Our johnny on the spot George Shaw reports on a batch of recent exhibitions in NYC…
Installation view, 2014
Installation view, 2014
Rum Distilling, 2014
Sugar Baby, 2014
Kara Walker is best known for her Victorian-style, black paper-cut silhouettes that examine issues of African-American race, gender and violence. Her latest body of work titled Afterword, at Sikkema Jenkins, elaborates on her 2014 monumental installation at the Domino Sugar Factory in Williamsburg in which a colossal sugarcoated sphinx took centre stage. Watercolours, charcoal studies, sculptural maquettes, a severed sphinx’s paw, as well as two new videos, reveal fascinating details of the creation, installation, audiences, and dismantling of Walker’s paean to black labour in the cane fields.
Drawn by a distant light, awaken to darkness, 2013
Finding a tiny waiver within silence, 2013
Peering at the secret scene behind the artist, 2013
As a master of photographic self-portraiture and reinvention, Yasumasa Morimura has reprised just about every important pop cultural and art historical figure in his thirty-year career. At Luhring Augustine, Morimura reimagines Velazquez’s famous 1656 Las Meninas by inhabiting every character while subverting the original’s narrative and composition. The series was shot in situ at the Prado and, for the first time, includes an undisguised image of the artist to further complicate notions of authorship, originality and reproduction. But can we really be certain it’s him, after all? [Images courtesy Luhring Augustine].
Ben Rak, Bobble Heads series, 2013
Abdullah M.I. Syed, Enmeshed series, 2013
Michael Kempson, Friends and Acquaintances, 2013
As the result of a cross-cultural, international residency at Parramatta Studios, UNSW Art & Design (previously UNSW COFA) PhD candidate Abdullah M.I. Syed has curated a travelling exhibition of Australian and Pakistani artists, which include COFA alumnus Ben Rak and Head of Cicada Press Michael Kempson at Aicon Gallery. With an array of etchings and silkscreen prints, these artists together with Adeel-uz-Zafar and Roohi Shafiq Ahmed examine notions of global narratives, cultural translation, and the creation of new meanings in what is now considered the Asian century.
