May 2015 – Page 2 – Deidre Adams

More selections from the Studio Museum

The Studio Museum in Harlem – 144 West 125th Street, New York

Samuel Levi Jones – Unbound

Installation view of Unbound, work by Samuel Levi Jones

Samuel Levi Jones (b. 1978) deconstructs and manipulates books such as encyclopedias and textbooks, to critically explore systems of knowledge and power.

In 2013, Jones began collecting the encyclopedias and reference books—often understood as authoritative sources of information, even though they are sometimes biased and inaccurate—that form the foundation of his current project. He tears the covers off these books and stitches the exposed binding surfaces together in grids, which he then mounts on canvas.

In the three wall works, form and materiality are emphasized, while function and value are called into question—the books have been stripped of authoritative identity. These works engage recent criticism of the law and the justice system with respect to human rights and social welfare. (The Studio Museum)

This work inspires feelings of what I admiringly call “jealous rage” – meaning that it is wonderful and complete and just so right. I wish I’d been the one to think of it and do it, but instead I can only gaze upon it in reverence. It carries the evidence of intense and thoughtful process, with a fine balance between utility and delicacy, and the visual effect is stunning. Its meaning is subtle and cannot be understood through a casual glance. And the fact that it’s made from repurposed books is the kicker.

Salon Style

Through an interdisciplinary examination, Salon Style looks at artists that use hair and fingernails as subjects or media in order to explore the complexities of identity and issues such as gender, politics and consumerism.

White Noise, 2014, by Mark Bradford

In White Noise, Bradford appropriates a culturally specific material—the endpapers used in perming hair—to construct a highly evocative, pixelated collage that unites art and the beauty industry. … The dynamic arrangement evokes the spontaneous fluctuations and growth of urban communities, a theme common to the artist’s work.

White Noise, detail

Who Can Say No to a Gorgeous Brunette? 2007, by Hank Willis Thomas

Black pride came with accessories: the Afros, dashikis, bubba, gels, Afro picks and other signifiers of a truly enlightened and politicized black person. The commercial arena was quick to appropriate these objects, of course, and soon major department stores were selling all of these items to eager black consumers anxious to remake themselves in a more enlightened fashion. This made the question of black pride difficult to locate with any kind of visual authenticity. How could that pride be after all if one of its signifiers—in the form of an Afro wig, for example—could be purchased at a mainstream white department store?

…
[T]his ambiguity is only heightened by the passage of time. If there was once any deep meaning to an image of a black woman looking into the camera with a head full of “natural” hair, that meaning is now diffused, haunted by a nostalgia of sorts. That black women with big Afros are not traditionally referred to as “gorgeous brunettes” only makes a reading of this picture even more problematic. By removing this seemingly iconic image from its original context, and re-presenting it in the contemporary moment, Thomas points to both the enduring challenge of fixing photographic meaning and the loaded social and cultural baggage, as well as presumptions, that still cling to the black subject.

—Dawoud Bey, excerpted from Re:Collection: Selected works from the Studio Museum in Harlem

Selections from “BLAXIDERMY Beauty Supply Nail Sconces,” 2010, by Pamela Council

There were was quite a lot more on display; too numerous to show. Here are just a couple more:

The Picnic, 1940, by Beaufort Delaney

Beauford Delaney’s The Picnic deftly recalls Édouard Manet’s Le déjeuner dur l’herbe (1862). … Delaney consciously inserts black bodies into this leisurely scene, echoing an image well recognized in international art history. For its time, it must have been an unusual image. In our time, it remains a beautifully insistent and powerful one.

Rat (from the “C-Stunner” series), 2010, by Cyrus Kabiru.

Rat is part of the exhibition Concealed: Selections from the Permanent Collection which includes works by modern and contemporary artists that address masking as art and performance.

May 12th, 2015|Interesting Artists|1 Comment

Trenton Doyle Hancock at the Studio Museum

Trenton Doyle Hancock: Skin and Bones, 20 Years of Drawing

The Studio Museum in Harlem
144 West 125th Street, New York

This exhibition has so many parts, it’s hard to know where to begin. It’s fascinating for several reasons: The in-depth, ongoing narrative of characters springing forth from the artist’s imagination and the fantastic rendering thereof, the variety of media employed in his process, the obsessive level of detail in the drawings, and the obvious dedication to exploring many different approaches to an idea. The most impressive aspect, besides seeing how Hancock’s work has evolved over the years, is the way the exhibition completely takes over the large and varied space, turning individual pieces into themes, then into a comprehensive installation complete with painting, drawing, and narrative applied directly to the walls themselves.

Bye and Bye, 2002, acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 84 x 132 inches
Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas

Bye and Bye, detail

The exhibition features more than two hundred works of art as well as a collection of the artist’s notebooks, sketchbooks, and studies, many showing the preparation for several public commissions. Comprehensive in scope, this survey includes works from 1984 to 2014, chronicling the foundation of the artist’s prolific career. The exhibition provides a glimpse into the evolution of Hancock’s idiosyncratic vision beginning in his childhood. Ephemera such as early childhood drawings and the artist’s comic strip that ran in a college newspaper are featured to allow viewers to see the genesis of the artist’s mythology as well as the evolution of his practice. (Contemporary Arts Museum Houston)

Vegans Send Newly Acquired Moundmeat to the Tofu Converter, 2004

The section Moundish chronicles an epic narrative encompassing ten years of artistic production. Hancock’s mythology of the Mounds contains a full and varied cast of characters who move between good and evil. The story includes the Mounds – half-plant, half-animal creatures — who are preyed upon by their mortal enemies, the puritanical, conformist Vegans. Additional characters include Torpedoboy, the artist’s alter ego and a protector of the Mounds whose morality is highly suspect; Homerbuctas, father of the Mounds, Mound #1, The Legend, the very first Mound to exist; Painter, a spirit energy who brings color to this world; and Loid, a judgmental force who sees morality as either black or white.
(Wall label accompanying the work in the series)

Vegans Send Newly Acquired Moundmeat to the Tofu Converter (detail)

The From the Mirror section contains a variety of self-portraits from a period of more than twenty years. In recent years the variations “have become more wide-ranging; Hancock himself is now a character in his own mythology.”

The grouping I found most interesting was the The Liminal Room, which contains “stand-alone works that showcase Hancock’s experimentation with drawing as a method of visual brainstorming with both imagery and language. The works in this section range from doodles with only a few lines to convey the subjects, to more complex works that are highly detailed and full of visual information.”

Next to these was a group of drawings mounted on a wall that was covered with what seemed to be a wallpaper of pages and pages filled with endless close, tiny handwriting in a kind of code. I didn’t see any wall label explaining these and I never did find out what the code represented.

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Adams-_MG_4719-

Hancock has received a lot of attention for this exhibition, even a review in Forbes, of all things. It’s interesting for the many direct quotes from the artist, including this one:

“What’s written about my characters and the names that I’ve assigned to these creatures is just one layer of a seven-layer cake. I don’t want the work to fall too far to the left or too far to the right; I want it to exist on a fine line. I want the work to be open where people can find their ways into the work and then find their ways out.”

There were several other interesting things on exhibit at the Studio Museum; more about them tomorrow.

May 11th, 2015|Interesting Artists|Comments Off

Composition IV – Sold!

Just a quick one today, to celebrate some good news.

I had a lovely trip to Portland last week to attend the SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) Fiberlandia conference in Portland. It was fun to see old friends again and meet some new ones. The presentations were all quite excellent, but the standouts for me were hearing Namita Gupta Wiggers talk about the position of the quilt in the context of history and the larger art world. She definitely got me thinking about trying some new directions in my work, one of which would be to consider working at a much larger scale. I tend to work within a narrow range of sizes, mostly due to the convenience of shipping and storage. But Namita made me see how working bigger could open up some new opportunities.

Maria Shell also gave a great talk on researching and applying for grant opportunities. I’ve had that on my to-do list for a long time, but for some reason always find other obligations more pressing. And still, I’m thinking, when I get done with X, Y, and Z, I’ll get right on that!

Then I had a great time exploring Portland, which is my new favorite city.

Yesterday, I received word that Composition IV has sold to Methodist Mansfield Medical Center. This piece has always been one of my favorites, and I’m so happy it has found a new home. Now, off to the next adventure – another trip to New York.

May 5th, 2015|Career and focus|5 Comments