10 Toes With His Chest Caved In

HVW8 Gallery Los Angeles presents the first exhibition of its Emerging Artists Series, featuring Steven Traylor’s 10 Toes With His Chest Caved In, which chronicles the artist’s shared experiences as a young black man in Los Angeles.

Images are pulled from various media platforms that encompass the artist’s formative years in the city of LA. Complexities of race, sexuality, and pride are explored throughout Traylor’s work, including the multiplicities of violence illustrated in the physical, emotional, and societal disturbances which permeated into his adolescence. The ability to persevere physically in the face of adversity, but with a heavy heart emotionally informs the show’s title.

Traylor’s short film, freemyyoungsoul, features two young black men grappling with each other begging the question of what is truly being fought for. Providing insight into culturally specific rites of passage, it also forces viewers to confront how this violence transcends to more than a hard punch in the face. The violence is received, internalized, then shifted onto others– specifically black women in the community.

Traylor’s work provokes a dialogue between the viewer, the subject matter, and the medium, shedding light on the complexities of contemporary life in Los Angeles.

– Kaivalya Brewerton

 

Emerging Artists Series Vol. 1.
Steven Traylor
Opening Reception Sept. 21st – 7 – 10pm
Exhibition Runs Sept. 22nd – Oct. 7th

10 Toes With His Chest Caved In marks the first in a series by HVW8 Gallery Los Angeles to give a platform to emerging artists.

 

Steven Traylor

b. 1996, Los Angeles.

Steven is an artist and photographer living and working in Los Angeles. His work implements photography, collage, text and mixed media as medium to interrogate profound characteristics of his childhood and South Los Angeles’ black community–– specifically, the complexities of race, sexuality, and pride.

 

title: “Freemyyoungsoulll” , Video (color, sound) (2018) duration: 7:36