Dewey Crumpler

Roll Up Project is pleased to present two new paintings by Dewey Crumpler. Crumpler explores the entanglement of people and objects in time and space, and how and commerce has shaped history and culture.

In the Harrison Street window, Untitled (2026) features a black tulip painted over a multilayered backdrop of curving loops. Gold loops float over pink and blue ones, with a yellow and orange cacophony in the far distance, and seen together, they form a sense of dimensional space. But to challenge the orientation of this space, Crumpler has collaged cardboard and paper elements that look like boats seen from above. So where are we in this swirling mass of movement? It is up to the viewer to orient themselves within this new environment, and to seek meaningful clues. Stepping closer, some of the circular silver marks reveal themselves as mirrors, merging the viewer and their streetside environment with the painted canvas. Crumpler sees the shapes as representing interlinked energies, affecting each other as in a quantum state.

Crumpler has used tulips in his work for several decades as a way to examine global commerce, the lasting repercussions of the slave trade, and Black individuals of the past and present. He recalled seeing fields of tulips swaying in the breeze at Keukenhof Gardens in Amsterdam in the early 1990s, and likened them to memories of people on crowded dance floors. But the Tulipmania craze of the 1600s also weighed on his mind, and seeing imagery of tulips shipped all around the world and taken from their natural environments reminded him of the concurrent trade of enslaved people through those same ports of trade. So tulips represent both the unique beauty and resilience of Black people, and also the diverse pressures and circumstances they have experienced through history.

Filling the windows on Third Street, Untitled (2026) also utilizes the curving loop shapes, here combined with text that reads “Ooooh we,” “Mama don’t take no mess,” and “Baby, baby, baby.” A collaged image of James Brown singing onstage, haloed in blue glitter as if radiating his energy, fills the cardboard outline of a ship’s hull. In the upper right corner, Sun Ra appears in the outline of another ship, serene amidst the vibrant palette of the canvas. Iconic musicians like James Brown and Sun Ra transmit energy to audiences in the moment, but their performances resonate long after and reach exponentially more people through time and shared memories. The dynamic movement and color palette bring powerful experiences of the past freshly into view.

To see more work in person, visit Dewey Crumpler: Sonic Lineages at the Museum of African Diaspora in San Francisco. The exhibition will be on view through May 30, 2027.

About the Artist

Dewey Crumpler is an artist and educator based in the San Francisco Bay Area. His work examines themes of cultural commodification, global commerce, and race. In addition to earning degrees at the San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco State, and Mills College, Crumpler studied mural painting under Pablo O’Higgins and David Siqueiros in Mexico City. In 1974, he completed the Multi-Ethnic Heritage Murals as a response to Victor Arnautoff’s controversial mural at George Washington High School. He taught art and ethnic studies at local universities since the 1970s, including three decades as an associate professor in painting at the San Francisco Art Institute. His work is held in the collections of SFMOMA, the de Young Museum, the California African American Museum, the Oakland Museum of California, among others. Honors include the Flintridge Foundation Award, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and Fleishhacker Foundation Eureka Award. Recent exhibitions include Dewey Crumpler: Life Studies at the Driskell Center, University of Maryland; Trade Winds at Jenkins Johnson Gallery; and Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1976-Now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Learn more about Dewey Crumpler and his work on his website and at Jenkins Johnson Gallery.