There are instances when a work of art responds to a moment with sharp clarity that can only be achieved when the past catches up with the present.
In the main gallery at Artspace, a patch of dirt neatly shaped into a low platform features an installation by Raleigh artist André Leon Gray containing found materials encased in glass—its presence is both an invitation and a provocation. I experienced the work on two occasions, walking away with a different read each time.
Gray thrives in this malleable and subjective conceptual space. His work in collage, assemblage, and photography is suffused with codes that require some unpacking to decipher, if you’re willing to invest the time.
In his solo show on display titled Full Spectrum Dominance, Gray debuts new work that tackles gentrification, a concept the artist began exploring in 2015 while documenting the dismantling of his childhood neighborhood in Raleigh.
The show opens with an installation titled “requiem 4 an urban myth” (2025), a family room vignette contains household items displayed on a Persian rug: A globe rests on a black crate filled with encyclopedias and cassette tapes, an organ is surrounded by family photographs, church fans, and other mementos attached to a quatrefoil patterned display. A small video screen, meanwhile, displays a black-and-white recording of demolition equipment dredging piles of earth as it tears down a home— workers throw debris into a dumpster, as dirt slowly tumbles from the articulated arm of the excavator.
The area code 919 painted on the side of the dumpster is the only clue to the site of the demolition, but this familiar scene of extraction transcends space and time, a point that Gray further elucidates throughout the exhibition, conjuring connections to indigenous land sovereignty, displacement, and assimilation.
Through text-based works including letterpress posters and etched signage, Gray sprinkles in inquiries disguised as statements: “I used to live in the hood until the suburbs moved in…” and “Indian Land For $ale”. Through these juxtapositions, Gray challenges present-day power structures and their historical antecedents.
Surrounded by Gray’s thoughtfully repurposed objects, the two-inch patch of dirt on the gallery floor most captured my attention…. The soil surrounds a black pillar holding a vintage typewriter and the familiar trappings of a 20th-century writer—a glass pen holder, an ashtray with a cigar, and an in-box stacked with typed pages from a manuscript. The objects and their placement on the soil conjure thoughts of writers creating new worlds through prose. Two planted trees flank the glass case, evoking new ideas springing from the earth.
In hindsight, that initial read of the work was wildly off base.
It wasn’t until I saw the show a second time, last Saturday, that I became more acutely aware of Gray’s provocation. This time, a sign was placed next to the installation warning viewers against stepping onto the dirt surrounding “The Antagonist” (2025). That warning prompted a closer look at a repeated line that appears on the page in the typewriter.
“All war and no peace makes Bibi a bad boy.”
The phrase recalls fictional writer Jack Torrance’s descent into murderous madness in the horror film The Shining. From here, the pieces of Gray’s puzzle fall into place: “Bibi” is the nickname of Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel. Next to the “manuscript” is a copy of the 1928 book titled Propaganda–The Public Mind in the Making by Edward L. Bernays. The book, coupled with the repeated turn of phrase, draws the viewer’s attention toward Israel and Gaza, in critique of Zionist rhetoric that challenges dissent against genocide and equates support of Palestine with anti-semitism.
When I last saw this work on June 21st, the United States, in support of Israel, bombed three Iranian nuclear sites, triggering a spate of air strikes between Iran and Israel in its wake. Grappling with the connections between the origins of this artwork and this present moment brought the title of Gray’s show into sharp focus.
Full Spectrum Dominance, in its final few days at Artspace, asks us to examine the ramifications of a power structure that assumes control over all elements of warfare, including what is constructed in the rubble of the destruction.
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