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"As the title suggests, I hope this exhibition will bring out the complexities of the conversations that happen on different Main Streets, with their disparities of race, class and economics,” Rodney McMillian said. McMillian juxtaposes these sculptures with works such as Untitled (The Supreme Court Painting) (2004-06) that challenge the terms that government and the media use to discuss justice, democracy and the rights of citizens in their private space, especially as these political ideals are experienced by African Americans. In works such as Couch (2012)-a sateen sofa sawed in half and then cemented back together-McMillian uses post-consumer objects including discarded mattresses, carpets, chairs and bedsheets as both the material and the subject matter of his art, as he evokes the physical, psychological and economic distress of communities hit by loan defaults, home foreclosures and unemployment. Keith, Deputy Director of Exhibitions and Programs at the California African American Museum, Los Angeles, in close collaboration with the artist, the exhibition brings together more than twenty key works made from 2003 to the present that use symbols of domesticity to scrutinize the political and economic biases within the myth of a universal, middle-class “Main Street.”
#Robert bruce williams portrait painter full#
Rodney McMillian: Views of Main Street is the first exhibition to reveal the full trajectory of this major aspect of the artist’s complex and varied practice in painting, sculpture, video and performance. Finally, Ride to Da (Art) Club juxtaposes videos that self-reflexively take on issues of ambition and belonging in the contemporary art world as well as the pop music and club scene.įor more than a decade, Rodney McMillian has been exploring the domain of home as part of a larger examination of the intersection of race, class, gender and socioeconomic policy.
#Robert bruce williams portrait painter series#
Da Churen brings together works from the artist’s iconic “Churen” (2003-05) series, which traces a set of family archetypes, narrated over a series of phone calls. Taking its point of departure from the artist’s ongoing negotiation of love, longing and loss, The Pursuit of Happyness features both narrative and music videos. Each highlights a recurring theme in Linzy’s work. The video component of If it Don’t Fit is organized into three hour-long programs, which were on view throughout the duration of the exhibition. His work draws on a variety of American pop- and counter-culture genres, including early video and performance art, gay drag performance, reality television competitions and YouTube videos. Since then, he has continued to work as a writer-director-actor and singer-songwriter. Linzy first presented his cast of comedic and dramatic characters at the Studio Museum in African Queen (2005), and then again in Frequency (2005), a group exhibition of emerging artists. With innuendo and double entendre, this blues lyric speaks to both the disappointments and hopes of attempting to belong to aesthetic genres, social categories and intimate relationships. The title, If it Don’t Fit, is appropriated from a song Linzy used in a recent video. From his original take on the soap opera and sketch comedy genres to his music videos and filmic shorts, this compilation tracks the artist’s clever and complex approach to questions of race, gender, class, sexuality and national identity. Kalup Linzy: If it Don’t Fit was the first museum survey of the artist’s work, and included over twenty videos made over the last seven years, a drawing suite and a one-night acoustic performance.