Heralds, Kemar Keanu Wynter’s solo show at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery in New York, features a suite of nine paintings on paper and considers the artist’s established abstraction of food in reference to his family history. The exhibition calls to mind the delectable sensory archive of Jamaican heritage in Wynter’s earlier works, now presented in hexagonal frames that reveal fields of abstraction. Partitioned in an X formation, the works on view harken to flags, family crests, shields, and Tupperware tubs filled with densely textured foods.

Wynter uses heraldry, a system used to regulate coat-of-arm designs and corresponding family legacies, to build upon previously-untold stories about his diasporic Jamaican upbringing in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. His continued inclusion of grommets in the paper brings tactile materiality to the forefront, while saltire-partitioned frames reinforce a sense of robustness in fragility. Read More