Chaz Guest
The Planning, 2021
Oil and Japanese Sumi ink on linen
72 x 120 inches (182.9 x 304.8 cm)
© Chaz Guest; Photo by Argenis Apolinario; Courtesy the artist and Vito Schnabel Gallery
Artist Chaz Guest’s current solo show “Gaining Pride with Promises Broken,” his first at Night Gallery in Los Angeles, opens with a grouping of intimate paintings exploring themes of war, domesticity and Black life. In this milieu, the artist uplifts the Black experience with dignity, while negotiating the many instances in which race has been interpreted in American culture and media. Guest aims to build new meanings to historical events with the creation of fictional superheroes, including his Buffalo Warrior—an imagined figure based on the Buffalo Soldiers, Black members of the 10th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army. His paintings not only serve as documents to an almost forgotten history but help to capture the beauty and temperament of quotidian life.