Copyright %C2%A9 Rico Gatson%2C published by Highpoint Editions
Color lithograph, photolithograph, and screenprintexpand_more
Highpoint Editions Archive, The Friends of Bruce B. Dayton Acquisition Fund and the Christina N. and Swan J. Turnblad Memorial Fundexpand_more 2021.105.3
In Untitled (Cotton Pickers), Rico Gatson creates a foundational image based on a historical black-and-white photograph of enslaved field workers harvesting cotton, which he then repeated, rotated, and distorted. The background imagery is overlaid with an array of bright “spotlights” in green, red, yellow, orange, and black, colors associated with Pan African emblems and ideology. By obscuring portions of the underlying imagery with geometric shapes, Gatson pushes the viewer to look more closely at the background details and activity, encouraging a deliberative consideration of the people and events of our past.
Gatson studied fine art and graphic design in college, which prompted him to experiment with the formal simplicity of minimalism. His regular use of brilliant color and simplified geometric representations in his work speaks to his use of an abstract visual language inspired in part by African American traditions of optical patterning. “There’s a fast and slow thing that occurs within the work,” notes Gatson. “The pattern and color are spatially active to the point that I hope the loudness produces a focus that slows the viewer down.”
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