David Humphrey's 'The Swimmer' at Fredericks & Freiser explores racial and sexual dynamics

David Humphrey's painting The Swimmer, featured in his exhibition 'I'm Glad We Had That Conversation' at Fredericks & Freiser, presents a charged interaction between a shirtless young white man and a laughing black woman. The work departs from Humphrey's typical abstract style, using a deceptively simple composition with a wobbly grey auto fragment, green shrub, and red brick hedge in the foreground. Colors of the bodies and sky blue negative spaces are emphasized through formal abstraction. Humphrey sexualizes the encounter by depicting the man in low-slung blue trunks defensively embracing his torso, while a white bikini highlights the woman's brown body. The woman's expression, with closed eyes and wide-open pink lips and white teeth, introduces ambiguity between flirtatious laughter and derisive mockery. The painting is interpreted as a white painter's gesture of solidarity with Kerry James Marshall's mission to normalize black presence in the high art canon. The exhibition was reviewed in 2017 by artcritical.