Untitled

The compositional simplicity and luminosity of Gallagher’s Untitled at first recalls the minimalism of painter Agnes Martin, a source Gallagher acknowledges. On closer inspection, one finds a wholly different narrative embedded—an alternative history told obliquely through small, subliminal details. The pattern of dots and lines resolve into cartoon-like lips, eyes and locks of hair that are shorthand for derogatory caricatures of African American features. By referencing cultural stereotypes and their effect on perception and communication, Gallagher teases the authority of the modernist grid.