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DONTÉ K. HAYES is of the hip-hop generation but not in it. His painting of grinning, big-eyed "Hip Hopstrels" makes it clear he thinks that the world of bling and swagger plays into old racist stereotypes just as much as the minstrel show did.

This still-youthful African-American artist is growing and changing rapidly. His show at Spruill Gallery earlier this year has been followed by the four-year retrospective at the Clarkston campus of Georgia Perimeter College.

(ENLARGE)
Donté K. Hayes' Gingerblack figures symbolically confront everyday racism and their own emotions. "Baggage Claim" (above) and "Nest" are acrylic on roofing paper.
(ENLARGE)
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Hayes followed up his stereotypes series with the Gingerblack series, featuring a gingerbread man-shaped black figure who goes through symbolic confrontations with everyday racism and his own emotions.

"Difference Between Finding and Looting Food," for example, refers to the looting legends in Hurricane Katrina news coverage. "Eating Myself to Death" is about more personal kinds of food issues.

Hayes, who uses a controlled painting style on the funky medium of roofing paper, is a gradually but steadily rising star.

His new wall sculptures take his Gingerblack men into the world of the Middle Passage, putting them in wood boxes that refer to slave ships, among other things. Branching out to "Dirt and Nails," as the title of one piece has it, pushes his ideas in new, even grittier aesthetic directions.

Hayes will deliver an artist's talk Sept. 7 at a public reception from 5 to 8 p.m.

• THE 411: Through Sept. 27. 8 a.m.-10 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays, 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Fridays, 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturdays, 1-6 p.m. Sundays. Cherry Gallery (fourth floor of the Learning Resource Center), Georgia Perimeter College, 555 North Indian Creek Road, Clarkston. 678-891-3556. www.gpc.edu.

— Jerry Cullum