CURATED BY ADEN+AYERS 4 TIMES SQUARE NEW YORK, NY 2018
Good Bye Columbus considers the SPRING/ BREAK 2018 theme A Stranger Comes to Town by considering the American narrative, the land and people’s of the Post-Columbian period, the impacts of manifest destiny, cultural ostracism, the Other; her allies and enemies. Evident in the works selected are reconsiderations of the aesthetic values of ages gone by: realism reckons with Gee’s Bend as contemporary works contemplate the intersection of art and the American experience. 2
Included in the exhibition are historic objects along side contemporary works of art. The curators include crafts and ceremony objects made by women in the late 19th century: an African American quit, a Lakota ledger drawing, and a Ghost Dance Wand, to emphasize works of art which tell the American story from the perspective the Other, her objects frequently relegated from the cannon of American art because they did not reflect the current cultural and aesthetic norms.
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These historic works are juxtaposed contemporary with works like Isaac Aden’s Rodeo Painting, a video in which a white square is painted on the dirt of a rodeo and the horses and bulls leave marks in it as they move through it (above). The curators strategy of sensorial and cognitive oscillation is evidenced by the comparisons between the works Rick Shaefer’s Bison (top right), an exquisitely wrought naturalist drawing and Hugh Hayden’s American Buffalo (bottom right), in which his longtime interest in African American hair intersects with the American narrative as he uses clippers to sheer a flag into a bison’s hide. 6
The curatorial strategy is also evident in Antonio Garcia’s photograph of the Mexican American border Manual Labor Force Exit Stage Left Via the Right juxtaposed with Rainer Ganahl’s Trump Tweet drawings, evoking the divisive complexities surrounding immigration.
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Joseph Ayers’ stained walnut slabs, Nat’l Beauty, evoke the splendor of the continent and reveal a female form upon close examination, rewarding the viewer for looking while contemplating the relationship between the human spirit and the natural environment and whether we can have a symbiotic relationship or are we just a stain on her land.
And in Ayers’ 3D hologram piece Dangling, 1894 footage of Sioux Nation Native American’s perform the Buffalo Dance in a circle to the beats and chants of their modern contemporaries singing the Sioux National Anthem. As they ambulate inside the glass pyramid, waves coalesce and form a portal overhead, and the sounds of creaking ships adds tension to the heavy slabs of Black Walnut used to
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