Nick Cave “Made for Whites”

Jack Shainman Gallery

poster for Nick Cave “Made for Whites”

This event has ended.

Many of the works included in Made for Whites by Whites, on view at 513 West 20th Street, have formal similarities to the Rescues in that central found objects are presented within elaborate armatures built up with items from Cave’s familiar lexicon of ceramic birds and flowers, porcelain fruit, and copies of Capodimonte. However, the content is quite different. In Made for Whites by Whites, racially charged historical objects anchor the works such as the stereotypical representation of a black man with dark skin, big red lips, and white eyes in Untitled, 2014, or the Golliwog costumed mannequin in King of the Hill, 2014. These were once commonplace caricatures that infantilized and dehumanized the African American population.

This project began when Cave found a container at a flea market shaped like the head of a black man and labeled ‘Spittoon.’ He was shocked and began, “to rehabilitate the problematic loaded object and find a place of reverence and empowerment through reuse.” These remnants of another time hold a strange place in the public consciousness. They are too important to be discarded but too painful to be widely displayed. They persist at a distance across the country in the cultural gray area of flea markets and antique stores, potently saturating the American present. Cave treats these items with compassion while forcing the viewer to confront this problematic genre of mass-produced and widely disseminated collectibles. Following the artist’s unveiling of this new direction in his summer exhibition at Jack Shainman Gallery’s newly launched 30,000 square foot exhibition space, The School, in Kinderhook, New York, these two exhibitions expand the breadth and content of Cave’s oeuvre while remaining inextricably linked to the reclaiming of found objects that has always been at the core of his work.

Media

Schedule

from September 04, 2014 to October 11, 2014

Opening Reception on 2014-09-04 from 13:00 to 18:00

Artist(s)

Nick Cave

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