“Between Two Shores” as part of the show “A Peaceful Vigor”, at Swivel Gallery. July 2022, curated by Alyssa Alexander.’

“A Peaceful Vigor brings together the photographic work of Laurent Chevalier, and the mixed media paintings of Freddie L. Rankin II. Centered within both bodies of work, is a careful examination of relaxation, retreat, and how pleasure can be a driving force towards liberation.”

Install images by Cary Whittier.

A Peaceful Vigor brings together the photographic work of Laurent Chevalier, and the mixed media paintings of Freddie L. Rankin II. Centered within both bodies of work, is a careful examination of relaxation, retreat, and how pleasure can be a driving force towards liberation.The coasts of Dakar, Senegal and Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. With most of the subjects and the locales often indistinguishable, each photo builds on the notion of an objective and engagement with rest and amusement. Not rest as a radical act or political statement - nor in myriad outside forces - simply rest as a practice. Much like buying groceries, a check-up at your getting your hair done, rest can be - and perhaps should be - mundane and ordinary. photos did not set out with any agenda in mind other than a good time. Contextually, the address an unavoidable tension that exists between the shores of Africa and North America. A capture, enslavement, displacement and subjugation across the Atlantic Ocean, juxtaposed with history of African-Americans retreating to the storied Oak Bluffs on summer vacation.“As I spent my time there (Dakar), I found myself further considering the duality of experience being African American. African & American. Both of those, yet never solely either. Further line of thought is the consideration of place and home. Home can be where you come from, but the place you create once you leave. It is a place of refuge, but also a place where brokenness begins.”

Confounded as this relationship is with the places we seek refuge along the coast, this time and the pleasure of being with the outdoors is one both Chevalier and Freddie L. Rankin II explore. On the concept of pleasure, Rankin has amassed a series of paintings entitled that hinge on a subjective reading of what pleasure is, and how we give and receive it. His deeper investigation of what pleasure can mean to Black people on a broader scale, while technical cues that tether his work to Chevalier’s photos. The incorporation of sand as a practical and personal - providing texture within the pigment, but also referencing his coast as a source of pleasure. The use of Black, almost exclusively, speaks to both the experience and the expansiveness of Black as a hue across art history. More importantly approach to addressing a flattened concept of what pleasure can look like within his community. opportunity to meditate on what and how we engage with pleasure - across sensorial liberated from the ways it has been withheld and the confining notions we often perpetuate.

Text by Alyssa Alexander