Fred Wilson “Sculptures, Paintings, and Installations: 2004–2014”
The Pace Gallery (534 W 25th St)
This event has ended.
New York—Pace presents Fred Wilson: Sculptures, Paintings, and Installations: 2004-2014. Since the beginning of his career, Wilson has created a diverse range of work that challenges assumptions of history, culture and race. Pace’s exhibition will feature works from the past ten years, including several that have never before been exhibited. A catalogue featuring an essay by Doro Globus, editor of Fred Wilson: A Critical Reader (Ridinghouse, London, 2011) will accompany the exhibition.
As Doro Globus writes in the exhibition catalogue, “Wilson’s appropriation is wide reaching. Simultaneously working with decorative art and national symbols, he breaks down the supposed structures in place and offers up an alternative view of nearly everything he touches. He treats even the seemingly simplest of forms, a mirror or a flag, in the same manner as an entire museum collection; clearly showing the relevance and import of his work outside such institutions.”
The Mete of the Muse (2006) juxtaposes differing representations of race in two bronzes: one a black patinated Egyptian figure and the other a white painted classical European nude. While this work refers to recognizable motifs without known origin, Wilson’s Ota Benga (2008) depicts an actual person who suffered a life of unthinkable hardship and degradation in the early 1900s. When exploring the collection at the Hood Museum at Dartmouth College, Wilson discovered an old plaster bust of Ota Benga, a man from the then Belgian Congo who was put on display as a specimen of the pygmy at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. He later committed suicide at the age of twenty-three. Wilson memorializes the life of Ota Benga in bronze, tying a white silk scarf around the base of the bust. Though they have been exhibited widely throughout the U. S. and Europe, including at Wilson’s solo exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2013, this is the first time The Mete of the Muse and Ota Benga will be shown in New York.
Pace’s exhibition will also feature Wilson’s complete flag series, which has never before been exhibited in its entirety. The artist strips color from flags of African and African diaspora countries, leaving only the graphic stripes, stars, crescents, and shields, applied in black acrylic paint directly on raw canvas. Selections from this series of works have previously been exhibited in London, Paris, San Francisco and Cleveland. Mimicking museum wall labels is a never before exhibited 2009 work consisting of 63 wooden plaques that describe the history and imagery of each flag.
Wilson also engages the flag to confront assumptions of American identity in Don’t (2010), superimposing various flags from the nation’s history, including the Gadsden, Confederate, and Black Liberation flags, on top of one another. Clearly visible are the phrase “Don’t Tread on Me” from the Gadsen flag, the X from the Confederate flag, the horizontal band from the Black Liberation flag, and the stars and stripes from the American flag. Globus writes, “He brings together a cacophony of voices that is layered and confusing, pointing to the chaos inherent in trying to represent a whole people with a singular heroic flag.” Wilson’s newest work using flag images, Black All Stars (2014) and Black Birds (2014), isolate star and bird iconography from the flags of African and other “black identified” countries, rendering these symbols onto a canvas surface exactly where they would be positioned in their respective flags. In The People (2010), Wilson brings together 27 flags from African, African diaspora and South Pacific nations in a grid isolating the black imagery. He continues this in four never before seen vertical groupings of eight flags—M (2010)—which the artist intends to display in the corners of the gallery.
Wilson’s mirror and chandelier sculptures demonstrate the artist’s innovative use of black glass in a centuries-old Venetian tradition, simultaneously undermining assumptions of a homogenous European culture. This exhibition will include two new mirrors and two new chandeliers, named after lines from Shakespeare’s Venetian tragedy Othello. For Speak of Me As I Am, his solo exhibition at the U.S. pavilion in the 50th Venice Biennale, Wilson began working with glass artisans on the island of Murano creating sculptures rendered in black glass. Stretching ten feet across, Wilson’s mirror work titled Act V. Scene II – Exeunt Omnes, 2014, refers to the final stage direction in Othello, during which all characters exit, leaving only the empty expanse of stage. Oh! Monstruosa Culpa! (2014), a new chandelier, combines traditional elements from the style of the 18th century Ca’ Rezzonico with Italian mid-twentieth century motifs. Globus writes, “Wilson continues to appropriate and layer familiar forms, pushing them until they become common-place yet unrecognizable.”
Pace’s exhibition will include Cadence (2014) and Whether or Not (2014), two new works comprised of Wilson’s signature black glass drips. Drips evolved out of Wilson’s first experiments with glass more than ten years ago, during a residency at the Pilchuck Glass School in Washington State. Playing with the color and shape of glass, Wilson creates his most ambiguous and natural forms, possibly evoking tears, blood or oil. Globus writes, “the black glass has the added dimension of being reflective, allowing the viewer to see themselves within the sculptures and have their own readings of the work.” Combining flags with the black glass drips, Wilson’s new works Promise (2012) and Some Loss (2012) confront themes of diaspora and the material nature of blackness.
Media
Schedule
from September 12, 2014 to October 18, 2014
Opening Reception on 2014-09-11 from 18:00 to 20:00