#045 The Golden Age: Rudy Shepherd
561 Grand Street, NYC 10002 April 3 - May 5, 2024
KATES-FERRI PROJECTS is delighted to present Rudy Shepherd's first solo exhibition with the gallery, THE GOLDEN AGE, from April 3 to May 5, 2024, with a reception on Friday, April 5, from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM at their 561 Grand Street space. This collection of acrylic on canvas paintings evolves from Shepherd's ongoing portrait series and delves into the visual culture of the golden age of hip-hop in the 1980s and 1990s, a period of tremendous innovation and stylistic experimentation in the genre. The artist renders intricate portraits of legendary musicians from iconic publicity photos and album covers, crafting massive 3' by 4' and 4' by 4' works that display the bravado and opulence of hip-hop while also interrogating it, prompting the viewer to reflect on the many meanings embedded in hip-hop imagery and music.
Drawing on his own experiences as a hip-hop loving middle schooler in the 1980s, Shepherd’s paintings convey the core messages he absorbed as he listened to artists like Slick Rick and Big Daddy Kane: men are physically tough and emotionally distant, their worth is measured by material success, and women are accessories—symbols of a man’s status. In the words of writer Jelani Cobb, hip-hop of this era also embodied “the frustrations, hopes, ambitions, and fears of a set of people who came of age amid the scourges of crack and AIDS and the generally barren social landscape of the nineteen-eighties.”
Shepherd’s work explores the impact of this “barren social landscape,” as well as the hypermasculinity and capitalistic ideals impressed upon young black boys and our society as a whole. At the same time, his paintings invite the viewer to challenge the societal expectations and conditions that limit personal freedom and artistic expression, which he achieves by piercing through the façade of hip-hop—the gold, the girls, the lifestyle, the lyrics. In their soft palettes and curving lines, his paintings reveal the vulnerability and beauty of the people behind the personas.
In the first work of the series, Shepherd renders a familiar image of Slick Rick, the stage name of London-born Richard Walters, with his signature eyepatch, large gold pendant necklaces, and rings on each finger. He wears a smart 1990s royal blue suit and a small diamond crown brooch on his regal hat. In Shepherd’s reproduction, the royal blue of Slick Rick’s suit softens to an Easter egg pastel and the gold of his chains takes on a lighter hue. These subtle changes encourage one’s focus to shift from Slick Rick the performer to Richard Walters the man—complex, creative and impossible to reduce to tropes or stereotypes. Equally delicate portraits of female hip-hop artists MC Lyte, Roxanne Shante and Salt n’ Pepa speak to the nuances and complexities of—and challenges to—the male-dominated scene in the 80s and 90s. Women in hip-hop claimed their own space and spoke for themselves, sometimes in the face of backlash and criticism both in the media and within the music scene itself.
Shepherd's work also pays homage to and questions the flamboyance and flash inherent in the aesthetic of that period in Black culture. The artist, whose ideas of masculinity were influenced by the era, interprets exaggerated jewelry, attitude, and posture as a means to achieve personal security. As Slick Rick himself wrote in an article in The Guardian in 2022, “Displaying our opulence affirms the traditions and wealth of our culture. … My jewels are my superhero suit, an extension of my beautiful brown skin. It’s a gift from ancestors who sat on thrones and reigned with rings and rocks the size of ice cubes.”
Rudy Shepherd received a BS in Biology and Studio Art from Wake Forest University and an MFA in Sculpture from the School of Art Institute of Chicago. He has been in solo exhibitions at Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, CT, Latchkey Gallery, NY, Mixed Greens Gallery, NY, Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY, Regina Miller Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA and group exhibitions at MoMA PS1, NY, The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, Bronx Museum of Art, NY, Art in General, NY, Triple Candie, NY, Socrates Sculpture Park, NY, Cheekwood Museum of Art, TN, Contemporary Museum, Baltimore, MD, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, CT, Southeastern Center of Contemporary Art, NC, Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, IL, Tart Gallery, San Francisco, CA and Analix Forever Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland. He has been awarded Artist in Residence at PS1 National/International Studio Program, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY, Artist in Residence Visual + Harlem, Jacob Lawrence Institute for the Visual Arts, New York, N, Emerging Artist Fellowship, Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, NY, Artist in Residence, Location One, NY, Process Space Artist in Residence Program Governors Island, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York, NY. He has done public art projects on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, Penn State University, PA at Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, NY, First Street Green Art Park, New York, NY and the Three Rivers Arts Festival, Pittsburgh, PA in 2015 and in Harlem in collaboration with the Studio Museum in Harlem.