...er, a few weeks ago, in The Root:

There is no sign of the so-called hope at an excellent show now on view in Atlanta's High Museum of Art, After 1968: Contemporary Artists and the Civil Rights Legacy. All the same, the artists in After 1968 offer a number of different takes on the central question of Obama's candidacy: "Okay; now what?"

After 1968 is on display at the High along with a new survey of civil rights photography called Road to Freedom: Photographs from the Civil Rights Movement, 1956–1968. (Both shows, packaged together as "History Remixed" are on view until October 2008.) Road to Freedom displays hundreds of iconic civil rights photographs from the High's permanent collection. Using supplementary materials like maps, posters, magazines and official documents like Rosa Parks' fingerprint paper work, it sheds new light on photography's value as both documentation and a tactical tool for shaping public sentiment.

Road to Freedom is worthy in its own right, but, if you're old enough, you've likely already worshipped, found strength and grieved in this church before. The six artists in After 1968—Leslie Hewitt, the Otabenga Jones & Associates collective, Adam Pendleton, Jefferson Pinder, Nadine Robinson and Hank Willis Thomas—were invited by High Museum curator Jeffery Grove to remix the images in Road to Freedom. The results have all that glorious diversity and nagging ambiguity that crops up whenever we think about our recent history. [full old me]

Photo_080108_001.jpg, originally uploaded by ebogjonson.

Studio visit. Carolyn's up to some new tricks.

dave mckenzie's while supplies last

Me writing about the Dave McKenzie show now up at LA's REDCAT gallery.

May 23, 2008--In Brooklyn-based artist Dave McKenzie's tantalizing first solo show "Screen Doors on Submarines," our conversation about race spins and spins like a broken record, our thinking trapped in cycles and rituals like a buggy program stuck in a loop. The work on display at downtown Los Angeles' REDCAT gallery through June 15 doesn't necessarily show us a way out of those loops, but McKenzie is young man (31), and his show is a strong solo debut that marks him as an artist to watch. With time his work might just give us some clues as how to get unstuck – provided, of course he doesn't fall into one of those pesky grooves he so effectively depicts.

Like Kehinde Wiley, McKenzie works with popular culture as a raw material. But unlike Wiley, with his wry, courtly depictions of black men heroically embodying a kind of imperial hip-hop ideal, McKenzie turns his back on luxe, collectible surfaces in order to brood a bit on the contradictions inherent to media, entertainment and our own folk mythology. In McKenzie's current show, things don't so much fall apart as they spin off on their own stubborn trajectories. [full me]

The show is on view at REDCAT until June 15th, so if you're in LalaLand, pay a visit.