AUSTIN, TEXAS
The installation The Property of...
(D. Berman Gallery, April 10—May 17, 2003) lets Austinites experience
the latest work of resident artist and University of Texas Professor
of Art MICHAEL RAY CHARLES. Charles' international reputation has
taken his attention far afield in recent years, making this show
a much-anticipated homecoming. Though known pri-marily as a painter,
Charles lately has moved into sculpture and installations. This
shift in media, however, is not a dramatic depar-ture for the artist,
whose work continues to explore historical and contemporary instances
of racial stereotypes and prejudices. But for those of us familiar
with Charles' satirical and subversive paintings of whistling Sambos
and grinning Aunt Jemimas, The Property of... requires a little
more conceptual unpacking.
The Property of... occupies one main room, though additional elements
spill out into other areas of the gallery. A red velvet curtain
pulled back with twine dramati-cally marks the primary entrance
into the installation and entices the visitor into a hybrid space.
A wooden floor painted with the center markings of a basketball
court evokes an old gymnasium while functioning as a platform for
a baby grand piano. The haunting vocals of Billie Holiday, Ella
Fitzgerald and other black female singers flow through the space
from hidden speakers. At the far end of the main room a backlit
window hangs from the ceiling and effectively offers a non-view
onto its own cast shadow. Positioned like a basketball backboard,
the lack of a hoop again subverts the window's function. In both
instances, this "window of oppor-tunity" proves to be
anything but.
The main impact of the instal-lation, however, comes from the ragged,
stuffed and painted burlap coffee sacks hanging from ceilings and
walls throughout the gallery. The distressed condition of these
eerie human surrogates bears traces of the on-going exploitation
of the African
American body
by mainstream Anglo culture. The history of lynch-ing is an inescapable
reference here, but Charles effectively con-nects it to the present-day
mis-treatment of blacks at the hands of sports and entertainment
indus-tries, not to mention penal and labor systems. Some of the
burlap sacks bear jersey numbers. Others have musical scores stenciled
over the ghostly traces of coffee labels, themselves a reminder
of backbreaking field labor. Various combinations of words and visual
imagery on these sacks picture the mutual interdependence of African-American
success and white profiteering. On a pair of sacks positioned side
by side, two painted hands, one white and the other black, accompa-nied
by the words "White Privilege" and "Cultural Value"
respectively, point back to one another in acknowledgement of this
complex symbiosis.
Another overstuffed burlap sack, bearing the words "Black Art,"
establishes a provocative connection to Charles' own career. In
the past, his use of racist imagery and themes has earned him criticism
from some quarters of the Black art community. Here Charles questions
the use of such labeling, the overstuffed sack sug-gesting both
the over- and mis-use of narrowly conceived identity pol-itics.
His installation questions the ownership and use of cultural imagery
and cultural values more broadly. But it also acknowledges that
his work proceeds from an unruly mixture of fascination with and
criticism of the fame and celebrity offered up by mass media constructions
of "Black"
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