Sprüth Magers recently opened an exhibition on Arthur Jafa at its Los Angeles gallery. The show highlights the range of Jafa’s practice through recent paintings, sculptures and moving images, including his newest film, which has been retitled BG (2024). For the celebrated filmmaker and artist, who recently signed with Sprüth Magers for representation, the opening of nativemason will be his first solo exhibition in Los Angeles.

Jafa's newest moving image work, which was previously shown at Gladstone Gallery in New York under a different name, reassesses and reimagines the ending of Martin Scorsese's iconic film Taxi Driver (1976). Jafa approaches the final scenes of the murky neo-noir with the intent of combating the concerted effort at erasing Black American history. In the original screenplay, in those final scenes in the brothel, screenwriter Paul Schrader called for Black actors to play the roles of the pimps, but due to the racial tensions then running high across the US decided against that. Jafa strives to reinstate the Black presence that had been deleted from the film, seamlessly replacing the White actors by superimposing Black ones who then re-enact these climactic scenes.

Arthur Jafa, BG, 2024. Video, color, sound 73:16 min © Arthur Jafa. Courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery. Courtesy of Sprüth Magers.

BG is installed alongside collages, sculptures and his immense Picture Unit, which uncover the latent and overt expressions of racism that haunt the American psyche. This includes projections of the recent videos SloPEX and Dirty Tesla. Jafa's artistic practice, which now spans over three decades, is defined by his devotion to questioning and referencing the various articulations of Black identity and history.

The exhibition nativemason is open through December 14, 2024. Jafa will continue to be represented by Gladstone Gallery in New York City. More information about this and other exhibitions at Sprüth Magers can be found on their site.

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