HORIZONTALLY INCLINED: WILLIAM POPE L.
There is something curious about a brotha who calls himself "The Friendliest Black Artist in America." But then again, that is exactly what multi-disciplinary artist William Pope.L is all about. His new three-part installation at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, 'Art After White People: Time, Trees, & Celluloid...'—his first West Coast exhibit—is a bit of an enigma itself. "Am I following after a white model, i.e., in the trail of?" he asks. "Or is it 'after' in a sense of that which is obsolete?" These are the kinds of issues that have driven his work of pondering race and social constructs for nearly three decades. Take for instance his 'The Great White Way' performance where he spent five years crawling northbound from the Statue of Liberty up through Manhattan to the Bronx via Broadway sporting a capeless Superman costume with a skateboard strapped to his back. "In Western society," he explains, "we are given examples of the vertical: the rocket, the skyscraper…it's all about up. I want to contest and challenge that…I'm suggesting that just because a person is lying on the sidewalk doesn't mean they've given up their humanity."
So what then is 'Art After White People' all about? The three different parts—Grove, A Personal History of Videography (APHOV), and The Semen Pictures—each examine an aspect of American culture. In Grove is "an exploration of the social, psychological, and environmental consequences of human willfulness." A landscape eerily natural and artificial, a garden of palm trees covered in white paint glows in the dark room, filled with white tarps and boxes. The whiteness connotes both presence as well as void. Following Grove is APHOV, an examination at both performance and politics. The room is filled with an assortment of furniture surrounding a screen, with the image of a man in a Donald Rumsfeld Mask weeping blood—"a cinematic performance of performance, in a video about video." The exhibition ends with The Semen Pictures—collages of celebrity "portraits" interspersed with images of semen and hair, creating "veils" of both image and ultimately medium. Pope.L's commentary is patently conceptual, and at times obtuse, but ultimately it is that same curiosity that makes it so engaging.
'Art After White People: Time, Trees, & Celluloid…' is at the Santa Monica Museum of Art through December 23.
6 November 2007