"WHEN IT RAINS IT POURS" portrays a subject (one of White's real-life friends) taking a selfie in a convex mirror against the abstracted spinning wheel of death. In an email, White told me he completed this painting during quarantine, when "all hell was breaking loose" in the US with violent state crackdowns on protesters and the intensifying pandemic.
Over the figure's face is an off-kilter target and over his left shoulder, a Photoshop lasso tool—which serve both as a comment on the way Blackness is treated in America and also how a viewer's perception of a subject can easily be manipulated. "You never really know what the truth is, or how many edits it took to get the polished post for a viewer, editing out what we choose not to present," he wrote. Like a lot of his work, White is exploring distortion that's visible—like the foreshortened phone and right shoulder—and distortion that's more deceptive, like how selfies can be augmented with digital programs that make images seem perfect.
Part of my delight in viewing White's work is being able to really see the textures of the plastic he paints with. It's bright, plasticky, and done with meditative precision. You can catch Anthony White's "WHEN IT RAINS IT POURS" up close and several other artists' work at Greg Kucera Gallery's Seattle Deconstructed Art Fair "booth" until August 22—don't miss it.
