Fragments and Foci

We see what we have learned to see. From where we stand. A greco-roman statue in white marble. Traditional african mask in dark wood. An old quilt on the couch.

We have had a good amount of time to get used to the orders we call culture: black and white, classical and ethnographic, center and periphery, but suddenly it is clear that those opposites or dichotomies are not neutral. They have been created, repeated and institutionalised through centuries. And some seek to maintain and defend them at any cost. It feels safe yet it is hopeless. It is dangerous and luckily it is impossible. Because deep within us we are able to see things in a different way and through different tools. It asks something us us. Something we luckily possess. Which is the ability to read the language of art. Where it is not a matter of opinion – but about understanding(s).

Sanford Biggers does not dissolve the dichotomies. He does something more interesting: He breaks them apart. Puts them back together. And adds something new. He lets them coexist. Not separately side by side, but in each work where the different elements merge without losing their differences.

He stands on the shoulders of art history, but he is not standing very still up there. He twists its forms free of their associating narratives we have grown used to. A fragment may seem excavated from a distant past and at the same time be immensely contemporary. The antique quilts from the Codex-series get painted and staged. Woven into Japanese patterns and hip-hop and American folklore on secret sign posts. The Karyatid-series works with wooden sculptures that connect floor and ceiling. They are carriers of history and connect present and past. The anamorphic drawing on the wall comes together and break apart, when we move. One step to the side can change it all. Stories, we have learned to keep separate are given space in the same work. Everything is effortless. 

For Biggers history is still alive and in use. He continues to work with what we have inherited, making room for what we have overlooked, erased, and misunderstood. We are allowed to see it all again—as we have never seen it before—and as it actually always has been. This is the absurd, touching, and terrifying tale of us. Human beings. Homo Sapiens. Here we are. See for yourself.”

P.S Walk curiously and cautiously into this space. Please do not touch any of the pieces. The works are fragile – but the stories are as strong as you want them to be.

Sanford Biggers (b. 1970, Los Angeles, CA). He has since 1999 lived and worked in Harlem, New York, US. Fragments and Foci presents the conceptual artist’s new and site-specific works across a range of materials such as marble, wood, antique textiles, and oil paint.