Setting The Groundwork

A city is constructed for utilitarian purposes but for many artists, it is an eternal canvas or stage that, when used correctly, has the ability to stimulate dialogue within communities and abroad. Reggie LeFlore’s solo exhibition, Setting the Groundwork, incorporates his awareness of and appreciation for the multifaceted perspectives and practices of art in the public sphere to interrogate the power of space in the built environment and its connections to the natural world. 

Informed by his everyday interactions and collaborations with folks in the community, organizers, graffiti writers, curators, and fellow artists, LeFlore’s work embraces the nuances and complexities of street art, guiding him throughout his creative projects. While Reggie primarily uses spray paint and hand-cut stencils to create vivid, large-scale portraits and imagery, intentionality and subjectivity, unconditional to medium, provide him the space to examine the various layers of identity and legacy of cultural abundance. Boundless to the constraints and aesthetic expectations, Setting the Groundwork showcases LeFlore’s exploration of storytelling and the strength and healing that comes from sharing our ancestry and honoring it. 

Setting the Groundwork is Reggie LeFlore’s visual autobiography. Through the use of six portraits, each representing a different chapter of creativity in his life, viewers will have the opportunity to get a look into his inspirations as a child and to his collaborations across his life, highlighting his connections to community and the environments that surround it. Each foundational portrait represents a piece of LeFlore’s methodology, supported with elements containing his past, future and his current bookmark resounding on identity, afrocentricity and purpose. These experiences and influences create a larger than life, bold, vibrant story; a mural per se of his life, from his roots in Omaha to his life in Minneapolis.