NEW YORK: Sanford Biggers: Sweet Funk -- An Introspective / Brooklyn Museum / September 23, 2011 - January 8, 2012

Sanford Biggers, Blossom, 2007. Steel, Zoopoxy, silk leaves, wood, piano with MIDI system. 

Image via Brooklyn Museum web site.

Sanford Biggers: Sweet Funk—An Introspective  

September 23, 2011–January 8, 2012

BROOKLYN MUSEUM 

200 Eastern Parkway

Brooklyn, NY

SPECIAL EVENT: IN CONVERSATION WITH SANFORD BIGGERS
The artist in conversation with Marcus Samuelsson and Mos Def
Thursday, October 13, 2011

In this In focused selection of thirteen pieces, New York–based artist Sanford Biggers challenges and reinterprets symbols and legacies that inform contemporary America. The exhibition is Biggers’ first museum presentation in New York, and it will also mark the Brooklyn debut of Blossom (2007), a large-scale multimedia installation that incorporates references ranging from lynchings to Buddha’s enlightenment under the bodhi tree. Recently acquired by the Brooklyn Museum, Blossom also alludes to the ideologically tinged landscapes of artists such as Alfred Bierstadt and Frederic Church.

Among the other, thematically related pieces is Cheshire (2008), a sculpture that references both the disembodied smile of the eponymous cat and the caricatured grin associated with blackface minstrelsy. Kalimba II (2002), named after an African percussion instrument, incorporates a piano bisected by a wall; a bench invites visitors to sit down and play half of the keyboard, initiating a dialogue/duet with an unseen visitor on the other side of the wall. As with Blossom, Lotus (2007) combines references to Buddhism and to slavery: a lotus etched in glass contains in each petal diagrams of human bodies placed in the cargo hold of an eighteenth-century slave ship. Biggers has been creating installations and performances for more than a decade.

YouTube Video: Sanford Biggers: Sweet Funk -- An Introspective 

Sanford Biggers: Sweet Funk–An Introspective is organized by Eugenie Tsai, John and Barbara Vogelstein Curator of Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum.

Generous support for this exhibition has been provided by the Martha A. and Robert S. Rubin Exhibition Fund, Toby Devan Lewis, the FUNd, the Stephanie and Tim Ingrassia Contemporary Art Exhibition Fund, and other donors.

The accompanying catalogue is supported by the Lambent Foundation and by a Brooklyn Museum publications endowment established by the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Exhibit Link

Sanford Biggers online

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NEW YORK: Sanford Biggers / Cosmic Voodoo Circus / SculptureCenter / September 10 - November 28, 2011

Sanford Biggers, Shake, 2011. HD color video still. © 2011 Sanford Biggers.

Sanford Biggers: Cosmic Voodoo Circus

September 10 - November 28, 2011

SculptureCenter

44-19 Purves Street

Long Island City, NY

Opening Reception: Saturday, September 10th, 5-7pm

SculptureCenter is pleased to announce Cosmic Voodoo Circus, an exhibition of new work by Sanford Biggers commissioned through SculptureCenter's Artist in Residence program. Merging modern and post-modern strategies with vernacular forms, Biggers studies and posits historical and contemporary subjectivity as a fluid and multivalent concept. Cosmic Voodoo Circus is curated by Mary Ceruti, SculptureCenter's Executive Director and Chief Curator, and will be on view September 10 - November 28, 2011. An opening reception will take place Saturday, September 10th, 5-7pm and is open to the public. 

In Cosmic Voodoo Circus, Biggers exploits the carnival aesthetic to address profound issues of identity, the power of objects, as well as spiritual and cultural transmigration. At the center of Biggers' installation is a new video titled Shake, the second part in an odyssean trilogy about the formation and dissolution of identity. Shot in Brazil with a Creative Time travel grant, Shake follows Ricardo Castillo, a Brazilian-born, Germany based, choreographer, clown, stuntman and DJ, through a transformative journey from the ocean through the favelas, to a colonial palace eventually returning to the sea as an androgynous silver-skinned figure. (The first video in the trilogy, Shuffle, will be on view at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, beginning September 23, 2011 as part of Sanford Biggers: Sweet Funk - an Introspective.) The installation will also feature several new sculptures including an empty trapeze swinging overhead like a pendulum, a suspended sculpture based on a pair of African spirit sculptures constructed from fabrics including seersucker and quilts, and a billboard sized minstrel-like toothy grin, a recurrent image in Biggers' work. 

Sanford Biggers works across disciplines and cultures creating sculpture, video, photography, music and photographs. Incorporating icons and rites ranging from Japanese mandalas and slave quilts to hip hop and YouTube music culture, Biggers' work connects the signifiers and patterns that link African spiritualism, Buddhist sacred rituals, and African-American urban culture. Biggers has been included in several notable exhibitions including Prospect 1/ New Orleans Biennial, Illuminations at the Tate Modern, Performa 07, the Whitney Biennial and Freestyle at the Studio Museum in Harlem. He has also had solo exhibitions at Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, Santa Barbara; Grand Arts, Kansas City; Triple Candie, New York; Contemporary Art Museum, Houston; and Matrix/University of Berkeley Museum, Berkeley. A solo show will open at Mass MOCA in December 2011. Born in Los Angeles, Biggers currently lives in New York and is an Assistant Professor in the Visual Arts Department at Columbia University.

SculptureCenter's exhibition program is generously supported by grants from the New York State Council on the Arts; The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; the Kraus Family Foundation; the A Woodner Fund; the Lambent Foundation Fund of The Tides Foundation, Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Inc., and contributions from our Board of Trustees and many generous individuals. 

Cosmic Voodoo Circus is made possible with the support of Beth Rudin De Woody, Toby D. Lewis Philanthropic Fund of the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, and Jeanne and Michael Klein and a grant from the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation.

About SculptureCenter

Founded by artists in 1928, SculptureCenter is a not-for-profit arts institution in Long Island City, NY dedicated to experimental and innovative developments in contemporary sculpture. SculptureCenter commissions new works and presents exhibitions by emerging and established, national and international artists. Our programs identify new talent, explore the conceptual, aesthetic and material concerns of contemporary sculpture, and encourage independent vision.

Source

SculptureCenter online 

Sanford Biggers online

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CLIP ART: Sanford Biggers / Martell Cognac advertisement / Circa 2005

This advertisement which featured artist Sanford Biggers was clipped from an old issue of Vibe magazine. The blue scrawling  on the right is actually the artist's signature and was not a part of the original ad layout. 

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POST: Studio Museum in Harlem / Things We Love / November 29, 2010

Things We Love   Posted by Dominic Hackley November 29, 2010 3:09 pm

The Undefeated Billboard Project

Sanford Biggers

The Undefeated Billboard Project selects contemporary artists to create an artwork for a large billboard that sits atop the Undefeated store on Los Angeles’ La Brea Boulevard. Sanford Biggers, one of last season’s Harlem Postcard artists, is the most recent artist to be selected. Past artists include Studio Museum alums Gary Simmons and Kehinde Wiley.  I interviewed Sanford about the project and got the inside scoop...

How was the collaboration between you and the Undefeated Billboard Project initiated?

I was in Brasil on another project when I received an email from Sarah Cohen, the curator of the Undefeated Billboard project. She is a collector of my work and we share several mutual friends yet have never met in person. She told me about the project and asked if I had any images that might work. Until then I'd been by the shop several times over the years, but didn't know her connection to it.

Describe the image and tell us your inspiration behind the artwork?

The image is from a 2007 sculpture of a big, red-lipped smile entitled "Cheshire", which refers to both Lewis Carrol’s infamous cat and the iconic grin of blackface minstrelsy. It is exhibited hanging from a tree or the ceiling. The sculpture also plays a starring role in the video "Shuffle" which I shot in Stuttgart, Germany and Salvador do Bahia, Brasil. The teeth and lips of Cheshire light up in random patterns creating a carnival-esque atmosphere.

How does “Cheshire” fit in to your larger body of work?

One tendency in my work takes problematic images and references to US and world history (slavery, blackface, lynching etc), and attempts to transcend their gravity, horror and psychological vestiges. Through visually and conceptually compelling installations, videos and performances, I challenge our traditional reading of history. Cheshire is a direct example of this approach.

What was the level of involvement of Undefeated’s creative team with this project?

The creative team was quite open, supplying me only with site and printing specs. We all agreed immediately on the best image for the project.

Do you have a particular affinity for sneakers or interest in sneaker design?

I'm a b-boy from back in the day. I don't rock sneaks like I used to but stay up on the latest designs and names.

http://www.studiomuseum.org/studio-blog/checkout/things-we-love/the-undefeated-billboard-project-sanford-biggers

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