In Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s paintings, thick layers of paint form figures that seem to emerge from darkness. A Few For the Many centers on a young Black man who looks lost in contemplation, with his eyes directed somewhere off in the middle distance. While Yiadom-Boakye’s expressive brushstrokes appear to respond to living, breathing portrait subjects, she does not base her paintings on sitters; her cast of characters is imagined. In this “conceptual portraiture” Yiadom-Boakye foregrounds images of Black men and women as she would like them viewed—in all their emotional and intellectual complexity.