EYE (I) SPY, THE GOSPEL
June 26th - August 9th 2025
A Solo Exhibition by Lamar Robillard
Opening Reception: Thursday, June 26th 6-9 pm
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EYE (I)SPY THE GOSPEL is a solo exhibition by Lamar Robillard (b. 1991, New York) that showcases a newly produced, original body of work exploring materiality, spirituality, and perspicacity through the lens of the artist’s self-coined Black perceptivity, iconography and phenomenology as tools for reading and revealing higher consciousness.
In this presentation, Robillard equates the I (self) with the Eye (consciousness/us), consequently positing that to understand Eye (us) one must understand I (self). In search of the truth which he characterizes as the gospel, Robillard explores and exposes the tensions between the self and the system—particularly social institutions that break rather than make us.
Along this search for the gospel, Robillard finds phenomenology and perceptivity as
two components in understanding the climate of Eye. This is didactic discovery is informed by comparative literature in the fields of divinity, philosophy and theology. In particular, Robillard weaves studies and readings of This is It by Alan Watts, Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison and The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual by Harold Cruse.
Ultimately, through EYE (I), SPY THE GOSPEL, Robillard invites viewers to step into the eye of the storm with the aim of uncovering and recovering truths through an ingenious use of veiling and unveiling.
Written by Usen Esiet
Lamar Robillard (b. 1991, New York) is a conceptual artist, Photographer, and filmmaker working primarily with visual familiarity and found objects. Lamar’s practice is an act of resistance that takes a multidisciplinary approach to examining visibility, nonconformity and spirituality as it relates to identity, Black material culture and the self-coined “Unfavored American” experience. Inspired by various forms of literature, media, representation and history, he aims to insert his theory of second class citizenship into the canon through a lifelong exploration of the Unfavoured American experience while simultaneously providing authentic representation for Blackness with the absence of the Black body politic.
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