STREET LEVEL: MARK BRADFORD, WILLIAM CORDOVA, ROBIN RHODE
29 March – 29 July 2007
www.nasher.duke.edu
Curated by Trevor Schoonmaker, ‘Street Level’ brings together Mark Bradford,
William Cordova and Robin Rhode, a group of artists who have received
critical acclaim in the US recently for their examination of the city. Their
works reveal how conceptually close yet formally distant the artists are. In
Scorched Earth (2006), Bradford creates an abstract image informed by
topography, Cordova’s Wholesellers, Retailers & Bullshitters (2005) is an
elegant depiction of a graffitied truck alluding to urban lifestyles, while
Untitled, Sticks (2005), based on Rhode’s performance on the rooftop of the
Mexican Museo Tamayo, in which he manipulates cleaning utensils, makes a
political statement about current migration issues in general and Mexican
migrants in the US in particular.
Bradford’s Black Wall Street (2006) is one of the highlights. Informed by
the Tulsa African-American community’s struggle, it takes the form of an
immense collaged grid based on an aerial view of a metropolis, painted black
and red. Cordova’s tower of destroyed speakers and vinyl records that bring
into being Badussy (or Machu Picchu after dark) (2004) complement the
monumental World-Famo Paintings (2004-05), a set of 100 intimate and ironic
scenes drawn on pages torn from a notorious 1939 scholarly book edited by
Rockwell Kent, World Famous Paintings, in which music motifs play a
significant role. Also worth mentioning is Rhode’s stylish portrayal of
consumerism in Untitled, Dream Houses (2005), in which he represents himself
failing to catch commodities – such as TV sets and cars – that are falling
out of the sky and end up crushing him. Rooting their personal visions in
historical and present political conditions, these artists challenge the
usual perception of the built environment, ‘seeing beauty where others often
do not’ – to quote Schoonmaker’s words – at street level.
MIGUEL AMADO