Review

A review of Freedom to Expand:  Contemporary African American Art from the Collection

An installation view of "Freedom to Expand: Contemporary African-American Art from the Collection," on view at the Ulrich Museum of Art at Wichita State University through April 18. Photo: courtesy of the museum

Ulrich Museum of Art at
Wichita State University
Wichita, Kansas
January 16 — April 18, 2010

At a glance, the six paintings and works on paper in Freedom to Expand: Contemporary African American Art from the Collection are familiar enough. Three are abstract, three figurative. There are no-bells-and-whistles, no curatorial-heavy-handedness. The viewer is just supposed to look at these objects.

The three figurative works — prints by Kara Walker and Kerry James Marshall and a stunning painting by Mequitta Ahuja — have much in common with the basic format of Renaissance and Baroque allegorical paintings. In each, the viewer first looks at, then beyond, a life-sized figure. In Marshall’s color lithograph, Memento, a woman looks over her shoulder directly into the viewer’s eyes. She is depicted in a manner familiar to those who know Marshall’s work; drawn mostly in a deep shade of black with a few white lines to render facial features, and some light shining on her hair and shoulders. Holding a vase of flowers, she appears to have turned from looking at a framed picture showing photographs of Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy, above the words, "We Mourn Our." Other photographic portraits of civil rights figures hover above King and Kennedy, wings growing from heads like putto surrounding Madonnas in Italian Renaissance paintings. In works by Walker and Ahuja, the figure, also being roughly the same size as the viewer in the room looking at it, implicates the viewer in the scene. “You are a part of this, too,” the image tells us, drawing us into what may be a vision, a memory, or a dream, and may offer a risk or an opportunity.

Kerry James Marshall, "Memento," color lithograph with gold powder, 30.2" x 44.2", 1996. Collection of the Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, Wichita, Museum Purchase

The other works appear less concerned with historical narratives and more with each artist’s day-to-day surroundings. The visible urban landscape, as it is or as it could be, is the subject of three works that surprisingly use the language of abstract painting. This abstraction filters the overwhelming complexity of the city scene, allowing each artist to focus on one or two aspects of the urban landscape, such as graffiti or new construction. Julie Mehretu’s small print turns what looks like architectural drawings into a dynamic abstraction. New construction is presented as whirlwind. Mark Bradford’s painting simultaneously calls to mind aerial views of urban American landscape and, from up close, the fascinating palimpsest-like layers of graffiti and clean-up one sees on the sides of buildings in cities. A large painting by Donald Odili Odita is divided down the middle, irregular geometric diamonds and triangles of color radiating from this center line. Odili’s painting inserts a type of pattern and coloration missing from the artist’s everyday experience into the gallery, some sensation strongly remembered but not immediately accessible to the African-born artist living in urban Philadelphia.

Installation view of "Freedom to Expand," contemporary African-American art from the Ulrich Museum of Art's collection. Photo: courtesy of the museum

All six artists make work for the gallery setting that reflects a deep engagement with life as it goes on outside. This is the shared quality that makes Freedom to Expand a success. In 1961, pop artist Claes Oldenburg wrote, “I am for an art that embroils itself with everyday crap & still comes out on top.” In 2010, the everyday may be art’s most common subject matter, but only a tiny fraction of artists can be said to be ‘embroiled’ with it. Freedom to Expand shows us six who are.

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