New York artist Titus Kaphar disrupts each of his works, cutting figures out of a canvas to consider the impact of absence, whiting out and redrawing figures or peeling back a layer of canvas to literally reveal a back story. Here, a colonial-era man’s portrait is shredded and stretched to shatter any illusion of a tidy personal narrative. (At Chelsea’s Jack Shainman Gallery through Feb 21st).
Titus Kaphar, Stripes, oil on canvas and nails, 59 ½ x 51 x 1 ½ inches, 2014.