How Do You Look at Abraham Lincoln Walker’s After World in Los Angeles?
Abraham Lincoln Walker: After World, 1980-1991 opens at David Kordansky Gallery in Los Angeles on November 13, 2026, and runs through December 16. The exhibition focuses on the final period of the self-taught painter’s career, when narrative figures gave way to works approaching abstraction. An opening reception takes place November 13, from 6 to 8 PM.
Walker was born in Henderson, Kentucky, in 1921 and spent most of his life in East St. Louis, Illinois. He ran a house-painting business, gaining practical knowledge of paint and surfaces through his trade. The gallery connects this experience to his experiments with oil paint, palette knives, butcher paper and Formica samples. His paintings are therefore worth approaching as made surfaces, as well as images.
Look first at the direction of the paint. Does a passage seem dragged, spread or broken into angular strokes? Then step back and see whether those marks form a body, a landscape or something less stable. This is a suggested looking exercise: it lets the physical handling of paint lead the reading instead of requiring an immediate identification of the subject.
The gallery describes Walker’s religious upbringing in the Church of God in Christ and his continuing interest in what might lie beyond visible reality, even after he left the church. That context offers a question rather than a fixed answer. How might an image suggest forces or spaces that cannot be described by a recognizable figure alone? Notice where a figure appears to emerge from, or dissolve into, its surroundings.
The exhibition is presented in collaboration with Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York. David Kordansky Gallery’s Los Angeles address is 5130 W. Edgewood Place. Regular hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 AM to 6 PM; the opening reception extends beyond those hours. Check the gallery’s current information before a later visit.
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Sources
- David Kordansky Gallery: exhibition dates, artist history, technique, address and hours
