An investigation of how seven cutting-edge contemporary artists use high-key, kaleidoscopic color to express the hybrid and multiform nature of identity As contemporary artists reckon with the immense destructive forces of today’s world, including climate change, a global pandemic, gun violence, and the rise of racism and right-wing extremism, there has been an increasing shift away from both realist aesthetics and the safety of abstraction. This publication showcases the work of seven dynamic artists in their twenties and thirties based in the United States whose work shares a radical approach to figuration through the use of a loud, heightened color palette, willful distortions of form, and the mixing of everyday, horror, and dream imagery. The book examines how Sula Bermudez-Silverman (b. 1993), Sasha Gordon (b. 1998), Sara Issakharian (b. 1983), Kite (b. 1990), Chella Man (b. 1998), Ilana Savdie (b. 1986), and Austin Martin White (b. 1984) articulate the frenzied too-muchness, all-at-onceness, in-betweenness, and expansiveness of our current existence. Commentary by and on the artists elucidate the various strategies, particularly the use of prismatic color, that allow the artists to claim a space for themselves, reveling in the exuberant, transgressive, and uncanny. Exploring the ways that color is infused with politics and how the myriad networks of identity translate into artistic expression, this is a compelling and lavishly illustrated window into an exciting new direction in contemporary art.
