David Antonio Cruz: come close, like before

moniquemeloche is pleased to present David Antonio Cruz: come close, like before. This is the artist’s third solo exhibition with the gallery.

come close, like before is a continuation of Cruz’s “chosenfamily” series–exploring the non-biological bonds between queer people that are based in mutual love and support–and centers this structure within the historical canon of western art, specifically maritime and landscape painting. Cruz produced this body of work after extensive travel during the last year and a half, having undergone an artist residency in Laguarres, Spain and visiting his grandparent’s land in Humacao, Puerto Rico. Reflecting on themes of lineage, family, and home, as well as the complex history between Spain and Puerto Rico, Cruz contemplates ideas of drift and voyage rendered through a distinctly queer, Brown perspective.

The colonial and Eurocentric roots of maritime painting evolved alongside European colonization of the Americas, Africa, and various other regions worldwide, made possible through seafaring. A particular work resonated with the artist during his travels, Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault. Monumental in stature and considered to be the most famous painting of a shipwreck, it narrates the tale of the French frigate Medusa's shipwreck and the plight of the survivors adrift on a makeshift wooden raft. America’s deep relationship with its waterways involve complex histories, with the sea representing a feeling of connection, vast expansiveness, beauty, and violence. For Black and Latinx Americans, the history of home making is inextricably linked with conflict. In the painting titled, iknowyou'vebeenwonderingwherei'vebeen:adrift,adraft,astare,atill,asigh,exhale.but,icamebacktoletyouknow,gotathingforyou,andican'letitgo_the raft, Cruz’s subjects billow atop fragmented furniture within a liminal space, their forms enacting a similar composition to Medusa, à la lost at sea. But rather than a hopeless depiction, the figures are resolute in their commitment to and safe keeping of each other. iknowyou’vebeenwondering… is a celebration of how our bodies represent home, and there is room for everyone on this raft.

In Cruz’s works on paper, bodies are fragmented, drifting in and out of the foliage, floating in air. Birds delicately rendered suggest migration and movement, while the limbs of spiked Ceiba trees hold us tight to the land, a lightness and heaviness at the same time. This motif found in Cruz’s drawings permeate into his paintings. Whether as a backdrop, garment, or textile, this lush vegetation centers around a geographic location personal to the artist or subjects depicted (Laguarres, Philadelphia, Brooklyn), and is a way of tracing things back to their roots. In his painting icamebackthefollowingnightandwalkedthegroundslookingforyou,wegotturnedawayonthesecondnight,buticamebackagainandagain,andagain, figures pile together suggestive of a mountain, the collective mound of identities and histories coalesce into a single unified body. Prolonged viewing gives way to the layers beneath, where we realize the figures are simultaneously bound together and disjointed, a necessary tension created to shift modes of thinking.

Topographical influences aside, one cannot ignore the spectrum of texture, pattern, color, and design that Cruz’s subjects employ. Before paint meets panel, elaborate photoshoots ensued in the artist’s Bronx studio and Los Angeles. Chosen family members play dress up, combining sequins, lace, and pearls with high fashion garments. Cruz purposefully choreographs the composition, gaining the trust of his sitters along the away. Poses inspired by 1990s fashion photography encapsulate a sexy freedom or dirty realism, highlighting a visual language that helped shape the perspective of a generation. Subtle coding references 60s, 70s and 80s gay culture and bits of flat color and glitchy moments when the compositions break channel a resistance to the status quo.

As the title suggests, come close, like before asks us to reflect how and who we consider home. It’s a return to our roots after drifting away, its knowing that everything you need you already carry with you.

Cruz’s exhibition opens on the tail of his traveling museum show when the children come home, curated by Monique Long, which debuted in his hometown at ICA Philadelphia last summer and opens in his current hometown in Harlem, NY at the Sugar Hill Museum on Tuesday, September 10.

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