Mickalene Thomas has spent more than two decades making large-scale paintings of Black women—rhinestone-embellished, richly patterned, posed in interiors that draw on art history and the domestic sphere. A new body of work turns that same gaze, for the first time, toward the Black male body. Working with a range of models including non-binary and trans men, Thomas rejects a single definition of masculinity, instead making room for tenderness and desire alongside strength. The paintings retain her signature visual language: rhinestones, acrylic, oil, staged environments. —Elena Clavarino