Sanford Biggers, Chesire (2008)
The art of Sanford Biggers is a pastiche of cultural signifiers, stacking symbols and tropes from the African-American experience together for a wide contextual palette of juxtapositions. Such is the nature of Blossom, seeing its Brooklyn debut as part of Sanford Biggers: Sweet Funk—An Introspective at the Brooklyn Museum. Referencing lynchings, Buddhist enlightenment, and the artist’s musical identity, all while making conscious aesthetic and situational ties to the early 20th century landscapes of the American West, the poetic piece functions as an example of Biggers’ densely multi-cultural work that speaks to both broad senses of American identity and the artist’s own personal experience.
Sanford Biggers, Blossom (2007)
Sanford Biggers, Bound (Triptych) 2009
Sanford Biggers, Bittersweet The Fruit (Video Still) (2002)
In one interactive work, titled Kalimba II, visitors are invited to sit at one half of a keyboard, cut in half by a large wall, and perform a duet with the unseen partner on the other side, illustrating the fractured harmony of a heritage split forcefully apart by slavery.
Sanford Biggers, Seen (video still) (2009)
The show, Biggers’ first in New York, features a number of similarly focused works, drawing from the artist’s broad vocabulary of sculpture, music, installation, performance, video and photography. Ranging from redemptive to condemning to celebratory, the pieces on view serve as spaces in which the reconciliation, incorporation and representation of the African-American experience play out in a Dadaist harmony.
Sanford Biggers, Calenda (Big Ass Bang!) (2004)
Sanford Biggers, UGRR:US2.2 (2009–10)
– D. Creahan
Related Links:
Exhibition Site [Brooklyn Museum]
