Authorities of Reason

Hodges' acrylic and chalk pastel paintings of his travels across Europe capture everyday liminal scenes with a hint of art historical tenebrism

Over several months spent traveling through Europe, American painter Reggie Burrows Hodges (born 1965) created an expansive body of work that engages with both written and unwritten histories, as well as the everyday moments that so often evade representation. Finely wrought allusions to Western art history and architecture emerge in works that pivot on quiet or liminal moments: a certain city's quality of light, a recollection of smoke curling from a chimney, the flash of white as rowboat oars splinter the calm of a river, the woven café chairs that mediate between street and establishment. Environments―both exterior and interior―leak through and stain the contours of his figures. This porosity echoes the artist's approach to history, equal parts generous and critical. Here, Hodges advances a new kind of chiaroscuro, capturing the light cast by memory into darkness.