My Shadow and Me
PaceWildenstein
57th Street
Fred Wilson
The Unnatural Movement of Blackness 2006,
glass globe, electric light fixture with bulb, chandelier elements, beads, and steel bracket
14 x 13 x 18 in.
Fred Wilson’s radical and original gesture has been the (re)presentation of objects in which he has operated as an iconoclastic curator, institutional critic, and semiotician of latent and obvious racism. In this exhibition Wilson broadens his expression beyond the recontextualization of readymades. Still claiming no desire to use his hands in the creative process, Wilson envisioned many glass objects and commissioned their execution: Dante Marioni blew most of the exhibition’s works, Venetian studios crafted its centerpiece.
This show’s barely translucent black-glassed vitrines of Black Memory (2005) and Black Present (2006) reference Wilson’s famed interventions, notably Mining the Museum (1992) in which he exhibited stored-away objects related to slavery and racism from the Maryland Historical Society’s collections. Black Memory contains inkwells and oilcans—antiquated containers bespeaking European legal arguments, documents and economic impetuses for exploiting Africa and its peoples. Black Present drives this point home through a skeleton juxtaposed with more oilcans as a reminder that imperialism thrives today through big oil, corrupt governments and state violence against impoverished populations.
These themes are reiterated in The Unnatural Movement of Blackness (2006) that consists of a mid-twentieth-century globe with an Africa divided into Rhodesia, Belgian Congo and other colonial territories. This planet drips oil colored blobs and pear shaped faceted glass. Strands of black beads trace the (forced) African diaspora. Speak of Me As I Am (Chandelier Mori) (2003) is the black Murano baroque chandelier installed at the 2003 Venice Biennale that suggests an older European racism by quoting Shakespeare’s Venetian Moor, Othello. Colonialism’s disruptive legacy is shown in Cry (2006) a large black (tear)drop inside of which Wilson presents obfuscated video clips evoking the violence of Rwanda or Darfur.
The show’s other pieces are installations of single or multiple glass blobs. These are Marioni’s cleanly crafted pieces that are a nearly opaque warm black but with highly reflective surfaces: some are drop shaped, others ellipsoid. The cartoony black and white staring eyes on many pieces evoke pop-culture stereotypical representations of African Americans. Through mammies, pickaninnies, blackface and South Park’s cartoon character Chef, these remain potent signifiers of blackness; they also refer to Wilson’s earlier collections and exhibitions of racial caricatures. These are also referents to oil, and the tears of slavery and empire, but also suggest a continuity—the ovoid floor elements intermingle with the wall-mounted sperm-drops in Drip, Drop Plop (2001) and Viscous Risk (2002). Dark Dawn (2005) adds panes on the floor that look like flowing liquid—a flood that covers emerging wide-eyed figures and calls to mind visuals of African-Americans engulfed in post-Katrina toxic ooze.
This show marks an uneasy transition from Wilson’s iconoclastic curatorial strategy to art market icon. That Wilson’s pieces now seem conventional is a backhanded sign of his success. In one of the most elite New York City galleries offering pieces at museum-quality prices Wilson’s critical edge seems further compromised and co-opted. Contrasting all of the show’s black forms, the gallery’s stark neutral box seems a critique of its inherent hegemonic whiteness.
William V. Ganis
"Fred Wilson: My Echo, My Shadow and Me" is at PaceWildenstein, 57th St., New York, New York from March 11 - April 15, 2006.