Renowned contemporary artist Kara Walker is currently presenting a series of drawings for the show Afterword at the Sikkema & Jenkins Co. The works in the show are based on Walker’s famous exhibition this past spring and summer of her giant sphinx made from 80 tons of hardened blocks of white sugar that was on display at the former Domino Sugar factory in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
For this show Walker presents a series of paintings, sketches, collages, videos, and notes that are precisely an “afterword” to her previous sphinx installation.
Afterword is divided into three sections. One section consists of notes and sketches that Walker began working on as she was coming up with the idea for her grandiose masterpiece. In the main section of the gallery is an installation of a fist whose gesture recalls the Afro-Brazilian “figa” which represents good luck and protection against harm. Walker also presents two watercolor works including one titled A Terrible Vacation which was inspired by J.M.W. Turner’s 1840 painting The Slave Ship depicting a ship violently being tossed around through an uproarious storm and many passengers who have been ejected fight for survival.
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| "Untitled" (2013-2014) by Kara Walker |
There are also a couple of video installations, one of them titled An Audience takes a look at those who visited the sphinx at the Domino Sugar Refinery an hour before closing time on the final day. Another video titled Rhapsody, is a six-minute ballet of mechanical industriousness and destruction which depicts the sphinx being dismantled, and it’s set to the music of Emmanuel Chabrier’s España. Walker compares Rhapsody to an “an industrial age orchestral warhorse, the bombast and moxie of which suggests the quixotic folly of dreaming up big things that don’t (or can’t) last.” Kara Walker is best known for her works that revolve around themes of race, gender, sexuality, and violence that have appeared at numerous gallery shows and museums exhibitions around the world.
At the Sikkema & Jenkins Co. Gallery, 530 W. 22nd St., through Jan. 17. The gallery is open Tues.--Sat. from 10 a.m.—6 p.m.
