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Deborah Roberts — Tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow
Deborah Roberts — Tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow
Deborah Roberts — Tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow
Deborah Roberts — Tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow
Deborah Roberts — Tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow
Deborah Roberts — Tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow
Deborah Roberts — Tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow
Deborah Roberts

Tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow

2023

"Tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow" confronts its viewer immediately and without softening. Spanning over four meters across a monumental diptych, the work presents two identical boys in yellow and red striped tops, facing one another as though caught in a mirror's reflection. The composition is inspired by the story of Ralph Yarl, the sixteen-year-old Black teenager shot twice after ringing the wrong doorbell in Kansas City, Missouri in 2023. Roberts builds her surfaces through a dense interplay of acrylic, graphite, pastel, ink, and collage, layering found imagery sourced from the internet, literature, and photography alongside hand-painted passages to dismantle the visual stereotypes that mainstream culture has long perpetuated. The result is a work that is at once monumental in scale and acutely, painfully intimate. The two panels diverge in ways that accumulate meaning slowly. On the right, the boy stands against a white ground, meeting the viewer's gaze with open curiosity. On the left, the same figure is set against darkness, his hands raised, his skin tone rendered in such subtle gradations that his body seems to recede from visibility, as though being absorbed by the void around him. Roberts deploys spare, deliberate line work that carries an unmistakable reference to chalk outlines drawn at crime scenes, a coded symbol embedded within an image of youth and ordinary childhood. The act of looking becomes charged and morally weighted. Created for Roberts' 2023 solo exhibition "What about us?" in New York, this work belongs to a practice that understands collage as a historically radical medium, one artists have employed since the early twentieth century to challenge normative culture and construct more truthful, inclusive visual narratives. Roberts continues and deepens that tradition here, using the vulnerability of a child's body to hold a conversation about race, visibility, and the particular precarity of Black life in America. For collectors, this is among Roberts' most significant and emotionally sustained statements to date.

Medium
Acrylic, graphite, pastel, ink and collage on canvas
Overall
Framed
Signed
Yes
Location
Stephen Friedman Gallery, London

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About this work

Deborah Roberts, Tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow, 2023

"Tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow" confronts its viewer immediately and without softening. Spanning over four meters across a monumental diptych, the work presents two identical boys in yellow and red striped tops, facing one another as though caught in a mirror's reflection. The composition is inspired by the story of Ralph Yarl, the sixteen-year-old Black teenager shot twice after ringing the wrong doorbell in Kansas City, Missouri in 2023. Roberts builds her surfaces through a dense interplay of acrylic, graphite, pastel, ink, and collage, layering found imagery sourced from the internet, literature, and photography alongside hand-painted passages to dismantle the visual stereotypes that mainstream culture has long perpetuated. The result is a work that is at once monumental in scale and acutely, painfully intimate. The two panels diverge in ways that accumulate meaning slowly. On the right, the boy stands against a white ground, meeting the viewer's gaze with open curiosity. On the left, the same figure is set against darkness, his hands raised, his skin tone rendered in such subtle gradations that his body seems to recede from visibility, as though being absorbed by the void around him. Roberts deploys spare, deliberate line work that carries an unmistakable reference to chalk outlines drawn at crime scenes, a coded symbol embedded within an image of youth and ordinary childhood. The act of looking becomes charged and morally weighted. Created for Roberts' 2023 solo exhibition "What about us?" in New York, this work belongs to a practice that understands collage as a historically radical medium, one artists have employed since the early twentieth century to challenge normative culture and construct more truthful, inclusive visual narratives. Roberts continues and deepens that tradition here, using the vulnerability of a child's body to hold a conversation about race, visibility, and the particular precarity of Black life in America. For collectors, this is among Roberts' most significant and emotionally sustained statements to date.

Medium
Acrylic, graphite, pastel, ink and collage on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 214.6 x 427 x 6.2 cm • framed: 214.6 x 427 x 6.2 cm
Year
2023
Signed
Hand-signed by the artist
Seen at
Stephen Friedman Gallery, London

More works by Deborah Roberts

Collected by

Sebastián Naranjo