Michael Workman

Does art matter in any "real world" way?

Undeniably, though more often it's the cultural by-product of fame that carries more contemporary impact. Elected despite accusations of sharing the Nazi sympathies of his father Gustav, for instance, now-governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger provides a case in point. That Schwarzenegger was caught on record expressing admiration for Hitler could have provoked a closer inspection of just how much of the father's ideology had transferred to the son. Instead, the issue was panned both in the press and by the electorate, arguably on account of the actor's vaunted celebrity.

What kind of message does this send? That it's acceptable to elect a candidate without properly vetting his background--so long as he's famous? Schwarzenegger's more than likely just a head-slapping doofus blindly grabbing after power, letting his celebrity camouflage the racial stains that taint his history. Yet the electorate's apparent disinterest in the particulars of his politics demonstrates how permissive our society remains on questions of race. While these questions may be "underplayed" by the mass media, a new art show attempts to imagine what the world might look like were it not possible to ask.

This week, I Space, the Chicago gallery of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, offers "After Whiteness," an exhibit that imagines the obstacles to a truly colorblind society. Curated by Suk Ja Kang Engles, a graduate student in Illinois' School of Art and Design, the show includes work by Katherine Bartel, Suk Ja Kang Engles, Kojo Griffin, Tana Hargest and Laurie Hogin. Starting with W.E.B. Du Bois' formulation that the "discovery of personal whiteness among the world's peoples is a very modern thing," this show examines the ongoing cultural problems resulting from white power structures, seeking out artistic sources, for instance, in the Surrealist concept of "miserabilism."

Using video, installation, drawing and painting to juxtapose work by artists both "of color" and "white," the show takes issue with the covert racialization of minority artists. Hogin's oil painting on panel, "The Spectrum of our National Discourse #5: The Scholar," depicts a monkey-like creature swathed in white robes and mortarboard, staged as if placed on a shelf, prehensile tail curled in the background. This stunning indictment of blackness transformed, from a racist perspective, employs the symbol of an educated animal as the symbol for the state of a national racial consciousness. Furthermore, the panel seems imposed upon with a white gloss finish to produce a perversely lightened, hazy blue surface, a tone unrecognizably removed from the blackness at its base. David Hammons' portrait of a blond, blue-eyed Jesse Jackson emblazoned with the words "How ya like me now?" comes to mind, though the purpose of Hammons' image was to suggest the disparity in white voter turnout in support of Jackson's 1988 presidential run. Hogin's image, projected on the floor in the gallery, travels to much further removes from any conceivable human self-image.

Griffin's charcoal drawings on paper continue the bestial theme, reversing the symbolic flow of human to animal in Hogin's work, depicting instead cartoonish, anthropomorphized creatures in a sterilized social context. Mere figures on blank backgrounds, Griffin's characters still manage to convey an innate sense of separateness, in this case the divide illustrated by the distance between species. Art Spiegelman's "Maus" comes to mind, specifically his depiction of Nazi thugs as cats, and their Jewish victims as mice. Uncommunicative and mundane, the images depict figures inured to the stultifying system they live and work within. In Griffin's "Untitled," for instance, a donkey-headed man slowly, vacantly moves his mop across an unseen floor while a bear-headed figure in business attire carrying an attaché strides obliviously out of the frame.

Less dogmatic in its depiction of the pervasive state of whiteness that the collected works seek to transcend, Bartel's more centrally feminine examination of the white aesthetic reaches into the sublime of fairy tales. Her mixed-media video, "Offerings," depicts a kitchen in a typical white home at the edge of suburbia, sink piled with the bounty of the fields. In this fantasy of white bountifulness a core of purity promising "beauty, success, sophistication and love." Not to mention the profound sense of safety evinced by such a perpetually enclosed view of the world in which the message that cleanliness is close to godliness cuts between the pristine of whiteness and the culturally reinforced connotations of "uncleanliness" implied by the color black. In its attempt to undermine the calcified problems of a cultural or socially reinforced sense of white birthright, this exhibit tackles relevant questions indeed.

"After Whiteness" shows at I Space, 230 West Superior, (312)587-9976, through Nov. 29.

(2003-10-16)

Also by Michael Workman

Tip of the Week
The exhibit examines the influence of subcultures on the perception of everyday objects
(2003-10-08)

Eye Exam
Two exhibits this week offer similar but ultimately contrasting views on the nature of our relationship to the world around us and how we metabolize that experience
(2003-10-08)

Eye Exam
Tectonic shifts are taking place across the art-world map, movements intended to resuscitate dead cities and transform the future of mass art exhibition
(2003-10-02)

Eye Exam
As a society, our simultaneous disassociation from and obsession with images of death and destruction are legitimately driving us insane
(2003-09-25)

Tip of the Week
(2003-09-17)

Eye Exam
(2003-09-17)

Tip of the Week
(2003-09-10)

Eye Exam
(2003-09-10)

Eye Exam
(2003-09-04)

Pencil pushers
(2003-08-27)

Eye Exam
(2003-08-27)

Eye Exam
(2003-08-20)

about Newcitychicago | about Newcity magazine | advertising | privacy policy | FAQ | employment