In the Galleries: Winfred Rembert
All of Me by Winfred Rembert (1945-2021), n.d. Winfred Rembert © 2023 The Estate of Winfred Rembert / ARS NY, Courtesy the estate, Fort Gansevoort, and Hauser & Wirth. Some advice: keep your hands clasped behind your back when looking at artworks by Winfred Rembert (1945-2021). There’s a strong temptation to touch them, which of course is not allowed. Part of that urge stems from Rembert’s medium. His “paintings” are actually panels of tooled leather—that most tactile of materials—incised with figures and scenes that he dyed in vibrant colors. But the impulse to touch comes more from the stories of life in the Jim Crow South that Rembert’s artworks tell. Sometimes of joy, but more often of pain, hardship, and cruelty, these stories are so powerfully affecting that you feel an instinctive need to reach out in a simple gesture of empathy. Installation view, ‘Winfred Rembert. All of Me,’ Hauser & Wirth 69th Street 23 February–22 April 2023© 2023 The Estate of Winfred Rembert / ARS NY, Courtesy the estate, Fort Gansevoort, and Hauser & Wirth Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer. Winfred Rembert: All of Me, on view until April 22 at the Upper East Side, Manhattan outpost of the international art gallery Hauser and Wirth, offers a rare chance to engage with a large number of Rembert’s works at one time. The show, mounted in collaboration with the New York art gallery Fort Gansevoort, features 44 works by Rembert, some on loan and others for sale at prices ranging from $90,000 to $400,000. The exhibition is not to be missed. The details of Rembert’s life have been told often—most notably in his prize-winning 2021 memoir, Chasing Me to My Grave, written with Erin I. Kelly—but bear