Alex Gardner
It could be simple.
“I’m half black; my mom’s Japanese. I pretty much look black. So obviously there are those things; I grew up with those kind of issues you’re talking about,” the 28-year-old Los Angeles-based artist said. (quote from Fader Website, May 2016).
Quiet Admiration.
Can’t see how full my hands are.
It was funny in retrospect.
Identity is a central theme for the Afro-Japanese artist, with much of his work featuring anonymous figures painted in a deep, rich black. A rebuke against the fair-skinned bodies he used to habitually paint, Gardner uses skin tone to challenge the ways in which viewers identify with what they see. “I don’t know if I’m trying to paint black people, but I guess that’s what I’m doing! I’m certainly trying not to paint white people, but I feel like [the bodies] are so black that they can be perceived as not just of African descent,” he says. “Growing up, identity was always an issue because I’m mixed race, but in a broader sense I want the viewer to have non-specific figures in the composition … so they have the chance of seeing themselves and people they know.” (from AnOther website, October 2015)