scene approaches on the viewer’s scale, allowing us to place ourselves within the canvas’ narrative. A figure holds a pale umbrella for another man against a pink, blue, and black sky. Rendered in such a way, the short deliberate brushstrokes allow for extraordinary detail, as can be seen in the swirling cloud of red, black, and white on the canvas’ left side. Both figures look outwards, away from the viewer and each other, perhaps in contemplation of their own collective and individual worlds. With such a scene, the present work encapsulates the entirety of Hodges’s practice, elevating others to get at the core humanity of each of us. Along with another painting from the series, the celebrated critic Hilton Als calls this caring moment “a potential gesture of such tenderness and concern that I had to look away from the image at first” (H. Als, “‘In the Service of Others’: The Art of Reggie Burrows Hodges,” The New York Review of Books, March 22, 2021). This emotional reaction solidifies Hodges’s status as a painter “in service to others.”

Throughout the course of his career, Hodges has forged an inimitable style. He is known for starting with a dark background and working outward by layering colors, he explains “I start with a black ground [as a way] of dealing with blackness’s totality. I’m painting an environment in which the figures emerge from negative space…If you see my paintings in person, you’ll look at the depth” (R.B. Hodges, ibid.). Nowhere is this process clearer than in the present work. Though these men have no distinguishing features, they are not shadowy or mute. As critic Andrea Gyorody writes, “The conjoining of facelessness and the gaze brings Hodges deep into conversation with the history of painting, with an allegorical approach (and a deftness of facture) that echoes that of Milton Avery, Jacob Lawrence, Bob Thompson, and Édouard Vuillard, among others…In a way that is utterly beguiling, and true to black’s formal properties, Hodges’s figures don’t sink into oblivion; they float” (A. Gyorody, “Critics’ Picks: Reggie Burrows Hodges,” Artforum, May 2023). Within the black expanses of these men’s bodies, there are details that emerge, such as the reddish browns on their arms. Hodges proves that black is never a static color. Instead, it can contain and produce entirely new worlds and ways of seeing.

Hodges’s own extraordinary life adds to the uniqueness of Black Ground: In the Service of Others. He was born in Compton, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, the memories of which often form his imagery. He went on to study theater at the University of Kansas, which may have contributed to his skill for painting interrelated characters, but he was also a professional tennis coach for the United States Tennis Association/International Tennis Federation Pro Circuit, which offers up the subject matter for the present work—a ballboy protecting a tennis player from adverse weather. A major exhibition, Reggie Burrows Hodges: Incline, is currently on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, as part of their exhibition series Bay Area Walls and features Labor: Keepers Orchard, the artist’s largest painting to date at twenty-five wide. Hodges’s work is also included in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, among others.