Rarely is an exhibition title as apt as this one. In his first hometown solo show, up at Povos in West Town, Hubert Neal Jr. dissects a uniquely American social sedative: that preventable mass violence is both an anomaly and an acceptable price for freedom. Neal probes that foundational falsehood with his figurative paintings, rendered in vibrant acrylics. His style is as potently individual, and immediately recognizable, as Kara Walker or Keith Haring, with a political acuity in the spirit of both those artists.
Installation view, Hubert Neal Jr. "Thoughts and Prayers" at PovosCredit: Jake Ellerbrake
A graduate of the Chicago Academy for the Arts, Neal is based in Los Angeles but turns an unsparing eye on violence all around the globe in “Thoughts and Prayers”: the war in Ukraine, Haitian immigrants terrorized at the U.S.-Mexico border, and police shootings of unarmed African American men. Neal’s police paintings depict officers in solid blue, not the skin tones of his other figures, and eerily grinning as they commit unspeakable acts of violence. Other paintings are more parenthetical but no less chilling. In Club Robb Elementary at the Uvalde Resort, Texas (2023), officers smilingly drink beer and play craps, a biting commentary on law enforcement’s more than hour-long delay in stopping a gunman’s rampage at Robb Elementary School last year. The work’s dissonance between breezy repose and horrific carnage is as stark as pleading for reform and, instead, getting thoughts and prayers.
Hubert Neal Jr, Alton Sterling, 2023