Arthur Jafa: BLACK POWER TOOL AND DIE TRYNIG | 011 | 52 Walker | EXHIBITION PREVIEW

52 Walker's eleventh exhibition, BLACK POWER TOOL AND DIE TRYNIG, features a large-scale installation and new and recent paintings, sculptures, and film by Los Angeles-based artist Arthur Jafa (b. 1960). Lauded for his achievements as a filmmaker and cinematographer as well as a visual artist, Jafa has developed an incisive, chameleonic practice, through which he seeks to unravel the cultural significance and strictures ascribed in tandem upon Black existence in the Western world. In BLACK POWER TOOL AND DIE TRYNIG, Jafa invokes the body’s personal, political, and industrial guises in one fell swoop, deftly interweaving images and objects to create a forceful and maximal space that beckons toward engulfment and revelation alike.
Jafa’s exhibition at 52 Walker brings to the surface questions of form, force, and resistance- in addition to tensions that result from common slips and errors. The title of the show, BLACK POWER TOOL AND DIE TRYNIG, applies strategies of sequencing and juxtaposition, channeling various meanings in its wordplay-including political ideologies, industrial terminologies, and the specter of death-while also nodding to the complexities of the word “black” and its many inflections. Favoring intuitive arrangement over uniformity, the artist eschews traditionally monolithic modes of presentation and instead coheres multiple simultaneous events, applying a decidedly Black and non-Western viewpoint that confronts twentieth-century art historiography and museology’s indebtedness to African aesthetics.
Arthur Jafa: BLACK POWER TOOL AND DIE TRYNIG is curated by Ebony L. Haynes and presented by 52 Walker.
Arthur Jafa: BLACK POWER TOOL AND DIE TRYNIG was on view from April 05 - June 01, 2024.
www.52walker.c...
#ArthurJafa #52Walker

[@ryanjsimons]

Cady says "no photos"