I’ll go with what Libby said below (see post of Thursday, Dec. 11) about the awesome “Black Belt” show. Let me add that I found most of the work nostalgic for the source material, something I hadn’t expected. That means nostalgia for fighting, of course, and some of it fighting between the races.
Mostly, issues of inter-racial conflict seemed submerged beneath an atmosphere of video arcade karma and kung-fu/hip hop love.
David Hammons, an artist I’m guessing is older than most of the others in the show, stood out with a piece that had a quiet presence and a theme of racial harmony. (image is Hammons’ piece, a gong with black and gold and black embedded circles)
If you can’t make it to “Black Belt,” you can at least catch work by two of the featured artists, Kori Newkirk and Sanford Biggers, here in Philadelphia. Newkirk is at the Fabric Workshop and Museum and Biggers is at the Borowsky Gallery.
