People in Boxes: The Angry 1975

Wallace Kelly made ‘People in Boxes: The Angry’ with what looks like screenprinting; the shapes are simple, flat, and bold. You can really feel how the process itself – layering those colors, getting the registration just right – becomes part of what the piece is about. The colors here are amazing, like a vintage poster but with this undercurrent of…something else. There is the buttery yellow background, contrasted by deep brown, green, and orangey-beige. I’m drawn to how Kelly uses blocks of color to define these figures contorted in their black angular boxes, the figures seem constrained by the black forms, but not engulfed by them. Look at the hands in the center, how they clasp and hold; is this a gesture of support, or restraint? The way Kelly simplifies the bodies, almost like geometric puzzles, reminds me a bit of Stuart Davis. But where Davis is jazzy, Kelly feels…harsher. The anger in Kelly's work isn't just a feeling, it's a whole way of seeing. It’s a reminder that art doesn't have to be pretty to be powerful.