"Target Audience: Pink Helmet," Reggie Burrows Hodges
Reggie Burrows Hodges (United States, born 1965), Target Audience: Pink Helmet, 2019, acrylic and pastel on wood panel, 43 1/2 x 48 x 2 3/8 inches. Anonymous gift, 2021.4. © Courtesy the artist and Karma, New York
Fine me at Range Pond state park!
Maine-based figurative painter Reggie Burrows Hodges explores themes of identity, truth, surveillance, elitism, and sport in his work. He paints from a black ground, developing the environment around the figure so it emerges from its surroundings. Hodges’ paintings challenge preconceived notions about the Black body in the legacy of figurative painting as well as today’s society.
The series Target Audience, created at the Monson Arts residency program in Maine, addresses incidents of police brutality toward Black Americans. In it, Hodges addresses how the public and celebrity are treated inside and outside of their professional uniforms or arenas. Target Audience: Pink Helmet is part of a series of three paintings that portrays athletes, coaches, and umpires in open-ended narratives. In each painting, Hodges uses the color scheme of a 3 Musketeers bar to reference a 1997 shooting in which an undercover Federal agent mistook the foil-wrapped candy bar that the youth was holding for a handgun. Conceptually, Hodges believes Target Audience is a nonviolent metaphor for bridging community and fandom visualized through the power of sport and spectatorship.