“Portals (Antwerp, Paris),” 2026. Three UV pigment prints on Dibond in artist's frames. (Photo: Paul Salveson © Todd Gray, courtesy of the artist and Perrotin)
For Todd Gray, a portal isn’t so much about its destination or even its origin point. Rather, it’s about connecting two distinct modes of being, however disparate they may be. That idea is at the core of Gray’s photographic practice, which often visualizes the fraught relationship between Blackness and colonialism. His solo exhibition at Perrotin Los Angeles expands upon this line of inquiry, contending that Black identity is far from static.
Aptly titled Portals, the show gathers an assortment of Gray’s new assemblages, each juxtaposing photographs of European formal gardens and Renaissance interiors with West African scenes. These images bear their own individual frames—some are oval, while others are rectangular—and they’re all meticulously stacked upon one another. The result is a collaged, heavily textured surface, one that collapses the geographic boundaries between European and African worlds.
Paradox of Liberty illustrates this effect beautifully. The composition layers three images: a landscape peppered with palm trees in Akwidaa, Ghana, where Gray has a house and studio; a marble bust of Thomas Jefferson; and the entrance to a dungeon at the Elmina slave fort, also in Ghana. Jefferson’s face is completely obscured by the fort, a visual reminder of the more than 600 enslaved people he owned during his lifetime. Likewise, the palm trees in the work’s background recall imperial fantasies of Africa, which veered toward primitivism, exoticism, and racial othering. Taken in its entirety, Paradox of Liberty stages a confrontation between European assumptions of their own excellence and the supposed savagery of Black people.
But Gray doesn’t only contend with these historical systems of power. He also investigates Black presence and the African diaspora across western contexts. The Promise, for instance, gathers photographs taken in Ghana, Rome, and Gorée, an island off the coast of Dakar, Senegal, known for its role in the 15th- to 19th-century Atlantic slave trade. In the center, a circular frame showcases two girls and a boy passing beneath an arched passageway, set against an intricate European wallpaper. Displayed in this way, it becomes increasingly clear that Black people have been present within the Atlantic world for centuries—a direct consequence of global slavery.
These themes complement Gray’s own understanding of photography and its legacy. Throughout history, the medium was often used in service of ethnographic imperialism, transforming colonial subjects into racial curiosities. In his work, Gray reverses that equation.
“Photography is the tool of hegemony where the media gives us a version of reality that we come to think of as normal and apparent, and we don’t question it,” the photographer remarked in a 2025 interview with Bomb Magazine. “I saw how media representation, seeing images of myself in Blackness portrayed in dominant culture, is always less than, not overtly emotional, not non-rational, but abject in all these other aspects.”
Gray’s practice, then, offers portals through which to revisit—and, in many ways, correct and challenge—racial othering across time. But, aside from this, his assemblages insist that Blackness is a “collective condition,” a “tapestry woven out of multiple encounters of people, place, and history,” as Ekow Eshun’s exhibition essay states.
“The conventional understanding of the photograph is that it fixes in place a moment in time,” Eshun continues. “But Gray’s works instead offer a diasporic vision of the world in which everything is connected and in motion.”
Todd Gray: Portals will be on view at Perrotin in Los Angeles through May 30, 2026. To learn more about the artist, visit Todd Gray’s website.
In his new solo exhibition, Portals, Todd Gray presents new assemblages that juxtapose photographs of European formal gardens and Renaissance interiors with scenes from West African.
“The Promise (Ghana, Rome, Gorée),” 2026. Four UV pigment prints on Dibond in artist’s frames. (Photo: Paul Salveson © Todd Gray, courtesy of the artist and Perrotin)
Detail, “The Promise (Ghana, Rome, Gorée),” 2026. (Photo: Paul Salveson)
“Octavia’s Gaze (Study #1, LACMA),” 2026. Twelve archival pigment prints in artist's frames, UV laminate. (Photo: Paul Salveson © Todd Gray, courtesy of the artist and Perrotin)
“Into This Wild Abyss / The Womb of Nature,” 2026. Five UV pigment prints on Dibond in artist's frames. (Photo: Paul Salveson © Todd Gray, courtesy of the artist and Perrotin)
Detail, “Into This Wild Abyss / The Womb of Nature,” 2026. (Photo: Paul Salveson)
Detail, “Portals (Antwerp, Paris),” 2026. (Photo: Paul Salveson)
Exploring the legacies of slavery, colonialism, and racial othering, the exhibition will be on view at Perrotin Los Angeles through May 30, 2026.
“Portals (Nashville, Sekondi-Takoradi),” 2026. Three UV pigment prints on Dibond in artist's frames. (Photo: Paul Salveson © Todd Gray, courtesy of the artist and Perrotin)
Detail, “Portals (Nashville, Sekondi-Takoradi),” 2026. (Photo: Paul Salveson)
“Paradox of Liberty (Monticello, Elmina, Akwidaa),” 2026. Three UV pigment prints on Dibond in artist's frames. (Photo: Paul Salveson © Todd Gray, courtesy of the artist and Perrotin)
“Ghost in the Machine (fever dreaming fear),” 2026. Two UV pigment prints on Dibond in artist's frames. (Photo: Paul Salveson © Todd Gray, courtesy of the artist and Perrotin)
Installation view of “Portals” at Perrotin Los Angeles, 2026. (Photo: Paul Salveson)
