Wednesday, April 11, 2012

(Un)Masked

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(Un)Masked explores new ways to imagine identity; rather than through literal representations of the self, this exhibition examines the hidden self, the masked self. (Un)Masked addresses issues of race, gender, and nationality to communicate larger issues within our current socio-political climate. Featuring contemporary work, this exhibition combines video art, collage, painting, and performative sculpture to illuminate the multi-faceted nature and dynamism of identity politics.
Masking, as a means of altering ones identity, functions in a much broader domain than a desire to appear unrecognizable. Masks help to conceal and transform, whether for protective, assimilation, or retaliation purposes. This act of donning a mask, however harmless one’s intentions are, always communicates a message. Not only does it expose personal identities, values, and desires, but it simultaneously illuminates the surrounding social and political context. The need to hide oneself, or acquire courage through false identity, effectively communicates which individuals and communities are being attacked, scrutinized, and/or marginalized. 
Throughout the history of art, artists have and continue to utilize the mask to examine and re-evaluate displays of true identity. Masks have existed in decorative and ritualistic art practices for centuries, initially developing in Eastern cultures and gaining prominence as a Western art form. Originally, masks functioned within a ritualistic realm in which their performative function activated its meaning. Western adoption of the mask, however, emphasized its production and exhibition as its primary significance. While masks have become aesthetic artifacts for passive viewing (over active interacting), these objects continue to represent “social functions and cultural contexts.”[1] Understood as socially engaged objects, masks exist within a constant conversation between their own objectness, the individual wearer, and the cultural audience.
For the wearer, masks offer transformative properties. They provide individuals with strength, courage, and veracity, which they may find difficult to express, otherwise. Masks, in a sense, act as an outer shell, something through which individuals reveal inner desires and protect vulnerabilities. The human tendency to mask identities in order to protect or promote individual characteristics of gender, nationality, or race should come as no surprise.
With the 2012 presidential campaign evermore relevant, issues of recognition and representation lay on the forefront of American’s concerns. Candidates are debating policies and revealing their true positions on pertinent issues. Many of these issues, however, target and resonate with specific social groups, groups with already marginalized identities. In looking at the conservative leaning Republican candidate Mitt Romney, his attitudes towards minorities, specifically non-white heterosexual Christian male, surface as unjust, ignorant, and threatening. And thus, because masks are innately social, to be seen not individually experienced, people wear masks in order to experience a freedom they are otherwise denied. For women, members of the LGBTQ community, African-Americans, and so on, masks function as self protection; they allow marginalized communities to construct their own sense of power, escaping an otherwise silencing force.
All of the artists featured in this exhibition address the theme of masking, whether through physically wearing a mask or by alluding to an altered identity by means of past histories. (Un)Masked helps us understand the detriments of masking by taking a deeper look at why people do so. While acquiring a mask offers security and otherwise unfelt power, it also threatens the loss of self and connotes an environment in which individuals and larger communities feel threatened. Brian Bress’ video Family portrays the ‘idealistic’ family structure, yet one can only image that behind the masked, white, flat, characterless, vapid faces exists a more interesting and dynamic family. This reduction of self, to assimilate to convention and expectation, harms those who resist this heteronormativity by casting them as “other.” In this vein, Mitt Romney has taken opposition to same-sex marriage and civil unions, arguing for traditional marriages in which all children benefit from growing up with a mother and father.
Wangechi Mutu’s beautifully gruesome collages, furthermore, intersect perfectly with another one of Romney’s flawed principles. Romney believes that America, as a nation, needs to recognize and draw upon the skills of women and minorities, specifically in the workplace, yet fails to offer benefits or aid to them in other arenas. This idea, one that mocks the seriousness with which “women and minorities” are taken, is not only absurd but also insulting and ignorant of the struggle and progress already made. Mutu’s collages challenge this archaic viewpoint; they suggest a continuously static, even distorted awareness to issues of basic civil rights and the ongoing marginalization of identities.
The social implications of mask wearing are just as significant as the personal—lending insight to community attitudes and individual sentiments. According to Erving Goffman’s “face-work theory,” there exists a natural desire to save face, to protect oneself. Yet the face, a mask itself, changes depending on the context, audience, and social interaction. Thus, it remains essential, in looking at how people choose to mask their face, to first understand why they do so.


Brian Bress, Family (Devin, John, Jason, Lewis), 2012
High definition single-channel video (color)
15min., 41 sec., loop



[1] Donald L. Grimes, “The Life History of a Mask,” The Drama Review. P.62.
Between 1994 and 2001, Chinese artist Zeng Fanzhi painted his socially pertinent 'Mask' series, visualizing the ways in which humans interact and form relationships within the public sphere, and the imaginary masks people wear to conceal their private identity to conform to societal standards. Initially a means to express Fanzhi's personal emotional distress, the artist's 'Mask' series evolved into a socially-aware investigation of the "invisible barrier"[1] people erect to maintain distance between themselves and others. The subjects of Fanzhi's paintings don masks to shield themselves from social pressures and the constant negotiation between these expectations and personal identity. Fanzhi's masked characters "sacrifice emotional life for public conformity."[2] Painted with a strong expressionist style, the characters appear as almost idealized versions of a generic figure; they wear white masks that fit snugly over their faces, they dress in fashionable clothing (largely indistinguishable from one another), and stand in front of vibrantly bold colors whose flatness rejects any specific atmospheric interpretation.

 Mask Series #6, arguably one of Fanzhi's most famous paintings from this series, addresses these aforementioned characteristics, reinforcing the fabrication of relationships and the reduction of individual personalities to generic facades. Grouped together, the eight characters appear as if part of a performance. Fanzhi imbues the mask's ambiguity with cheerfulness and forced intimacy to emphasize the theme of the false facade. He arranges the characters in close proximity to each other to underscoring the psychological distance between them. Fanzhi enhances this sense of isolation in Mask Series #7 by positioning a well-dressed male alone on a bench in a similarly regulated scene. With the characters' true selves hidden behind their respective masks, these individuals appear, falsely, sociable and engaging.

The vogue yellow background of Mask Series #6—other paintings from the series display bright pink, pastel blue, and light tangerine backgrounds—indicates a vague, ultimately fictitious space; its starkness rejects any ties to reality. Its saturated all-overness supports the repetition of the masks to further accentuate the psychological tension between alienation and individuality that Fanzhi offers.

The red scarf, worn around the necks of many characters, functions as a symbol of honor and noble spirit, dating back to the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Fanzhi’s choice to incorporate these neck scarves signifies an internal emotional struggle that harkens back to childhood. When in school, Fanzhi was the only student in his class denied a necktie, an emotionally scarring event that tortured him into adulthood. For Fanzhi, this iconic red scarf simultaneously represents normalcy and social acceptance while limiting uniqueness and individualism. Another distinctive feature of Fanzhi’s paintings are his character’s unusually large hands. As evident in Mask Series #6, each character’s embracing hands, disproportionately large with exaggerated veins, communicate their personal and emotional traits.[3]

Zeng Fanzhi, Mask Series No. 6, 1996
Oil on canvas

Zeng Fanzhi, Mask Series No. 7, 2000
Oil on canvas



[1]Li Xianting, Zeng Fanzhi, exh. cat., (Shanghai, ShanghART Gallery, 1998). http://www.shanghartgallery.com/galleryarchive/texts/id/157
[2] Karen Smith, All That Meets the Eye: Zeng Fanzhi’s Art, 1990-2002, exh. cat., (Shanghai, ShanghART Gallery, 2003). http://www.shanghartgallery.com/galleryarchive/texts/id/162
[3] Karen Smith, Mask Series 1993-1998, exh. cat. (Shanghai, ShanghART Gallery, 2006). http://www.shanghartgallery.com/galleryarchive/texts/id/155
For most of his life Jean-Michel Basquiat fought against social expectations and pressures imposed upon him as a result of his cultural identity. Born to mixed race parents, his father Haitian and mother first-generation Puerto Rican, Basquiat’s racial identity was often misunderstood. Despite an upbringing offering middle-class benefits, Basquiat assumed a more underprivileged appearance, wearing torn clothes and pursuing an interest in graffiti street art. Basquiat embraced his African-Americanness and the stereotypical social assumptions regarding Black youth. He rebelled; he fought against institutions and social structures, turning to the streets for his artistic outlet. Basquiat began his creative expression by tagging New York City with his street name, SAMO (“Same Old Shit”).
At this time, the late 1970s into the 80s, high art returned to abstracted figurative painting during the Neo-expressionist movement. At a technical level, this movement emphasized vivid colors painted in a rough, emotive style. Basquiat’s aesthetic fit perfectly within this genre—he acted as a key figure in developing the movement. Basquiat channeled his talent and drive into socio-political driven paintings sensitive to matters of racism, prejudice, and inequality. Characterized as primitive and art-brutish, Basquiat’s paintings integrated a unique symbolism with components of his African heritage.
Painting helped Basquiat navigate personal struggles with self-identification, an escape from mainstream portrayals of Blackness. His art visualized his self-alienating behaviors; the creative process became a self-reflexive investigation. Despite his acceptance within the art community, Basquiat remained an outsider, “the only black in a sea of white.”[1] This perceived ostracism caused Basquiat to reflect on Black history in a journey to create his own identity. 
Basquiat painted the realities of Black histories, juxtaposed with fabricated myths, to illuminate how African-American identities are constructed and absorbed into a collective history. Basquiat’s 1984 painting Zydeco is a visual inquisition into African-American identity and conceptions of Blackness. Zydeco refers to an energetic music style popular in the South which combines traditional and contemporary music aesthetics. This painting, consequently, focuses heavily on how the past effects present day awareness of Black identity. Basquiat opposes safe representations of Blackness by exposing stereotypes--using text, symbols, and myths associated with this demographic. Zydeco features a sole Black musician to represent the larger African-American community. This anonymous musician stands in the middle of three panels, surrounded by text and symbols which reference mainstream media’s commodification of ‘Blackness’ (in the right-hand panel) and the oppression of large corporations, such as Westinghouse, as a reminder of slavery. Basquiat’s Black identity, he reveals, is obscured by associative words such as ‘pick-axe’ and ‘wood’ which allude to the manual labor of a victimized past.
The two groupings of alien-like heads at the top-left and bottom-right corners of the painting help illuminate the theme of masked identity. These masks, generalized and outlined in white, exhibit Basquiat’s negotiations with white conceptualizations of blackness. This focus on the external, facial features, heads, etc., stems from an innately personal space. As art critic Robert Hughes speculated, Basquiat “could only rehearse his own stereotypes, his pictorial nouns for ‘head’ or ‘body’ over and over again.”[2] Basquiat also applies this simplification of elements in his use of color, layering yellow, blue, red, back, and white against a predominantly green background. These primary colors simplify the imagery and overall message of the painting to its most basic and rudimentary level. Each symbol stands distinct from the others, yet the painting achieves cohesion through the repetition of colors and shapes.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Zydeco, 1984
Acrylic and oilstick on canvas



(Un)Masked introductory text: http://artscurated.blogspot.com/2012/04/unmasked.html



[1] Cora Marshall, “Jean-Michel Basquiat, Outsider Superstar,” International Review of African American Art, 16 no. 4 (1999): 33.
[2] Cora Marshall, “Jean-Michel Basquiat, Outsider Superstar,” International Review of African American Art, 16 no. 4 (1999): 35.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Emerging photographer Adriene Hughes explores the process of self-definition and the relationship between humans and our most primitive instincts in her series deer/woman. In this series, Hughes turns inward, to her personal battle with cancer and the effects it has had on her identity. In deer/woman Hughes photographs herself; fully dressed in women’s clothing, she wears a deer mask and poses in both domestic and wild settings. Many of the photographs from the series, including deer/woman, Denver Colorado, capture Hughes interacting with other humans. What initially appears satirical about these photographs becomes melancholy upon further examination. The deer mask becomes the intermediary between human and animal, concealing her true self in light of her sickness. The deer mask, as Hughes understandably feels, becomes an exterior illusion that influences perceptions and perspectives. In each photograph Hughes engages in ordinary, if not banal, behaviors and conventional interactions. The mask, however, offsets viewer’s expectations, emphasizing her disparate identity, almost begging for people to treat her differently due to stereotypical perceptions of otherness. The mask indicates Hughes sentiments regarding her jeopardized womanhood.
Deer/woman, Denver, Colorado captures Hughes in an intimate personal relationship. Scantily clad, the masked Hughes curls up on a couch embracing a nude male. Neither Hughes nor her partner look at each other or the camera, rather they stare into the distance. As Hughes seems to reclaim her feminine identity by displaying her womanly body, the message of the photograph becomes obscured through the masks presence. Questions start to emerge regarding the couple’s relationship: Does he see her mask? Does he care? Does she feel comfortable around him? Is the deer the elephant in the room? The photograph skillfully alters viewer’s perceptions and expectations as the composition and perceived emotions somehow remove the mask from the photograph, as if the obtrusive deer head exists solely in the viewer’s mind.
Deer/woman, New Mexico communicates a similar sentiment, although a bit more subtly. With Hughes sitting in front of a cabin in the woods, the mask appears less starkly out of place. Its presence, however, continues to confuse the relationship between human and animal.  While the aforementioned image prompts consideration of social interaction, this photograph contemplates a more personal sphere, an exploration of the inner-psyche.
Adriene Hughes, deer/woman, Denver, Colorado

Adriene Hughes, deer/woman, New Mexico

(Un)Masked: Hans Haacke

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Han's Haacke's 2004 photograph Star Gazing emerged during a period of political conflict and social unrest. Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the war America waged in the Middle East prompted unjust violence against innocent victims in order to reaffirm authority. With heightened censorship imposed upon war-related broadcasting, images from America's war on terror became more powerful, revealing, and influential on public perceptions of our affairs abroad--ultimately exposing a failing democratic at home. One of the most influential of these images was a photograph of a hooded man, visually resembling Christ on a cross, taken from Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison in 2004.  Haacke's response to this image illuminates a larger cultural response to this event, extending beyond critical aesthetics of the art world. Haacke's photograph frames his male subject, torso up, in a plain dark t-shirt slouched over wearing a hood made from the starred section of the American flag completely covering his face. This photograph confronts the viewer with sentiments of sadness and empathy, simultaneously. There is an apparent conflict of patriotism felt by America collectively, one straddling the desire to defend and support our country while simultaneously realizing the country's unapologetic brutality. This photograph highlights this personal conflict and exposes its underlying message probing at the personal desire to mask oneself in a patriotic façade to conceal visceral reactions to such an unsettling reality.

Hans Haacke, Star Gazing, 2004


Pierre Huyghe’s film The Host and The Cloud reflects his personal interest in examining human existence under slightly altered conditions, looking at the roles they assume and behaviors in which they engage. To effectively survey the range of human experience in an aesthetic environment charged with art-historical meaning, Huyghe shoots his film at the Musee National des Arts et Traditions Populaires in Paris on Halloween, Valentines Day, and May Day. Huyghe’s actors partake in both directed and improvised actions, negotiating the ins and outs of the Museum. With the museum as a fixed stage, Huyghe's themes of recreation and the obscured division between reality and fiction produce different outcomes depending on the day, the actors, and director’s objectives. Huyghe transforms his actors into masked psychedelic performers whose appearances transgress narrative expectations of the self and embrace fictional alter egos. Despite this “experiment in excessive visual confusion,”[1] as Frieze aptly describes it, Huyghe’s film elicits a particular psychological sentiment with which viewers can associate.
To more effectively communicate this psychological atmosphere, Huyghe conceals a selections of his characters in LED-lit masks, as exhibited on the gallery models, to instill a sense of being both hidden and visible, seen and unseen. These masks, artificial, abstracted light on a geometrical structure, represent characters, humans. Huyghe asks his audience to consider how these mass-produced objects come to symbolize humanness through their own emotions and personal reactions. Is it the viewer, Huyghe questions, that activates and humanizes otherwise inanimate, static objects?
Positioning the masks across the floor of the gallery demands an immediate confrontation, unavoidable interaction with these masks. Because viewers must directly encounter these masks, they must both instill a personal interpretation upon them as well as consider their own mask and identity. 


Pierre Huyghe, The Host and The Cloud, 2010
@ Marian Goodman Gallery, 2011

Pierre Huyghe, The Host and The Cloud, 2010
HD video, color, surround sound
2 hrs., 1 min., 30 sec.

Pierre Huyghe, The Host and The Cloud, 2010
@ Marian Goodman Gallery, 2011


[1] Fry, Naomi. "Pierre Huyghe." Frieze, Jan. 5, 2011. http://www.frieze.com/issue/print_back/pierre-huyghe/

(Un)Masked: Brian Bress

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Artist Brian Bress, born in 1975 in Norfolk, Virginia, combines his passion for two-dimensional painting, interest in three-dimensional sculpture, and fascination with film art to create collage-like videos that appear fantastical, experimental, psychedelic, and performative, all at the same time. Bress’ playful videos have a synesthetic quality that push the boundaries of art to the point of entertainment, and his creativity manifests itself in every element of production--from set design and costuming to acting and directing. Bress’ formal training in painting and collage prompts a similar visual aesthetic in his filmmaking; he values the flattening element of video art, a similarly fixed image as that of painting. Bress’ unusual approach is realized through his ability to masterfully stitch together video segments to create a narrative that reads, not as a logical, linear story, but rather an unconscious combination of fractioned parts that ultimately create a whole. As the arts forum Art Slant described, “his visual language is a mixture of 80s music video surrealism and a collage so floating and strange it feels more composed of random poetry than precise meaning.”[1] With eye-catching visuals and unconventional artistic techniques, Bress truly absorbs viewers into his videos. Yet once they’re in, he fights against comfortable expectations of the normative. By showing subjects in varying degrees of bodily distress, Bress urges viewers to self-reflect and consider their own physicality within their surroundings.
Janus (Max) captures a man with his face painted the same pattern as the background in order to blend into his surroundings. Animal like, the subject’s determination to camouflage himself within his environment falls short as his bodily trembles accentuate the distinction between subject and background. Upon viewing the video, viewers feel the arduousness in sitting completely still, having to come to terms with the reality that pure bodily sensations, who you are and how you exist in the world, prevent your ability to blend in, completely unnoticed, with the aesthetics of your surroundings.
Similarly, Bress composes Family (Devin, John, Jason, Lewis) in the tradition of a typical family portrait--a father, mother, and their two sons--posing with their arms around one another. However, the characters appear faceless, masked in neutral colored cloth. Aside from their concealed identity, they dress in the appropriate clothing: suit and tie, blouse, sweatshirt, and tee shirt. Based on outward appearance, Devin, John, Jason, and Lewis are America’s best family, but the masks distort this unrealistic ideal. It challenges their true selves and their social interactions and alludes to a more flawed identity that, according to social standards, must remain hidden. Furthermore, the video portraiture medium seems to have a broader social significance. Its initial appearance as a static image that evolves into a video, a medium that is inherently in motion, signals the static nature of “perfect” familial structures despite changing times.
Brian Bress, Family (Devin, John, Jason, Lewis), 2012
High definition single-channel video (color)
15min., 41 sec., loop

Brian Bress, Janus (Max), 2012
High definition single-channel video (color)
16 min., 57 sec., loop



[1] Brian Bress (Artist), interview by Andres Berardini, “Rack Room: Interview with Brian Bress,” Art Slant, Record, Nov. 2010, http://www.artslant.com/ny/artists/rackroom/596.

Kenyan born and raised Catholic, artist Wangechi Mutu’s own experience of self-definition in America’s male-driven and predominantly white culture has allowed for greater awareness to constructions of identity. Her collage series “History of the Different Classes of Uterine Tumors” responds to contemporary Western pressures concerning standards of beauty, national African identity, and problematic stereotypes of African-American women. These mixed-media collages incorporate a host of mediums, textures, and images to create conglomerate identities that, each floating solitary on pages torn from vintage medical illustrations, appear more alien-like than human. Simultaneously compelling and repulsive, Mutu’s collages subtly encourage viewers to grapple with psychological, political, and social issues that extend beyond the aesthetics of each collage.
By cutting out images from popular fashion and pornographic magazines, Mutu decontextualizes these clippings from the sphere of the male gaze while simultaneously altering their meaning--they no longer appear as demoralized women but reclaimed elements of a new identity. Yet a tension exists in Mutu’s collages, between this reclaiming of beauty within a new context and a sense of otherness in negotiating one’s identity. In this respect, collage remains a significant medium for Mutu; it represents a unification of two ideas that don’t necessarily produce a logical outcome, it disrupts expectations and distinct boundaries. Fragments from widespread magazines reveal cultural ideals that perpetuate social values and expectations. Mutu’s technique of anthropomorphizing these manipulated images of beauty and positioning them atop vaguely gruesome anatomical diagrams creates an uneasy and alarming sense of racism and sexism. Mutu transforms them into ethnographic studies that emphasize an animal-like nature of African women, closer to apes than White American women.
While these collaged portraits contain deeply rooted social messages, they never blatantly thrust meaning upon their audience. They are non-realistic narratives that resist traces of elegant construction, rather they appear as if to have evolved naturally. The playfulness of these portraits, furthermore, brings a level of lightheartedness to female suffering, as if these fashioned faces temporarily mask the experienced hardships.
For Mutu, the face signifies the fundamental outlet for recognizing differences. In a culture where people find it acceptable to define identity based on facial categorization, first impressions ultimately determine who you are. For African-American women like Mutu, the face represents the center for irrational and unfounded racial oppression and presumptions. In opposition, therefore, Mutu’s series of animal-like heads disrupts stereotypes and idealizations of the African female body that is continuously perpetuated and wrongly represented.
Wangechi Mutu, Cervical Hypertrophy, 2005
Collage on found medical illustration paper

Wangechi Mutu, Ectopic Pregnancy, 2004
Glitter, ink, collage on found medical illustration paper

Wangechi Mutu, Fibroid Tumors of the Uterus, 2005
Collage on found medical illustration paper

Wangechi Mutu, Histology of the Different Classes of Uterine Tumors, 2004
Glitter, ink, collage on found medical illustration paper

Wangechi Mutu, Primary Syphilitic Ulcers of the Cervix, 2005
Collage on found medical illustration paper