American painter Troy Lamarr Chew II's detailed, realist works trace the history and lexicon of the African diaspora in American culture.
Read MoreChew was born in Los Angeles, U.S.A. He received his BA from the University of California, Merced in 2004 and later completed his MFA at the California College of the Arts in 2018.
In 2020, he was awarded the Tournesol Residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts.
Troy Lamarr Chew II's works often explore the reverberations of the African diaspora within American culture. Drawing from European realist painting traditions, Chew skillfully uses this method to comment on the systemic erasure and exclusion of Black figures from historical accounts. His rich visual language takes root in elements of Black culture and histories of resistance.
In a series entitled 'Slanguage' (2019–2021), Chew paints Flemish style vanitas of everyday objects, coded with references to hip hop. In an interview with Juxtapoz Magazine, he relates the easter eggs in this series to the music genre itself, saying, 'It's like when you listen to hip hop. Some lyrics go over your head, and you don't know what they're saying, but sometimes you do. Listening to more of that music, it can help explain itself, like context clues, but it goes deep sometimes.'
This series includes works such as Yay Area (2020), a still life of a spilled Coca-Cola bottle, a three-tiered chocolate cake, and a serving of vanilla ice cream. Chew plays with language in this body of work. At first glance, this piece may look like a depiction of quotidian items, but a closer reading reveals that the names of the items depicted are slang terms for cocaine. A similar thread can be seen in Ball Street Journal (2020), a painting of a table topped with a basketball, heads of cabbage, bread, cheese, and papers, referencing slang words used to describe money.
In 2021, Chew turned to depicting popular American cartoon characters in his solo exhibition at Altman Siegel, The Roof is on Fire. An extension of his 'Slanguage' series, the works in this exhibition explore historical hip hop dance crazes as part of his growing visual vocabulary.
Chew plays with the history of dance moves being named after popular characters and creates witty and surreal scenes involving these figures. In As Seen on TV (2021), viewers see Tom and Jerry on a lawn by a snake and a sprinkler. In Ask ya Mama (2021), Roger Rabbit lounges on a pile of cabbages with a Smurf in the background.
Aside from painting, Chew has also experimented with augmented reality. For The Roof is on Fire, viewers were able to watch Chew's friends and family performing the dance moves associated with the paintings on top of the picture surface through a downloaded app.
Troy Lamarr Chew II has held solo exhibitions at the California College of the Arts; CULT Aimee Friberg Exhibitions, San Francisco; and Altman Siegel, San Francisco. His work has been included in group shows in institutions such as the Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco; Good Mother Gallery, Oakland; and Chapter NY, New York.
Chew's Instagram can be found here.
Arianna Mercado | Ocula | 2022
