Notes on artistic journeys
“Travelogue” flips usual constructs, perspective of genre
By the 19th century, the travelogue was a genre firmly planted in Western culture.
Tied closely to colonialism, the travelogue was for the wealthy and affluent, who could take trips to “exotic” cultures from the Middle East to Asia, often bringing back objects and specimens as trophies displaying their status.
They come in many forms — travel writing, satire, memoir — but common threads are observations from a journey encountering different people and otherness that are transformational, often confrontational.
This is true for the exhibit “Travelogue” at Jack Shainman Gallery’s The School in Kinderhook. Organized by artist Radcliffe Bailey with a dozen other artists, the exhibit is really a kind of “reverse” travelogue in that it takes us to the other side of the dominant, Eurocentric culture.
Most of the exhibit consists of Bailey’s evocative and unflinchingly honest work about slavery and the African-american journey — the Middle Passage — to slavery in the New World. His compositions, whether sculptural, painted or collaged, are engrossing by virtue of their robust compositions, but their gravitas lies in the material he uses within his frames.
Employing wood, steel, rope, aluminum, Georgia clay and black sand, among other things, Bailey adroitly displays the elements
of African-american slavery, moves them from memory to reality. The shear physicality of works like “Madagascar 1,” “Windward Coast-west Coast Slave Trade,” and “Before Cisero” jut forth into our space and challenge.
When he includes figures, especially the “Notes from Tervuren” series, there’s an added haunting quality as he wrestles with the ghosts of the past. His symbolism is particularly effective in a series of wall-hanging collages and stand-alone installations such as “Untitled (Mende)” about rituals and indigenous tribal clothing and the wood cabinet “67/68” with artifacts from the civil rights era. With his assemblage, it all seems
to have taken place such a long time ago.
The exhibit is anchored by the jarring “Windward Coast-west Coast Slave” at the front entrance, and the large back gallery with an array of his production, expanding his creativity beyond the discussion of slavery and its aftermath. As you enter through the main door, a black head “floats” barely above a surge of piano keys laid out like flowing water.
All of the large canvases in back are monumental to the fullest extent, They’re like archaeological digs hung on walls, excavating a covered past with symbols and tools of oppression and, at times, redemption.
In between are the winding hallways and rooms in the twofloor school. At first viewing art in such an environment is a bit disconcerting, but it does create a sense of journey as you turn corners and encounter various
installations in separate rooms.
Along the way is Gordon Parks, one of the most prominent photographers to capture African-american experience in the mid-20th century. Parks is more than a keen transition between Bailey and the other artists and acts as an unfiltered witness to black culture, a cohesive real-time glue that makes everything else in the exhibit all the more profound. He has the most works on display other than Bailey. Since they line the halls, they often surprise.
Although Bailey and the other artists deserve attention, Parks alone is worth the visit. His gift for finding the precise moment is timeless. The other artists either play off Bailey in form or match his work at a conceptual level. Vibha Galhorta’s hammock installation is about idleness and decay of poverty in Asia, while Brad Kahlhammer matches Bailey’s intensity and sense of drama.
Leslie Wayne’s boarded-up windows echo the vestiges of slavery and poverty, while Nina Chanel Abney’s highly graphic, spray-painted boards provide a big dose of cynicism about it all. Meanwhile, Lyne Lapointe’s paper, wood, linen and beeswax creations conjure up ideas of patriotism, among other things. Margaret Kilgallen toys with pop, skateboard and surfer culture.
While Bailey and Gordon Parks drive the exhibit, the remaining artists offer a nifty look at contemporary art in a setting that compliments and enhances their works. Come for Bailey and Parks. Stay for the rest of the artists and take a little journey that might surprise you.