Reggie Burrows Hodges

Reggie Burrows Hodges was born in 1965 in Compton, California. He attended the University of Kansas, reportedly on a tennis scholarship, where he studied theater and film rather than fine art; the exact years of his attendance and any degree earned are not documented in public sources. His path to painting came later, after time working in theater and film, and his mature style builds compositions from a black or dark ground first, then layers color and context around figures so that identity and mood emerge from placement and light rather than facial rendering.

His institutional profile accelerated in the late 2010s and early 2020s. In 2019 he received the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation Fellowship in the Visual Arts, which came with a subsequent solo exhibition at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art (2021 to 2022). In 2020 he received a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant. Karma gallery gave him his first solo exhibition in New York in 2021, the same year he received the Jacob Lawrence Award in Art from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Museum recognition followed quickly: a solo exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2023 to 2024), Turning a Big Ship at the Addison Gallery of American Art in 2023, and in the same year he received the Addison Artist Council's inaugural Bartlett H. Hayes, Jr. Prize, and FRESH PAINT at the Parrish Art Museum in 2025, presented with The Flag Art Foundation. In 2026 his exhibition Mela opened at MICAS in Malta, his first solo museum exhibition in Europe, bringing together new work made during a 2025 residency there.

He is based in Lewiston, Maine, according to current gallery and museum sources. He is represented today by Karma, with exhibition history spanning its New York, Los Angeles, and Thomaston, Maine spaces.

Critics have connected quickly with Hodges's central formal idea, that a figure can carry weight and specificity without a rendered face, built instead from color, ground, and context. His 2023 exhibition Turning a Big Ship at the Addison Gallery of American Art coincided with the Addison Artist Council's inaugural Bartlett H. Hayes, Jr. Prize and marked his first solo museum show at a collecting institution. His 2026 exhibition Mela at MICAS in Malta, reviewed by Frieze, grew out of an extended stay in Malta during which he created an entirely new body of work, and was covered as his first solo museum exhibition in Europe, suggesting critics see his black-ground technique as adaptable to new geographies and subjects beyond his originating Compton narratives.

Hodges's auction history began in 2021, when For the Greater Good sold for GBP 441,000 (about USD 606,726) at Phillips London, a result widely described at the time as a meteoric debut for a young painter. The record climbed again on 18 May 2022, when Intersection of Color: Suite sold for USD 730,800 at Phillips. The current auction high is USD 882,000, paid for In the Service of Others at Christie's New York on 14 May 2024, a result Christie's specialists and market trackers described explicitly as a new record for the artist.

Because Hodges's public auction history is still short, dating only to late 2021, each result carries outsized weight in shaping his price trajectory, and his market should be read alongside his rapidly expanding museum exhibition history rather than in isolation. There is no published catalogue raisonne; Karma, his primary gallery, functions as the main channel for verifying works and exhibition provenance.

Hodges's market is young: his entire auction record dates from 2021 to the present, so price history should be read as an early-stage trajectory rather than a mature curve, and a single strong or soft result can move the picture meaningfully. The absence of a catalogue raisonne means provenance and authenticity questions should be directed to Karma, his representing gallery. At the same time, his institutional trajectory, including exhibitions at SFMOMA, the Addison Gallery, the Parrish Art Museum, and MICAS in Malta, along with holdings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney, and LACMA among others, has moved faster than is typical for an artist with so short an auction history, which collectors should weigh as a strong independent signal of durability.