Arabesque
In Remebrance
of Kajieme Powell

These eight paintings are based on a cell phone video available on Youtube of a young man who ends up being killed by the police. The frames chosen happen over a couple of minutes before the police arrive - when the potential flow of events was still undetermined.

 

“In photographs, we can see death with a nakedness no other medium affords. But photography does not allow us to contemplate death. Contemplation is akin to what I’m calling enactments that enable reflection.” Robert Storr on Richter’s Baader-Meinhof paintings,

 

They were painted over the span of a couple weeks. Each frame is suspended, as if there could have been a different outcome had it happened on a different day. -summer 2014

Oil and acrylic on paper, 11 x 14 in