May 23, 2013 – August 4, 2013
ANDERSON GALLERY
Virginia
Commonwealth University | School of the Arts
907 ½ West
Franklin Street
Richmond,
VA
From VCU
Arts website:
Sanford Biggers has achieved
international prominence over the last decade with a diverse body of work that
explores themes of identity, race, American history, and spirituality, often by
blending installation and performance. In Codex,
his most recently completed project, Biggers continues to probe these themes
through another stylistic departure: painting on historical quilts, many of
which were gifts to the artist from descendants of slave owners.
In
conceiving the quilt works that make up Codex,
Biggers was inspired by the Afrofuturist notion of “Harriet Tubman as
astronaut,” the renowned abolitionist who led slaves to their freedom guided by
the stars. He was also inspired by the use of quilts as signposts along the
Underground Railroad, signaling “stations” or safe houses. Biggers knits these
multivalent themes together by applying to each quilt a complex system of
imagery that includes star maps, dance notations, and the Buddhist lotus
flower, whose petals are each formed by the image of a cross-section of a slave
ship. Suspended among the quilts, cloud forms made of raw cotton not only refer
to the institution of slavery, but also evoke the theme of transcendence,
reminding the viewer of the power of the human will to overcome oppression.
Biggers
began to develop Codex after
receiving the 2010 Greenfield Prize, awarded annually by the Hermitage Artist
Retreat and the Greenfield Foundation to a mid-career artist to create new
work. “I’ve not exhibited paintings or drawings for 15 years,” noted Biggers
when the exhibition premiered at the Ringling Museum last year. “This project
brought me back to those roots.” As observed by Matthew McLendon, the museum’s
curator of modern and contemporary art, “Codex
plays a significant role in the continued maturation of Sanford Biggers’ work.
Here we see the artist reconfiguring symbolism he has used before in
three-dimensional forms through a return to his earliest form of
expression—painting.”
The
exhibition at the Anderson Gallery will also feature the artist’s 2004
installation, Calenda (Big Ass Bang!),
which humorously plays on the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe.
Patterns of footprints painted on the gallery’s walls and floor, animated by a
spinning disco ball, suggest both dance steps and celestial charts. The title
Calenda refers to a form of martial arts originating in Africa that traveled
with slaves to America, where it may have become a dance with codes concealed
in its moves.
This
presentation of Codex is made
possible with assistance from The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in
Sarasota, Florida, where it appeared March 30-October 14, 2012.
About the Artist
A Los
Angeles native now based in New York, Sanford Biggers creates artworks that
integrate film/video, installation, sculpture, drawing, original music, and
performance. In the last year alone, his work was featured in solo exhibitions
at MASS MoCA, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and New York’s Sculpture Center. His
installations, videos, and performances have been included in many notable
group exhibitions worldwide, including Prospect.1
New Orleans, Illuminations at the
Tate Modern; Whitney Biennial, and Freestyle at the Studio Museum in
Harlem, and at institutions in China, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Poland, and
Russia.
Biggers
has received many international residency awards and fellowships, including the
American Academy, Berlin, Germany; Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart,
Germany; Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland; Headlands Center for the Arts,
Sausalito, California; ARCUS Project Foundation, Ibaraki, Japan; Art in
General/Trafo Gallery Eastern European Exchange, Budapest, Hungary; and
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Madison, Maine. He has been a
fellow at the Socrates Sculpture Park, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council World
Views AIR Program, Eyebeam Atelier, Studio Museum AIR Program, and P.S. 1
International Studio Program. Other awards include a Creative Time Travel
Grant, Creative Capital Project Grant, New York Percent for the Arts
Commission, Art Matters Grant, New York Foundation for the Arts Award in
performance art/multidisciplinary work, Lambent Fellowship in the Arts, Pennies
From Heaven/New York Community Trust Award, Tanne Foundation Award, Rema Hort
Mann Foundation Award, Camille Hanks-Cosby Fellowship, and James Nelson Raymond
Fellowship from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Formerly a
visiting scholar at Harvard University’s Department of Visual and Environmental
Studies, Biggers is currently Assistant Professor at Columbia University’s
Visual Arts Program. He is also Affiliate Faculty in the Department of
Sculpture + Extended Media at the VCU School of the Arts in Richmond.
No comments:
Post a Comment