EDITORS’ PICKS
Artforum staffers weigh in on the year’s highlights
By Julia Ribeiro
December 5, 2024
“Just on the Other Side,” Taj Poscé’s New York solo debut, was the last exhibition I saw before this year’s presidential election. The artist’s process-based practice utilizes nontraditional materials (industrial plastic sheeting, tar paper, diamond dust, flames, etc.) inspired by his family’s history working in construction. The paintings’ abstract, iconographic imagery draws from the artist’s personal life and art history, while also speaking to the collective experience of Black life in America. Poscé’s bombastic mark-making, discordant color palette, and energetic viscera now feel like an urgent premonition. The show’s largest work, You Wish, 2023, depicts a cosmic collision. A metallic-silver star explodes on the canvas’s right side, leaving a wreck of burnt reference materials in its wake. You know what they say about best laid plans, but Poscé turns all that is awry into a crash course on survival—a lesson we could all benefit from in the coming new year (or four).
On view through December 7.
