What does it mean to see and to be seen in art?
This question sits at the heart of Narrative Constructs: The Politics of Perception, SPAACES Gallery’s upcoming exhibition featuring Sarasota-based artists Alicia Lisa Brown and Aaron Board. Together, their work explores how the human figure continues to serve as one of the most revealing subjects in contemporary painting.
In today’s shifting art world, figurative realism remains one of the most powerful ways for artists to connect with viewers. Once overshadowed by abstraction and conceptual art, realism has reemerged as an important way to explore identity, power, and perception.
Realism today is not about copying what we see but about interpreting it. Contemporary figurative painters turn lived experience into visual stories, showing how bodies, gestures, and spaces reveal emotion and social connection. In this new realism, truth comes not from photographic accuracy but from emotional precision, from the honesty of what it feels like to be human.
Artists use the figure as a vehicle for empathy and critique, capturing the contradictions of modern life and the politics of seeing and being seen.
This return to figuration is part of a broader shift across the contemporary art world. Painters are rediscovering the body as a site of meaning that can hold stories of history, culture, and selfhood all at once. Among the most acclaimed artists working in this way are Njideka Akunyili Crosby and Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, whose approaches demonstrate how realism can be both personal and political.
Crosby’s luminous collaged interiors weave together Nigerian and American imagery through painting, drawing, and image transfer. Her work reflects layered experiences of migration, memory, and belonging. The figures she paints, rendered with quiet grace, inhabit spaces rich with cultural and familial history, inviting viewers to navigate multiple worlds at once.
Dupuy-Spencer, by contrast, turns her penetrating eye on American life. Her scenes range from public protests and family gatherings to intimate portraits of queer identity and rural Americana. Through expressive brushwork and unflinching realism, she exposes the tensions between myth and reality, tenderness and turmoil, the personal and the political.
Both artists remind us that realism today is deeply political, not because it preaches but because it insists on seeing. Through careful observation, they reclaim human complexity in a time of oversimplification.
SPAACES’ exhibition Narrative Constructs: The Politics of Perception continues this global conversation in the local context, highlighting two Sarasota-based artists whose work deepens the dialogue around representation and truth.
Alicia Lisa Brown and Aaron Board use figurative painting to explore how narratives, both social and personal, are shaped through the image. Their works move beyond likeness to reveal the fragile boundary between perception and truth.
Brown’s paintings often center on the body as a vessel of emotional memory. Through nuanced brushwork and psychological depth, she examines how identity is performed, perceived, and felt. Board’s compositions balance realism and atmosphere, positioning the figure within spaces filled with narrative tension. His subjects often seem caught between inner reflection and outward expectation, a reminder of how easily truth can shift depending on the viewer’s gaze.
Through gesture, symbolism, and psychological presence, the paintings in Narrative Constructs invite viewers to encounter not only the figures depicted but also the systems surrounding them. Every line and shadow becomes a statement about visibility and the power dynamics of being seen.
In an era defined by digital images and rapid consumption, figurative realism demands something different. It slows us down. It asks for presence. It turns looking into an act of empathy.
To see another person clearly, to recognize them as complex and alive, is both an aesthetic and ethical gesture. It is one of the most profound acts art can offer.
Across galleries and studios around the world, a new generation of artists is reclaiming realism as a language of consciousness. The figure becomes a mirror through which we see the world and ourselves anew.
For SPAACES, Narrative Constructs represents more than an exhibition. It is a continuation of our mission to advance contemporary art that challenges perception, invites dialogue, and amplifies the voices of artists shaping Sarasota’s cultural landscape.
Figurative realism shows us that the world is not just something to be seen but something to be understood. And through looking closely, we might begin to see it differently.
Narrative Constructs: The Politics of Perception
Featuring: Alicia Lisa Brown and Aaron Board
Opening Night Reception: Friday, November 21, 2026 | 6:00–8:00 PM
Exhibition Dates: November 21, 2026 – January 17, 2027
Gallery Hours: Fridays and Saturdays, 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM or by appointment
Panel Discussion: Saturday, January 17, 2027 | 5:00–6:00 PM | $20 | Refreshments