Todd Gray at the Pomona College Museum of Art

On view September 3, 2019 – May 17, 2020.

It’s well worth the drive out to the Pomona College Museum of Art to see Todd Gray’s solo exhibition of photographic works. Each piece is made up of several images in varying sizes that are framed and then stacked on each other—each framed photo accumulates into a composition by concealing or revealing parts of the image beneath. The subject ranges from cosmic stars, to lush rainforests, to well-kept colonial buildings and gardens. The imposed order of the manicured lawns are offset by either the disastrous or the mundanely rural—in one, an image of a wildfire is overlaid on top of a plinth in a European park; elsewhere, a portrait of a humble goat takes center stage. If photographs present truth, or a version of it, then Gray’s mashups insist on an ever evolving history. The artist looks to the racial violence embedded in our past while pointing to our present as an ever-changing narrative. He further looks towards the future—to the stars (á la Neil deGrasse Tyson)—and maintains a glimmer of hope as to how it might unfold.