Fred Wilson in Pace Gallery, 534 W. 25th Street New York, till October 18
The Mete of the Muse, 2006.
About the exhibtion:
(review on the website of Artforum, September 23, 2014)
Urgent and metaphysical, Fred Wilson’s latest exhibition is an elegantly rendered meditation on the African diaspora. His sculpture The Mete of the Muse, 2006, occupies the center of the main room. An ancient Egyptian figure made of bronze with black patina stands beside the figure of a woman, also made of bronze but painted white, sculpted and posed in the Greco-Roman style. Across the room and facing that centerpiece is Ota Benga, 2008, a bronze cast of a young man stolen from Congo and exhibited at the 1904 World’s Fair and Bronx Zoo; a delicately tied white scarf suggestively drapes the base of the sculpture.
Ota Benga, 2008.
Surrounding these is a series of paintings of flags from African and Caribbean nations, including The People and M, both 2010. Only the black parts of each flag are painted—the rest is left blank. Juxtaposing this series is Untitled, 2009, an installation of sixty-three wooden plaques describing the color symbolism of the flags on display. Don’t, 2010, also a work of black acrylic on canvas, strikes a different note by presenting various versions of American flags layered one on top of the another. Meanwhile, carefully arranged on the wall of the second room, Wilson uses black and reflective tear-shaped blown glass for the works Cadence and Whether or Not, both 2014. On either side of these works are three Venetian-style works whose titles echo Othello: Act V. Scene II—Exeunt Omnes, 2014, I Saw Othello’s Visage in His Mind, 2013, and No Way But This, 2012—less a literary allusion than a gesture toward a new form of empathy.
Untitled (African Union) , 2011.
About Fred Wilson:
Born: 1954
Hometown: Bronx, NY
Lives and Works: New York, NY
Education: BFA, State University of New York, Purchase, NY, 1976
Fred Wilson is a conceptual artist of African-American and Caribbean descent who’s primarily known for rearranging art and artifacts in museum collections to reveal the inherent racism and gender politics that are often overlooked. First gaining notoriety in the early ’90s with the exhibition Mining the Museum, in which he placed a whipping post from pre-Civil War America in a gallery and surrounded it with four ornate chairs—all from the permanent collection of the Maryland Historical Society.
Whether or Not, 2014.
Wilson has represented the United States at the Biennial Cairo and the Venice Biennale. The recipient of numerous awards, including a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and the Larry Aldrich Foundation Award, Wilson is a trustee at the Whitney Museum and the SculptureCenter. As both critic and insider in the museum world, Wilson’s work challenges the outdated racial and gender hierarchies that these institutions are slow to shed.
Courtesy: Pace Gallery, New York, NY
