Andrae Green

We live in an age where representation and reality are interchangeable.  I use painting as a historical device to critique a contemporary issue of representation--that is representation through the photographic lens. I am interested in how legacies of coloniality and slavery inform how people of color are represented today.

I come to painting as a conceptual device-the reason why I paint is because I (a black male living in the digital age) am not supposed to. In art history, painting underwent many transformations and evolutions, all the while being an act reserved only for white men. Others were simply not accepted into a larger history. Painting, for me, is an act of gaining authorship and appropriation. It points to the missing pieces of art history while perceiving our age with critical eyes. In appropriating the language of painting, I investigate representation, existence and what it means to be in this generation. The very act of painting affirms and yet denies my existence; and it has never been a more conceptual act than it is now.