Year: 2024
Medium: Cast glass, graphite and wood
Dimensions: 62.2 x 86.4 x 21 cm (24 1/2 x 34 x 8 1/4 in.)
Acquired from Richard Gray Gallery, 2025
“Black Compositional Thought” is the core ideological foundation that Dyson consistently upholds in his practice. From the perspective that structures such as architecture, urban developments, and social systems have systematically regulated the people who inhabit them, particularly those subjected to oppression and discrimination, Dyson argues that “if there is systemic oppression, there must be systemic liberation”.
This work features a pair of glossy black trapezoidal bases coated in graphite placed side by side. Upon each base rests a dark-colored glass form shaped like half-moons, semi-transparent and positioned with a slightly distorted bilateral symmetry. The title’s term “Hypershapes” originates from a drawing series in which geometric figures are employed to represent the history of Black liberation and resistance. Behind these seemingly improvised, simple forms lie historical events such as Henry “Box” Brown hiding in a “square” wooden crate to transport himself as a cargo to a free state, thereby escaping enslavement. Harriet Jacobs, who won her freedom after spending seven years in a cramped “triangular” attic. And Anthony Burns, who concealed himself on a ship and fled from Philadelphia to Boston, evoked the “curved line” of the vessel’s form. The history of liberation and resistance encapsulated within these shapes—square, triangle, curve—is carried forward in this work.
