Renee Cox: American family
dal 9/10/2001 al 10/11/2001
Segnalato da
9/10/2001
Renee Cox: American family
Robert Miller Gallery, New York
American Family, an autobiographical and transitional work, explores the various roles Cox has assumed throughout her life from a Catholic schoolgirl, a wife and mother who knows (and shows) sexual pleasure, to black woman artist contesting an art history that has all but excluded her race. Cox describes the new work as a cross between Diary of a Mad Housewife and The Sensual Woman.
American Family, an autobiographical and transitional work, explores the various roles Cox has assumed throughout her life from a Catholic schoolgirl, a wife and mother who knows (and shows) sexual pleasure, to black woman artist contesting an art history that has all but excluded her race. Cox describes the new work as a cross between Diary of a Mad Housewife and The Sensual Woman.
With American Family, a veritable
minefield of taboos, revealed by the
miscegenated family album and the
erotic display of her own beautiful body,
Cox, the latest artist to be subjected to
Mayor Giuliani's censure for her
controversial Yo Mama's Last Supper,
is likely to raise more than eyebrows.
American Family is comprised of a
video projection, large scale
Cibachrome prints mounted on
aluminum, a series of smaller black and
white diptychs and triptychs, as well as
photographs culled from the artist's own
family album. The exhibition is
compartmentalized, suggesting the
rooms of a home. In the front room, the
"Family Room," some sixty family
photos dating from the nineteenth
century to the present document this
American family's life from its European
and Jamaican roots to its contemporary
activities at home and on holidays. The
"Family Room" is dominated by a larger
than life-size black and white
photograph of Cox's eldest son, a
proud, vulnerable prepubescent boy of
indeterminate ethnicity wrapped in an
American flag. In "Erotica," the inner
room of the gallery, are fetishistic
images of a female torso jarringly
juxtaposed with photographs of the
artist as a child. Across from this room
is a video projection of The Kiss, a
gargantuan close-up of two mouths with
interpenetrating tongues churning in
sensual slow motion. In the final room,
the "Salon," the artist inserts herself,
family members and friends into
canonical works of art history. These
works continue a growing tradition of
many contemporary artists by inserting
the excluded into famous scenes which
demonstrate thematic links with several
of Cox's earlier works including Yo
Mama's Last Supper.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a
full-color catalogue with an essay by
writer and curator Jo Anna Isaak.
Renée Cox's inaugural exhibition with
the Robert Miller Gallery will open with
a reception on October 10, 2001 from
6-8 pm.
The Robert Miller Gallery
524 West 26th Street New York, NY 10001 Tel. 212.366.4774 Fax. 212.366.4454