Know About Me
Reggie Colas (b. 1977, Spring Valley, New York; based in Frankfurt, Germany) is a Haitian- American artist whose acrylic paintings on canvas, a blend of figuration and abstraction, offer a glimpse into Black indifference. His body of work, most notably his larger-than-life portraits, feature subjects emerging from (or disappearing into) bright-colored saturated voids as if they were glitches, fleeting moments the viewer was not supposed to observe. Absorbed in their own thoughts and movements, even as they may look out of the canvas directly into the public, Colas' subjects neither seek nor resist the viewer's gaze, although they are hardly unaware of it.
Their indifference betrays the Western illusion that reduces people to their utility, their power or lack thereof, as historically communicated within the portraiture tradition through the positioning of the subject to that which they 'own' - family members, servants, books, and globes having been recurring motifs. Power aside, Colas suggests with his gently imposing characters, maybe they just are and that is enough.