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| Melvin Edwards, Ginau Tabaski, 2006, Welded steel, 19.88 x 19.75 x 7.75 inches. Image via alexandergray.com. |
October 30 - December 13, 2014
Opening reception: Thursday, October 30, 2014,
6-8pm
510 West
26th Street
New York,
NY
From
alexandergray.com:
“The use
of African words as titles of my sculpture is to extend the practical and
philosophical values of the large quantity of esthetic possibility in creative
art for now and the future.” ––Melvin Edwards
Alexander
Gray Associates presents an exhibition of work by Melvin Edwards reflecting his
engagement with and influence of Africa. Edwards’ first visits coincided with a
key moment in the region’s history as recently independent countries defined
their postcolonial national identities. Since his first trip in 1970 to Ghana,
Togo, Dahomey (now the Republic of Benin), and Nigeria, Edwards has
consistently traveled to Africa, often returning to Nigeria and Ghana and
making repeated trips to Senegal and Zimbabwe. He eventually established a
studio in Dakar, Senegal in 2000. His experience of and engagement with this
region and its traditional and contemporary art scene has nurtured Edwards’
investigations of metalwork and its formal qualities, abstraction, history,
language, exchanges between cultures, and the significance of personal
relationships.
The
central work in the exhibition is Homage
to the Poet Leon Gontran Damas (1978–81), a monumental installation shown
for the first time since Edwards’ retrospective at the Neuberger Museum of Art
in Purchase, NY in 1993. This work consists of several large-scale metal
geometric sculptural elements and a long piece of chain organized in relation
to each other to create an environment that encourages gathering and
meditation; collective consciousness and contemplation. Grounded to the
horizontal plain of the Gallery’s floor, the installation is oriented using the
sun as a compass in order to face East, looking towards Africa. He conceived
the work to honor Damas, a co-founder of Negritude, active in anti-colonial
politics, and a poet whose style creatively eschewed the standardized French of
the former colony and embraced influences from Harlem jazz to Caribbean
calypso. Edwards met Damas in 1969 through the poet, activist, and performance
artist Jayne Cortez, Edwards’ late wife and artistic collaborator, with whom he
traveled extensively throughout Africa and across the world.
Melvin
Edwards’ use of materials, primarily the result of his formal and aesthetic
concerns, unfold multiple meanings as they relate to African and African Diasporan
cultures and histories, represented in the exhibition in a selection of Lynch
Fragments and wall-sculptures. Returning from a trip to Nigeria in 1973,
Edwards began incorporating machetes as a formal and symbolic element as in the
disc Kasangadila: For Francisco Romão de
Oliveira e Silva (2004), made in homage to his friend Francisco Romão, a
prominent politician and key figure in the Angolan War of Independence
(1961–74). Edwards recognizes the utilitarian function of machetes in West
Africa, describing them as “another shape of steel that already exists.” At the
same time, these objects stand as embodiments of civil uprisings, which speak
to Edwards’ life-long engagement with social movements. The Lynch Fragment Ginau Tabaski (2006), created entirely
out of Senegalese objects, including the grid-like base sourced from local
metal workshops, refers to the Islamic Senegalese holy day Tabaski. Edwards
sees Tabaski, which involves feasting with family and friends, as “a day where
human beings come to grips with mortality, and with the importance of sacrifice
in order to accomplish a sense of fulfillment in life.” For Edwards, Ginau Tabaski is a summation of life,
death, and looking towards the future.
Edwards’
works also speak to a broad network of creative minds including African
artists, writers, and craftsmen, with whom he has developed personal
relationships throughout many decades. Edwards titled his Lynch Fragment Ibadan Oke (1992) in homage to his
visits to Nigeria during the 1970s. The urban landscape of the Yoruba city of
Ibadan stimulated Edwards’ interests in architecture and urban design, which
were also greatly encouraged through his close friendship with Nigerian artist
and architect Demas Nwoko. He met and worked with many others in the city,
including the Nigerian Nobel Prize-winning playwright and poet Wole Soyinka,
and the Jamaican writer Lindsay Barrett. The Fragment Djeri Djeff Papa Tall (2008) references the phrase “djeri djeff” or
“thank you” in Wolof—a widely-spoken language in Senegal—as well as Papa Ibra
Tall, a seminal Senegalese modern artist, founder of the influential tapestry
workshop Manufactures sénegalaises de arts décoratifs (MSAD). Tall and Edwards
met in Senegal in 1999, and later collaborated when Edwards produced two tapestries
in MSAD, including the large-scale Diamnaidio
(2010), on view in the exhibition.
