Reconstruction: 1.  An impression, model, or reenactment of a past event formed from the available evidence; 2.  The period 1865–77 following the Civil War, during which the states of the Confederacy were controlled by federal government and social legislation; 3.  rebuilding.

Titus Kaphar’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles opens at Roberts & Tilton on September 12, 2009.  Kaphar’s work initiates a contemporary dialogue with history.  Present in the work are manifestations of nineteenth-century American portraiture merged with modernist gestures.  Meshing historical narratives with his own, Kaphar’s work condenses the activity of decades into single objects.  His paintings/sculptures are constructions built from artifacts of art history.  Kaphar creates these paintings that he then manipulates using modern and contemporary modes of analysis, deconstruction, and reconstruction, to question the original contexts of the figures and re-present history.  By white washing, collaging, crumpling, ripping, cutting, and sewing, Kaphar reconstructs objects from the canon of art history.  In some works, paintings are stacked, one on the top of the other.  In others, intentionally hidden truths are uncovered by cutting out figures in the canvas and revealing the bare frame beneath.

Art is treated as artifact—something made by man with historical significance.  Crumpled, framed paintings appear to have been found in forgotten ruins.  A crate-enclosed portrait is visible only through slotted spaces.  The paintings speak to concealed family secrets, while the crate symbolizes the maintenance of these histories as well as the conservation of artifacts.  The distortion of truth over time is inevitable, and one can only piece together information to unearth it.

Titus Kaphar was named the first recipient of the Gwendolyn Knight and Jacob Lawrence Fellowship in 2009 by the Seattle Art Museum (SAM), Seattle, WA.  His corresponding exhibition, A History In the Making, will be on view at SAM through September 7, 2009.  In 2006, Kaphar graduated from the MFA program at Yale University and was the Artist in Residence at The Studio Museum in Harlem (New York, NY).