Andrew Reed Gallery is excited to announce Immediate Release: Pain Portraits, Christopher Huff’s solo exhibition at the gallery.  

 

“I’ve created this series of works in an attempt to excavate and process the repressed moments of pain and trauma I've felt during my childhood, focusing primarily on the time I’ve had to spend within the healthcare system. Recently I’ve asked myself if I ever truly processed these events from my childhood correctly. I've found through introspection that the lack of autonomy one deals with creates strong emotions that can’t be verbalized. Through this body of work, I attempt to depict the personal events that I’ve experienced in cartoonism, a visual format that depicts a style of imagery that accompanied me during those times. 

 

This new body of work which I call “Pain Portraits” features bold line work that travels throughout the layers of the painting. To me, these works are drawings that contain color, not paintings. Drawing has always been the most accessible medium for a child. It allows us to be direct with what we’re feeling at the present moment. My Pain Portraits each focus on a specific feeling or event from my past or current situation. I create the majority of my sketches on my iPad during times of hospitalization. I do this in an attempt to survey my emotional and mental state while either in moments of pain and or moments of being under the influence of heavy opioid medication, so that when these moments are no longer present I will have somehow gotten a bit closer to understanding myself and my illness.” – Christopher Huff

 

‘Immediate Release’ refers to the form of medication which Huff takes to counteract the frequent health issues which persist from sickle cell anemia. In this body of work, Huff renders a repeated cartoonish form – an embodiment of himself – in varying expressions of frenetic energy. Huff’s expressionist portraits allow us to engage with his malady in a manner which feels immediate, but under the artist’s terms. While Huff has no agency over his disease and its unpredictable toll, in these paintings, he can dictate how it is that he wants us to perceive his condition while confronting the range of human emotion which it enacts. 

 

Motifs of pills in myriad forms and colors recur throughout the Pain Portraits. A few of the titles reference the medications which Huff is prescribed. Meanwhile, bloodshot eyes and running noses demonstrates the side effects. Works such as Pain Portrait #1 ground the protagonist as the artist himself, with his telltale dreadlocks. In some works, the central figure sheds tears, understandably wistful from his frequent tribulations. Meanwhile, Pain Portrait #9 exemplifies a sneering defiance. 

 

The two black and white paintings, which more directly tie to Huff’s drawing practice, further exemplify this contrast of emotion. With these two works devoid of the chromatic hues typical of graffiti, a religious quality carries through: an intensity of emotion often associated with Renaissance iconography. A horn and halo appear in Pain Portrait #1, Pain Portrait #5 (Sorrow), and Pain Portrait #14, emphasizing both the spiritual and the otherworldly. In Pain Portrait #5 (Sorrow), Huff has affixed to the surface a bracelet from one of his hospital stays.