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Press Releases | |
October 8, 1999
African American Artist Willie Cole Comes to Avram GalleryWorkshop With the Artist Scheduled for October 21
Contact:
(516) 287 8313
Fax: (516) 283 4081Southampton, NY - The Fine Arts Gallery at Southampton College provides an ideal exhibition space for the sculpture and prints of an African American artist who is very much aware of his heritage, Willie Cole. His work is endowed with the spiritual power of African Art, a depth of concern for humanity, and wit. An exhibition of his work will be on view in the Avram Gallery from October 20 through November 30. Entitled "Iron Works", the exhibit will include large scale sculpture, as well as works on paper.
Willie Cole's anthropomorphic abstractions are powerful statements about the human condition. He transforms ready-made, everyday items, such as a blow-dryer, into a tribal mask. He stacks and reassembles irons and their cords into animated figural sculptures that are unmistakenly related to African sculpture. Some of Cole's pieces make direct historical reference to the dark passage of the slave trade. The maritime diagrams of African bodies laid in the ships lower quarters, toe to toe, and head to head, and the ritual tattooing of the homeland lost and kinship destroyed, as well as their future as branded property, are revealed in the extraordinary presence of his prints as well as his three dimensional work.
James Yood wrote in Artforum: "Willie Cole forages through detritus in the form of abandoned household appliances and recombines their parts into totems with unexpected anthropomorphic power. His is an art of recognition, rehabilitation, and revelation; implied in his recastings is a commentary on the ineluctible presence of the human image in virtually everything made by man, including, ironically, the remnants of throw-away culture...Discovering new meanings in seemingly exhausted utilitarian sources, Cole's art constitutes both a form of cultural critique and a kind of spiritual reinvestment...he forages through the effluvia of modern American culture and turns it in on itself taking items that were once trash and coaxing them to reveal their nature as talismans."
Willie Cole was born in New Jersey and lives and works there today. He attended the Boston University School of Fine Arts, the School of Visual Arts in New York (from which he received his B.F.A.) and the Art Students League in New York. His work has been widely exhibited throughout the United States and France, including one-person exhibits at Alexander and Bonin, New York, Galerie Almine Rech, Paris, and the Saint Louis Art Museum. He has won numerous awards including The Penny McCall Foundation Grant, The Joan Mitchell Foundation Award and The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant. His residencies include Artist-in-Residence at The Studio Museum in Harlem, Capp Street Project, San Francisco, and The Contemporary in Baltimore.
Willie Cole's exhibition is one of powerful work with special relevance to the African American members of the Southampton community. The college will invite students from local schools, giving them an unusual opportunity to explore and appreciate art inspired by African American history and culture.
A workshop with the artist will take place on Thursday, October 21, at North Cottage, Southampton College of Long Island University, at 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. with a reception and talk by the artist in the Avram Gallery from 4:30 - 6:30 p.m.
Willie Cole's exhibition is sponsored by the N.Y.S.C.A., the Town of Southampton, the John P. McGrath Fund, and the Avram family, for whom the gallery is named. The curator of the exhibition is Southampton College art history professor, Dr. Catherine Bernard. Promoting awareness of innovative, contemporary art forms, these events are free and open to the public. The Avram Family Gallery is open to the public Monday to Friday from 12-5 p.m., and by appointment. For information call gallery director Beth Giles at (516) 287-8234.