12H x 5W x 1D inches; 10H x 4W x 1D inches
Martinez’s sculpture A meditation on the possibility… of romantic love or where you goin’ with that gun in your hand , Bobby Seale and Huey Newton discuss the relationship between expressionism and social reality in Hitler’s painting depicts the legendary Black Panther leaders Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. By using Carrara marble, a material usually associated with heroic public sculptures, Martinez casts the history of African-American revolutionaries into the artistic tradition of monumentality. Like the artist’s earlier work included in the 1993 Whitney Biennial, an interactive piece made up with pins that read, “I CAN’T IMAGINE EVER WANTING TO BE WHITE,” A meditation on the possibility… continues Martinez’s effort to expose cultural contradictions and increase public awareness.
For more than three decades, the Los Angeles–based artist Daniel Joseph Martinez has used every art medium at his disposal to investigate raw aspects of American culture, dipping adeptly into derangements of body and brain, individual and society. In one well-known piece that he produced for the 1993 Whitney Biennial, he replaced the text on the museum’s admission ticket with the phrase “I Can’t Ever Imagine Wanting to Be White.” Visitors held the sentiment in their hands and kept it in their pockets. In The House America Built (2004), he re-created in exacting detail the cabin in which the Unabomber penned his manifesto. While Martinez’s concepts are tight and concise, they leave ample space to implicate the viewer. His work prompts more than finger pointing; it catalyzes introspection, signaling the necessity of taking stock of one’s own role in perpetuating difficult yet ubiquitous images.
These hand drawn maps are part of an ongoing series begun in 2008 in which Gupta asks ordinary people to sketch outlines of their home countries by memory...
Ramirez’s The International Sail is the fifth in a series that features an upside-down worn out, mended and fragmented boat sail...
The three monkeys in Don’t See, Don’t Hear, Don’t Speak are a recurring motif in Gupta’s work and refer to the Japanese pictorial maxim of the “three wise monkeys” in which Mizaru covers his eyes to “see no evil,” Kikazaru covers his ears to “hear no evil,” and Iwazaru covers his mouth to “speak no evil.” For the various performative and photographic works that continue this investigation and critique of the political environment, Gupta stages children and adults holding their own or each other’s eyes, mouths and ears...
The perceived effortlessness of power, projecting above experiences of labored subordination is examined in Death at a 30 Degree Angle by Bani Abidi, which funnels this projection of image through the studio of Ram Sutar, renowned in India for his monumental statues of political figures, generally from the post-independence generation...
In his evocative Landscape Paintings, McMillian uses second-hand bedsheets, sourced from thrift shops, as his starting point...
The Damaged series by Lisa Oppenheim takes a series of selected photographs from the Chicago Daily News (1902 – 1933) as its source material...
Untitled (San Francisco) was made in Idaho in 1984 and was facetiously dedicated to Henry Hopkins, the then director of the San Francisco Museum of Art who added “modern” to its name...
Thomas’ lenticular text-based works require viewers to shift positions as they view them in order to fully absorb their content...
South Africa Righteous Space by Hank Willis Thomas is concerned with history and identity, with the way race and ‘blackness’ has not only been informed but deliberately shaped and constructed by various forces – first through colonialism and slavery, and more recently through mass media and advertising – and reminds us of the financial and economic stakes that have always been involved in representations of race....
The Damaged series by Lisa Oppenheim takes a series of selected photographs from the Chicago Daily News (1902 – 1933) as its source material...
Douglas Gordon’s single-channel video The Left Hand Can’t See That The Right Hand is Blind, captures an unfolding scene between two hands in leather gloves—at first seemingly comfortable to be entwined, and later, engaged in a struggle...
Los rastreadores is a two-channel video by Claudia Joskowicz narrating the story of a fictitious drug lord, Ernesto Suarez, whose character is based on the well-known Bolivian drug dealer, Roberto Suárez...
Mapa-Mundi BR (postal) is a set of wooden shelves holding postcards that depict locations in Brazil named for foreign countries and cities...
Glenn Ligon’s diptych, Condition Repor t is comprised of two side-by-side prints...
The threshold in contemporary Pakistan between the security of private life and the increasingly violent and unpredictable public sphere is represented in Abidi’s 2009 series Karachi ...
The threshold in contemporary Pakistan between the security of private life and the increasingly violent and unpredictable public sphere is represented in Abidi’s 2009 series Karachi ...
Haendel’s series Knights (2011) is a set of impeccably drafted, nine-foot-tall pencil drawings depicting full suits of armor...