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Whitfield Lovell: Deep River August 15, 2014–February 1, 2015 / Jepson Center Artist Whitfield Lovell is internationally renowned for his thought-provoking portraits and signature tableaux. In this exhibition, Lovell utilizes sculpture, video, drawing, sound, and music to create an environment that fully engages our senses and emotions. His art pays tribute to the lives of anonymous African Americans and is universal in its exploration of passage, memory, and the search for freedom. Born in the Bronx, New York in 1959, Lovell was interested in art from a young age. As a teenager studying painting and sculpture in Spain, he experienced an epiphany during a visit to El Museo del Prado in Madrid. Lovell stated, "I knew I would go into some form of art, but I wasn't sure which....But while I was standing in front of a Velázquez painting, I had an amazing spiritual experience. The painter had communicated with me through centuries and cultures, and I suddenly understood the role of the artist. I ran from room to room. Goya, El Greco, Reubens, and Picasso all began to speak out to me. Whatever they were doing in those rooms was what I wanted to do with my life." The large scale of the current exhibition allows the viewer to experience three distinct and compelling aspects of the artist’s work, including examples of Lovell’s trademark tableaux, work from his Kin series, and the extraordinary Deep River installation. The multi-media Deep River installation converts a 2,500-square-foot gallery into a unique environment, which the viewer enters and experiences as a personal journey. The darkened space, which Lovell designed specifically for the Jepson Center, surrounds the viewer with projected images of a flowing river, as the sounds of chirping birds and the river’s rushing currents fill the air. The center of the gallery contains a massive mound of dirt, strewn with everyday objects seemingly abandoned by past inhabitants of the space. Dozens of reclaimed wooden discs, each containing a portrait of a single figure, surround the mound of dirt and populate the installation. Together, these elements create a haunting and mesmerizing passage. The exhibition also features tableaux that Lovell has produced since 2008. The artist creates these unique works by drawing life-sized charcoal portraits on wooden objects such as sections of walls, fences, or barrels. He juxtaposes these drawings with everyday found objects—including clocks, irons, frying pans, and bed frames. Tableaux such as Pago Pago and Autour du Monde (see below) feature uniformed soldiers, referencing the service of African Americans through two world wars for a country that still did not acknowledge their civil or human rights. Billie Holiday’s rendition of the song, “I Cover the Waterfront,” plays softly from Pago Pago. A collection of globes is placed in front of Autour du Monde, invoking both the adventure of travel and the dangers for soldiers of fighting abroad.
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