Strawberry Review: Afro-Futurism by Hebru Brantley

One of my FAVORITE artist hales from my city: Hebru Brantley. He recently did an art exhibit this past April at the Zhou B Art Center.

Yesterday's Losers, Tomorrow's CEOs (from Afro-Futurism exhibit)

What I love most about Brantley is that for a self-taught artist, he has a message to his vision and every piece of work he makes speaks massive volumes. He uses the stereotyped images of urban living with a mixture of comic book characters and superheroes. The way he fuses past images in African American history with cartoons of our present and future is genius! He mixes contemporary art and sculpture with the gritty styles of street graffiti to display the messages of possibilities.

Meet "Flyboy," the goggle-wearing hero in artist Hebru Brantley's solo exhibition, Afro-Futurism: (Impossible View), who takes children mired in an abyss of socioeconomic obstacles and celebrates their unwavering spirit to survive and succeed despite it all. Brantley, a self-taught painter and illustrator from Chicago's South Side, conceived Flyboy via "attempts to commercialize the idea of an ethnic hero," something not always visible in the general cultural landscape.

The Mask Wall (made with fiber glass, acrylic and plaster) 

Gabe Mask

Religion 

Wait a Cotton Pickn' Minute

Flyboy

Kool-Aid Mixed Media

Escape

Check out the process of Impossible View:

For more on Hebru Brantley, check out:

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