PAGE (NYC) and Dracula’s Revenge are pleased to present Handholders, a solo exhibition by Ravi Jackson. This show is the first in a series of collaborative presentations at 218 Centre Street.
In Handholders, Jackson indulges in painting, extending his unique blend of assemblage, carpentry, and mark making. The artist relates the act of painting to “applying makeup,”where brush and pigment enhance or conceal one’s sexuality. In this new body of work, Jackson cites a canonical lineage of art and eroticism, from Bonnard to Medieval depictions of Christ’s wound. His characteristic use of pop icons like Lil’ Kim meets a deluge of provisional brushwork. Holes recur across the show, serving as access points to peer or penetrate.
Jackson’s extended interest in the confluence of Black desire and American radicalism is made enigmatic: one is aware of a power relation between subjects but cannot name it.
In Untitled (2026), the handholding of Donald Trump and Nicki Minaj displays intimacy as power, clinging desperately. By contrast, Jackson is pointed in his use of feline subjects over female ones. The pussycat is a cunning actor in the history of art (eg. Manet’s Olympia). The exhibition’s largest cat, Seymour (2026), returns the gaze of its audience with a Mona Lisa smile. In other paintings, it passes by with its tail up, orifice out (maybe in heat)–its desires are present, but never determined.
