MICHAEL RAY CHARLES

‘Afrochemistry’ features a series of five large canvases and twelve small red nose portraits on cardboard centring on the representation of black identity.Since the 1990s, Michael Ray Charles has become a widely recognised artist with a pioneering approach to investigating African-American questions. He draws on his inexhaustible fund of energy and capacity to transcend linguistic, cultural and geographic boundaries to create visual archives that stand as a personal chronicle of an African-American history rooted in both terror and light, freedom and slavery, racism and humanity, guilt and responsibility.With Afrochemistry, Charles delicately juggles between idea and image to explore the way African-Americans are represented physically and the resulting moral prejudices. The figures depicted in close-up radiate a feeling of depth and truth that has the disconcertingly powerful effect of questioning our perceptions and emotional connection with others. The features Charles gives the faces, as expressive as they are static, not only offer an examination of sensitive social issues but also serve as a catalyst for social change in modern-dayAmerica.