Modern Art Oxford, Tue July 25th - Sun October 22nd 2006

---

Su Jordan October 16, 2006

MAO occasionally has late opening nights where there's food, music and conversation (at least, if the ace Big Village have anything to do with it) to complement the work on display. On Fri 13 Oct the gallery was open (7-10.30pm) to celebrate Black History Month. I went along primarily for the music - local vocalist Asher Dust (ex Big Speakers), and impressive Zimbabwean male a cappella group Amanguni - but stumbled on the best exhibition I've seen at the gallery in some time. A mix of beautiful drawings, graphic work, sculpture and huge painterly canvases incorporating collage, there are surprises and delights at every turn. I rarely get the feeling of being touched by an artwork (more often experiencing a kind of neutral, intellectual process of disinterested looking), but in this case the work went straight to my guts. It's political, and it references familiar popular culture, so it draws you in, cleverly and subtly compelling you to feel a bit of what the depicted figures might be feeling. It's also beautiful. In the small room between the main galleries upstairs the viewer faces two large glass-framed pictures side by side, one plain white, one plain black but for some grinning teeth and eyes. Examine the title of the piece, look closer and you might find out something about yourself! I love this kind of thing - not trickery, but beautiful, witty prodding of your mind. Which is what I wish art could do more often.

---

Lita Doolan August 3, 2006

Fired by the geography of an early childhood in Birmingham, Alabama in the 1950's, Kerry James Marshall uses a wide range of art references to position the black figure centrally on the Art history map. Images of jet black figures work to remove any negative connotations of being black; in 'Dark and Handsome' sparks of light gleam on a polished face. There is a matter-of-factness about each figure's rhetorical blackness; in 'Dark and Lovely' (also the name of a hair product) the beauty is clearly apparent within the blackness. Moving at an early age to South Central Los Angeles, near to the Black Panther headquarters, a strong direction for the work of this unique voice amongst American Artists is established. The 'Souvenir' series of paintings and sculptures pay tribute to the Civil Rights movement where oversized printing stamps bear the slogans of the era; 'Black Power!'

The image remains central to all of Marshall's work, possibly due to an early visual acuity nurtured by a School Teacher who would show him an illustrated book of the world as a reward for good behaviour. This experience influences Marshall's early work as seen in the cubist-styled abstract landscape collages which capture night in the Tropics sometime between midnight and the dawn. Recent work, 'Rhythm Mastr', is a graphic novel or 'comic about a comic' for the 21st century. Cartoon strips are printed in the format found in the Daily Newspapers except there are gaps. As with life, the viewer copes with the discontinuity of 'Rhythm Mastr' and makes do with the fragments.

Whilst each work comes back to traditional iconic representation, the symbolism in Marshall's work offers many levels of interpretation open to the viewer. A West African burial tradition is referenced in 'Lost Boys' (1993) of leaving the last item used by the deceased on the grave, in this case a cupid doll. In 'Lost Boys, AKA Baby Brother'; Harlequin romance novels with conventional images of white female beauty are collaged onto a canvas portraying Baby Brother wearing a plastic bag on his head. Baby Brother is a player, he is comfortable to walk around with a bag on his head in the daytime secure in the knowledge his hair will look terrific later that night. The two stereotypes clash to represent a historical imperative that your success is incomplete in a way without a white woman

As a viewer, the exhibition serves to heighten an inescapable sadness that the black figure is absent from most of the significant works displayed in the majority of Art galleries. Marshall relates to this on a personal level, having rarely seen a black Artist representing a black image in his/her own work during Marshall's own museum trips as a young person. As ever, Marshall finds the poetry in the political, the 'Lost Boys' series represents the young black men who have been cut down in their prime be it by prison sentences, illiteracy or bad housing. Marshall is a realist however and does not claim that even in the lifting of oppression all will be perfect. He works this concept through his recent 'Vignettes' series that bear an 18th century rococo sensibility. The Artist lives in Chicago.

Share this event