Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs. If you think you’ve seen it all in contemporary art, prepare for a monumental shock. Reggie Burrows Hodges is shaking up our certainties about painting with a boldness that would make your little right-thinking sensibilities tremble. It is no coincidence that his works now find themselves in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. But beware, it is not the institutional success that interests me here. It is the way this artist reinvents our relationship to vision, to memory, and to identity.
Let us start from the beginning: the black. Not just any black, not a decorative or symbolic black, but a fundamental, ontological black. Each canvas of Hodges begins in total darkness. This is his starting point, his original matrix. And this is where things become exciting, because this black directly refers us to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on perception. The French philosopher taught us that seeing is never a passive act, but an embodied experience that engages our entire being. In ‘The Visible and the Invisible,’ he writes that vision is a ‘touching by sight.’ Isn’t this exactly what we experience in front of Hodges’ canvases?
Take ‘Community Concern’ (2020), where a dancer emerges from the darkness in a whirlwind of pastel colors. Her body is not simply represented; it materializes before our eyes like an apparition. Merleau-Ponty would speak here of the ‘flesh of the world,’ this texture common to the seer and the seen. The blurry outlines of the figure, her deliberately indistinct face are not flaws in representation but the very expression of our way of inhabiting the world, always between clarity and mystery, presence and absence.
This phenomenological approach can be found in every brushstroke. In ‘Intersection of Color: Loge’ (2019), the white spectators emerge from the black background like luminous ghosts. Their silhouettes are defined not by sharp contours but by their relationship to the surrounding space. This is precisely what Merleau-Ponty spoke about when he referred to the intertwining of the perceiving subject and the perceived world. In Hodges’ work, figures are never simply placed against a background; they are literally woven into the pictorial matter.
This phenomenological dimension takes on a particular significance in his sports scenes. In ‘Hurdling: Sky Blue’ (2020), the athlete who clears a hurdle is not fixed in a photographic moment but exists in a duration, in a movement that engages our entire spectator’s body. Merleau-Ponty reminded us that the body is not in space like a thing, but inhabits space. Hodges’ figures truly inhabit their canvases, creating what the philosopher called a ‘lived space.’
But do not stop at this first phenomenological reading, for Hodges’ work resonates deeply with Walter Benjamin’s thoughts on memory and the image. In his writings on Baudelaire and photography, Benjamin distinguished between voluntary memory and involuntary memory. The latter, he said, bursts forth like a flash to illuminate the present with a new light. Hodges’ canvases work exactly this way. By bringing his figures forth from total darkness, he literally reproduces the process of involuntary memory.
Look at ‘Single Source’ (2019), where a tennis player bends down to pick up a ball. The scene may seem mundane, but the way it emerges from the black background, like a memory that refuses to clarify completely, gives it an almost metaphysical dimension. Benjamin spoke of the aura as ‘the unique apparition of a distant thing, however close it may be.’ This definition could perfectly apply to Hodges’ figures, which are simultaneously intensely present and strangely distant.
This tension between presence and absence takes on a particularly fascinating dimension in his recent maritime series. In ‘Turning a Big Ship’ (2023), the ships and their captains emerge from the darkness like memories that refuse to settle. Benjamin saw in the development of photography a loss of the aura of the artwork. Hodges, by returning to painting and precisely working with the indistinct, reintroduces this aura into contemporary art.
The scenes of ‘Labor’ (2022-2023) push this exploration of collective memory even further. The workers emerging from the Californian fields are like archetypal figures, presences that transcend individuality to reach a universal dimension. Benjamin would have recognized here what he called ‘dialectical images,’ moments where the past and present telescope to create a new constellation of meaning.
But what truly makes Hodges’ work extraordinary is his ability to engage in dialogue between these philosophical references and the literary heritage of Samuel Beckett. Like the Irish writer, Hodges finds a form of fullness in emptiness, a presence in absence. His faceless figures recall Beckett’s characters, both terrifically concrete and irremediably abstract.
In ‘Slumber Aura’ (2022), a figure contemplates her reflection in a mirror without us being able to distinguish her face. The scene irresistibly evokes Beckett’s ‘Film’ (1965), this obsessive exploration of perception and the being-perceived. Beckett’s central question – ‘how to say the unspeakable?’ – finds a visual echo in Hodges’ technique. By starting with total blackness, he literally begins from silence, from the ineffable, to bring forth forms that always remain partly elusive.
This Beckettian approach is particularly evident in the series of ‘Seated Listener.’ These motionless figures, absorbed in listening, are like pictorial versions of the characters from ‘Company’ or ‘The Unnamable.’ They inhabit an uncertain space between being and non-being, presence and absence. As Beckett wrote: ‘To be an artist is to fail as no one else dares to fail.’ Hodges accepts this necessary failure by leaving his figures in a state of incompleteness that is paradoxically their most finished form.
The tennis scenes, so recurrent in his work, take on an existential dimension under this Beckettian light. The back-and-forth of the ball, the postures of the players, all evoke the rhythm and characteristic repetitions of Beckett’s theater. In ‘On Your Mark: Lean In,’ the athletes seem caught in an absurd and sublime choreography, like Vladimir and Estragon waiting for Godot on their bench.
This theatrical dimension is not surprising when one knows that Hodges studied theater at the University of Kansas. But what is remarkable is the way he transposes Beckettian questioning into the visual realm. His figures are like actors frozen in a gesture, but a gesture that contains a whole story, a whole world of possibilities.
Recent series like ‘The Reckoning’ (2023) push this exploration of identity and representation even further. The figures that observe themselves in mirrors without us being able to see their reflection are like metaphors for our own quest for identity. They remind us that we are always partly invisible to ourselves, that our identity is constructed in that ambiguous space between what we see and what escapes us.
Hodges’ very technique becomes a metaphor for this quest for identity. By starting with total blackness before bringing forth his figures in a haze of colors, he reproduces the very process of self-construction. We all emerge from a form of original darkness, we build ourselves in successive strokes, never fully defined, always becoming.
What is particularly interesting in his recent work is the way he uses color to create spaces of possibility. His pastel tones, soft greens, and delicate pinks that emerge from black are not merely decorative. They create atmospheres, moods that transport us to that uncertain space between memory and perception. It is as if each canvas were a darkroom where the images of our collective consciousness slowly develop.
In ‘Labor: Sound Bath’ (2022), an almost indistinguishable figure emerges from a verdant landscape. The scene might seem banal – a worker in a field – but the way Hodges treats it transforms it into a meditation on our relationship to the earth, to labor, to memory. The title itself suggests a fusion between the physical and the spiritual, labor and contemplation.
The latest works presented at the Parrish Art Museum show a fascinating evolution in his practice. The monumentality of the formats contrasts with the delicacy of the pictorial treatment. It is as if Hodges were trying to create increasingly vast spaces for our imagination, territories where personal memory can unfold freely.
What strikes me particularly is the absolute coherence of his approach. From his early works to his most recent productions, Hodges has never ceased to deepen his questioning about perception, memory, and identity. But this coherence is never repetition. Each new series brings its share of discoveries, surprises, technical and conceptual innovations.
I can already hear some of you murmuring that this is all quite intellectual. But this is precisely Hodges’ strength: he manages to create works that operate on multiple levels. His canvases are immediately alluring due to their formal beauty, technical mastery, and subtle use of color. But they also open up to deeper, more complex readings, which always bring us back to essential questions about our way of being in the world.
So yes, pay close attention to what Reggie Burrows Hodges is doing. For he does not simply paint images; he creates experiences. Experiences that remind us that seeing is never a passive act, that memory is never simply a storage of information, and that identity is never completely fixed. In a world obsessed with clarity and definition, his work reminds us of the value of ambiguity, mystery, and the unfinished. And perhaps this is his greatest achievement: making us see the world differently, making us feel the vertiginous depth hidden behind every appearance.
His growing success on the international stage is therefore not a fashion effect but the recognition of a profoundly original and necessary artistic vision. The institutions acquiring his works have not been mistaken: Hodges is redefining the possibilities of contemporary painting. And he does so with an elegance, subtlety, and depth that make him one of the most exciting artists of his generation.
