By
Allison K. Young
October 2025
"The title of Willie Birch’s solo exhibition at Fort Gansevoort,
Up on the Roof, is partly descriptive of the artist’s 2022 work,
Two Roofers and a Ladder. [...] Here, the artist honors the dignity of physical labor, elevating those who toil to maintain our built environment to near-heroic heights."
[...]
"Birch offers many scenes of detritus, litter, and junk, but these are not to be misread as romantic meditations on the 'resilience' of those communities most harmed by systemic poverty. His compositions convey a critique of civic mismanagement and broken democracy, and of American dreams that are centuries deferred. Barricades—wrought iron, wooden, barbed-wire, and brick—that speak to conditions of division and inequity are ubiquitous. But we also see the breaks—subtle shifts and diversions of pattern and line—that reflect the existence of ways out, across, or around this mess. In the visual cadence of Birch’s art, you can sense his respect for the rebellious genius of Black vernacular culture and history." - Allison K. Young
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