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| Detail of video still from M. Lamar’s Badass Nigga, the Charlie Looker of Psalm Zero Remix, 2013; HD video, sound, 5 minutes; image via sfai.edu. |
January 30 – February 28, 2015
Opening reception: Friday, January 30, 2015,
7:00 – 9:00PM
RSVP online here
Walter and
McBean Galleries
800
Chestnut Street
San
Francisco, CA
From
sfai.edu:
M. Lamar’s exhibition NEGROGOTHIC strips the American enterprise to its hard-core
components of race, sexuality, violence, and optimism. In imagery that links
the histories of slavery and Robert Mapplethorpe, and through sound that
connects Lamar’s operatic counter-tenor with doom metal, the artist offers a
searing and soaring portrait of the contemporary United States.
Through an
immersive video projection, a haunting soundtrack, large-scale prints, and
sculptural props, Lamar unveils a stunning, epic vision of black male figures
in transition. Lamar’s expansive narrative draws from his own African American
heritage, and performs a cultural grand tour that bridges the slave ship and
bondage imagery, lynchings with capital punishment, and the Negro spiritual and
contemporary protest. In this fearlessly constructed landscape, Lamar projects
ecstatic resistance toward both the subjugated and essentialized black male.
Here we
witness the violence of our past, freedoms of the present, alongside the
ongoing inability of the American justice system to materially protect black
youth. Lamar painfully evokes injustice, even as he occupies the transcendent,
empowered role of the diva.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
M. Lamar
works across opera, metal, performance, video, and sculpture to craft sprawling
narratives of racial and sexual transformation. Lamar holds a BFA from SFAI and
attended the Yale School of Art, sculpture program, before dropping out to
pursue music. Lamar’s work has been presented internationally, most recently at
Participant Inc., New York; New Museum, New York; Södra Teatern, Stockholm;
Warehouse9, Copenhagen; WWDIS Fest, Gothenburg and Stockholm; The International
Theater Festival, Donzdorf, Germany; Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New
York; Performance Space 122, New York; and African American Art & Culture
Complex, San Francisco; among others. Lamar has had many years of classical
vocal study with Ira Siff, among others; and is a recipient of the Franklin
Furnace Fund Grant 2013–14. He recently performed the pre-transition role of
Sophia, alongside his twin sister Laverne Cox, in Orange Is the New Black.
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