BEND DI YOUNG TREE
Haines Gallery, San Francisco, CA
November 16, 2024 - January 11, 2025
Bend Di Young Tree, which draws its title from a Jamaican idiom about the malleability of youth to forces of influence, is anchored by a suite of four related works that the artist calls his “pillar paintings.” In these autobiographical tableaux, which masterfully integrate reflective aluminum, patterned woven papers, and colorful chiaroscuro, Robertson offers a look into the familial relationships, institutions, and vernacular culture that informed his early life and worldviews. We see him as a young child, sitting at the kitchen counter of his grandparents’ home in Aberdeen, rural Jamaica, and at his fourth birthday party, posing with his late older sister, Jodiann. Other works show the artist in school and at church, surrounded by peers and authority figures whose arms reach across the panels. Throughout his work, the artist hints at his complicated feelings towards these often conservative institutions, while still registering their influence.
Robertson’s pillar paintings are complemented by new self-portraits depicting pivotal moments of transition between boyhood and manhood. These works explore notions of masculinity and adolescence, as well as Robertson’s departure from Jamaica for boarding school in the United States. As his world expands, his compositions grow in complexity.
Bend Di Young Tree introduces audiences to Robertson’s practice through a deeply personal body of work — albeit one with a broad resonance. The exhibition reflects Robertson’s desire to examine and foreground his Jamaican identity — and the realities of the Caribbean experience, both good and bad — after half a life lived abroad. In this way, the artist invites viewers to reckon with the influences — cultural and kindred — that have shaped each of us.
- Haines Gallery
