Exhibitions
DEMETRIUS WILSON: AFTERSHADOW
The Red Arrow Gallery / 919 Gallatin Ave., Suite #4 May 23 - June 27th
Demetrius Wilson
Red Arrow is pleased to present Aftershadow, a solo exhibition of new work by New York–based abstract painter Demetrius Wilson, showcasing a dynamic selection of new paintings that explore color, movement, and form. Aftershadow is set to open on May 23rd, 2026.
Paint flies across Wilson’s canvases like a collision, fragments of bodies, landscapes, and beasts locked in struggle. At times it is man against man, other times man against beast, or the lone figure set against the force of the crowd. These tensions form the heartbeat of his work, where violence, survival, and transformation intersect.
His process is driven by restless mark-making and saturated color, conjuring visions of apocalypse, hunting scenes, and primal conflicts. Wilson draws on this tension, allowing violence to become a generative force that fractures form, ruptures color, and shapes entire worlds within the canvas.
Within these worlds, tensions rise between the individual and the group. Portraits of landscapes, bodies, and bodies interacting within landscapes become recurring structures through which Wilson stages conflict. The works suggest both the isolation of the singular figure and the chaos of collective struggle, often suspended in the same visual field.
Surreal hues collide with earthen tones, producing landscapes that feel ancestral and futuristic at once. They echo the inevitability of displacement, catastrophe, and conflict, while also suggesting that out of destruction comes new creation. Abstraction, for Wilson, becomes a language of survival, a way to witness violence, embody it, and transform it into visions that foretell both ruin and renewal.
"A phrase that’s been sitting with me is “running after shadows.” It’s often understood as chasing illusions or things that don’t have real substance, but I’m interested in it in a more psychological and spiritual sense. Shadows are almost-physical perceptions of ourselves that we can never fully grasp, so why do we chase them?
There’s something deeply human in that pursuit. The desire to define ourselves through things that are fleeting, distorted, or just out of reach. To chase appearances, to hold onto false narratives, to try and capture something that disappears the moment you get too close. Maybe it’s even the desire to be the first to be labeled as the “shadow catcher.”
In these paintings, light isn’t just a symbol of truth or divinity—it can also mislead, distort, and create the very illusions we chase. And darkness isn’t only something to escape; it can hold clarity, grounding, and a kind of honesty. I’m still working within that tension, that middle ground where attraction and resistance exist at the same time." -Demetrius Wilson
Image: Demetrius Wilson, Coming of age, 2025 - 2026, Oil on canvas, 60 x 60 in
