DAVID HUFFMAN

DAVID HUFFMAN

THE AWAKENING

8 SEPTEMBER - 15 OCtOBER 2022
Miles McEnery Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by David Huffman, titled The Awakening. The artist’s second solo exhibition at the gallery will open on 8 September at 525 West 22nd Street and remain on view through 15 October 2022. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue featuring an essay by Lawrence Rinder.
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Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, "David Huffman: The Awakening," 8 September - 15 October 2022.
"Born in 1963, Huffman grew up in Berkeley, California, during the full flower of the hippie movement. His father died when he was a baby, leaving his mother, Dolores Davis, to raise David and his four siblings. Their home was a sanctuary for philosophers, musicians, and political activists, especially those associated with the Black Panther Party. Young Huffman absorbed these influences and nurtured his own interests in astronomy and nuclear physics. Adorning his bedroom walls were two posters: one of Malcolm X and the other of Albert Einstein."

- Lawrence Rinder in "David Huffman: The Awakening"
- Malcolm X, 1964, photo by Ed Ford
  Image courtesy the Library of Congress
- Albert Einstein, 1947, photo by Orren Jack Turner
  Image courtesy the Library of Congress
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DAVID HUFFMAN

Africano, 2021

Acrylic, oil, spray paint, African cloth, glitter and color pencil on wood panel

60 x 60 inches

152.4 x 152.4 cm
David Huffman's mother holding the iconic "Free Huey" flag, 1968

Image courtesy the artist

"A remarkable illustration of this radically hybrid experience is the story of Huffman’s role in helping his mother, a graphic artist, design the Free Huey [Newton] flag. His mom was struggling to get the paws of the black panther just right when five-year-old David offered to help. Applying insights obtained by studying illustrations of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, he fine-tuned this now iconic image."

- Lawrence Rinder in "David Huffman: The Awakening"
DAVID HUFFMAN

Children of the Sun, 2022

Acrylic, oil, spray paint, African cloth, glitter, photo collage and color pencil on canvas

77 x 77 inches

195.6 x 195.6 cm
David Huffman studio, 2022, Photo by Francis Baker

"His perspective isn’t an ordinary historical view of this celebrated serial gathering of hippies, activists, and their spiritual kin. In Huffman’s paintings, kente cloth visually rhymes with hard- edge abstraction, the head of a sphinx merges with the face of his mom, and basketballs float alongside the moons of Jupiter and Pluto. One might easily mistake Huffman’s juxtaposition of seemingly antithetical modes of abstraction—hard-edge and expressionistic—as some kind of postmodernist ploy. It is not. Their presence in these paintings is not a clever or ironic art historical pose but, rather, an authentic and genuine reflection on his early life experience."

- Lawrence Rinder in "David Huffman: The Awakening"
DAVID HUFFMAN

Cosmology, 2020

Acrylic, oil, spray paint, African cloth, glitter and color pencil on wood panel

72 x 59 3/4 inches

182.9 x 151.8 cm
Black Panther Party headquarters at 4421 MLK Way after a shooting by the Oakland Police Department. Photo: MediaNews Group/Oakland Tribune via Getty Images.

"One especially memorable event was rushing with his mother to the scene of a raid on the party’s Oakland headquarters where, without cause, the police had shot countless rounds into the building’s facade, leaving the office in ruins and the street littered with broken glass. Is it too far-fetched to see in Huffman’s jumbled-all-over compositions, his incorporation of references to iconic African American figures, and his creation of abstract zigzags and ominous voids, some imaginative residue of that violently shattered storefront window?"

-Lawrence Rinder in "David Huffman: The Awakening"
DAVID HUFFMAN

Diop's Universe, 2021

Acrylic, oil, spray paint, African cloth, glitter and color pencil on wood panel

60 x 60 inches

152.4 x 152.4 cm
David Huffman, his two brothers Ronald and Robert, and Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party in 1970 in Provo Park, Berkeley, CA, Courtesy the artist

"To Huffman, the world suffers from a peculiar inability to break out of its seemingly endless cycle of liberation and reaction. The arc of history is indeed long, and it may well bend toward freedom, but in his own life, Huffman has seen more than enough evidence of backsliding in society’s attitudes toward race. So the title of this exhibition, 'The Awakening,' must be seen at least in part as ironic. The kind of awakening these works describe is less the awakening of Dorothy into the comforts of home after her tumultuous journey to the Land of Oz than it is a Groundhog Day nightmare of endless reawakenings into a beautiful reality tarnished by hate, malice, and fear. 'We woke up before,' he says, recalling his experiences as a child in the ’60s, 'So why do keep needing to awaken again and again?'"

- Lawrence Rinder in "David Huffman: The Awakening"
DAVID HUFFMAN

I Can't Breathe #7, 2020

Acrylic, oil, spray paint, African cloth, glitter and color pencil on wood panel

72 x 59 3/4 inches

182.9 x 151.8 cm
DAVID HUFFMAN

Kemit Soul, 2022

Acrylic, oil, spray paint, African cloth, glitter and color pencil on wood panel

60 x 48 inches

152.4 x 121.9 cm
David Huffman studio, 2022, photo by Francis Baker
DAVID HUFFMAN

Ogun, 2022

Acrylic, oil, collage, spray paint and color pencil on wood panel

60 x 60 inches

152.4 x 152.4 cm
DAVID HUFFMAN: MUSEUM OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA

September 2022

"As a cultural aesthetic, Afrofuturism reconnects the Black diaspora to its African heritage, addressing the monstrous depredations of slavery and colonialism through technofiction. Maybe Huffman’s Traumanauts are on a perilous journey to a place where both home and history can be found."

- Maria Porges

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DAVID HUFFMAN

Psychedelic Drum, 2021

Acrylic, oil, spray paint, African cloth, glitter and color pencil on wood panel

60 x 60 inches

152.4 x 152.4 cm
David Huffman studio, 2022, Photo by Francis Baker

"Mid-twentieth century artists as diverse as Joan Miró, Norman Lewis, and Hannah Ryggen skillfully negotiated the fraught terrain between abstraction and social commentary, proving that art can be both timely and timeless. Huffman’s work charges full-bore into this art historical dialectic, incorporating multiple tropes of abstract painting (i.e., hard-edge, expressionistic, etc.) alongside images and texts that serve as iconic markers of social conflict and history."

- Lawrence Rinder in "David Huffman: The Awakening"
DAVID HUFFMAN

Riot, 2020

Acrylic, oil, crayon, glitter, collage and spray paint on canvas

48 x 71 7/8 inches

121.9 x 182.6 cm
DAVID HUFFMAN

Sublimation, 2020

Acrylic, oil, spray paint, African cloth, glitter and color pencil on wood panel

72 x 59 3/4 inches

182.9 x 151.8 cm
David Huffman studio, 2022, photo by Francis Baker
DAVID HUFFMAN

The Awakening, 2022

Acrylic, oil, spray paint, African cloth, glitter, photo collage and color pencil on canvas

77 x 77 inches

195.6 x 195.6 cm
Music: The Ahmad Jamal Trio - Stolen Moment
DAVID HUFFMAN

This Season's People, 2022

Acrylic, oil, spray paint, African cloth, glitter, photo collage and color pencil on wood panel

72 x 60 inches

182.9 x 152.4 cm
David Huffman in his studio, 2022
Image courtesy of Francis Baker

DAVID HUFFMAN (b. in 1963 in Berkeley, CA) studied at the New York Studio School and the California College of the Arts & Crafts, and received his Master of Fine Art degree at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco in 1999.

Recent solo exhibitions include “The Awakening,” Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; “Terra Incognita,” Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA; “Afro Hippie,” Berkeley Art Center, Berkeley, CA; Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, CA; “Print Project,” Paulson Fontaine Press, Berkeley, CA; “Worlds in Collision,” Roberts and Tilton Gallery, Culver City, CA; and “Everything Went Dark Until I Saw Angels,” Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco, CA.

Recent group exhibitions include “Painters Paint Paintings:LA Version,” Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; “BOTH TEAMS PLAY HARD,” San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; “Personal to Political: Celebrating the African American Artists of Paulson Fontaine Press,” Bakersfield Museum of Art, Bakersfield, CA; “The Artist’s Eye: Tammy Rae Carland, David Huffman, Lava Thomas, John Zurier, ” Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA; “Mothership: Voyage Into Afrofuturism,” Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, CA; “Recognition and Response: Rico Gatson and David Huffman,” Miles McEnery Gallery at The Armory Show, New York, NY; “Home & Away: Selections from Common Practice,” Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; and “To the Hoop: Basketball and Contemporary Art,” Weatherspoon Museum of Art, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC.

His work may be found in the collections of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA; Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA; Embassy of the United States of America, Dakar, Senegal; Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, MN; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; San José Museum of Art, San José, CA; and The Studio Museum, Harlem, New York, NY, among others.

David Huffman lives and works between Berkeley and Oakland, CA.
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DAVID HUFFMAN: The Awakening

THE AWAKENING

8 SEPTEMBER - 15 OCtOBER 2022

DAVID HUFFMAN: MUSEUM OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA

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