A life lived in the midst of harrowing times of chain gangs, sharecropping and Jim Crow laws in the Deep South is the bullseye of Winfred Rembert’s exhibition, “Hard Times.” In hand-carved and debossed painted leather, the late Rembert creates striking patterns from the identifiable violences of our racial caste system: limitless and maze-like white cotton fields, the hierarchical order of plantation life, high contrast stripes of prisoners hammering in the field together and a ridiculous amount of crackling earth moved by prison labor. With respect to the pain of these truths, Rembert is an excellent storyteller, making figurative and metaphorical motifs from bodily dispossession.  Despite these scenes being pulled directly from Rembert’s personal experiences, he primarily illustrates his life through groups of people he had once clung to and endured existence with. Amplifying the sense of peril and devastation, he shows us that many others have lived his life too. Here, the act of depicting memory is also the act of depicting history, all the while, his narration becomes a necessary form of witness to suspend the unnatural horror of those times. In punishment’s undoubtedly current and mutated form, Rembert provides a stunning visualization that I fear makes it easy for the unchallenged viewer to avoid a vital question: In the wake of mass and robust maltreatment, how do we meet what we see?

Hauser & Wirth
901 E 3rd St.
Los Angeles, CA
On view through August 25, 2024