Reginald Colas

Reginald Colas (b. 1977, Spring Valley/NY; based in Frankfurt, Germany) is a Haitian-American artist whose acrylic paintings on canvas, a blend of figuration and abstraction, offer a glimpse into Black nonchalance. His larger-than-life portraits often feature subjects emerging from—or disappearing into—brightly saturated voids, as if they were glitches: fleeting moments the viewer was not supposed to witness. Absorbed in their own thoughts and movements, his figures neither seek nor resist the viewer’s gaze, although they are hardly unaware of it. Their detachment challenges the Western portraiture tradition, which has historically positioned subjects in relation to what they ‹own›—servants, books, family members, symbols of power and dominance. In contrast, Colas proposes that presence alone is enough.

His artistic practice explores the human will to integrate internal contradictions, rendering this subtle psychological process visible through the tension between abstraction and realism. Colas’ characters are true to form but abstracted in light and color, with blotches transmogrifying their faces like memories slipping through the mind’s grip. His process involves layering memory upon memory—sometimes allowing one image to overtake another—mirroring the internal tug-of-war that comes with change.

Inspired by Édouard Glissant’s notion of opacity, Colas embraces the right to be unexplained, to exist without needing to be decoded. This influence is evident in the quiet autonomy of his subjects: they are not symbols of resistance, nor symbols of power. They simply are.

Colas returned to painting after serving 18 years in the United States Armed Forces, reviving his practice as a therapeutic strategy during his transition back to civilian life. This experience granted him a new way of seeing and expanded the possibilities of visual storytelling. His work reflects the push and pull between peace and war, stasis and dynamism—opposites that, like abstraction and realism, only exist in relation to one another. His characters embody this negotiation, resting in stillness while remaining alert to what may come.