Nari Ward, Sick Smoke. 2010.
In LIVESupport, Nari Ward’s 1st show at Lehman Maupin Gallery, a white ambulance stands as the centerpiece of the show. It’s instantly recognized as a vehicle that offers “life support” and yet you will quickly realize the ambulance is filled with smoke (thanks to a smoke machine running on a cycle). The smoke along with the ambulance’s flashing lights introduces an ominous note. Does the tension between the rescue and sickness aspects of the ambulance reflect the current state of affairs with regard to health care?
Notice that Ward has masked the ambulance’s identifying labels by applying white vinyl over them. The masking encourages you to peer closer at this at once familiar and now newly-made strange vehicle.
Ward pointed out in an interview at Lehman Maupin Gallery with Naomi Beckwith, Assistant Curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem (SMH) that the rest of the exhibition plays with issues of “blackness” in contrast to the whiteness of the ambulance. Ward covers the surfaces of both found and made objects with black stencil ink. He described how he likes what the ink does to the surfaces of the objects and how it makes the viewer slow down and see a familiar object in a new way.
In the Role Playing Drawings, Ward masks or silhouettes parts of the images to create new narratives. Ward found the cards in the trash of an elementary school across the street from his home in Harlem. In the 1960s, a child’s psychological state would be judged on the story they told about the picture. What stories do you imagine as you look at these images? How would your psychological or emotional state be judged?
From the beginning of his career, Ward has been interested in the found object. Born in Jamaica in 1963, Ward came to NY to study art and received his BA from Hunter College (1991) and his MFA from Brooklyn College (1992). Squatting in an apartment building in Harlem, Ward became interested in the debris on the streets of his new neighborhood. He did a residency at the Studio Museum of Harlem, culminating in Amazing Grace which included 300 abandoned strollers he had collected from the streets of Harlem and then installed in an unused firehouse in his neighborhood.
In his first stand-alone video Father and Sons, Ward addresses the complex situation facing African-American police officers dealing with young men of color. It’s filmed at Reverend Al Sharpton’s National Action Network House of Justice, a space Ward said he is enamored with and features a police officer who’s actually retired and the father of the 2 young men in the video. The audio includes the reciting of one’s Miranda Rights (which Ward’s brother, a lawyer, had printed on the back of his business cards) and the supportive words spontaneously spoken by the dad/police officer encouraging his son during filming “you can do this”. By turns tender, tense, and ambiguous, Ward’s video offers a potent and open-ended narrative. What’s your interpretation of it?
As you look at the other works in the exhibition that incorporate a variety of existing objects including store gates, MRIs, Chase construction signs, and church pews, consider how the idea of support - physical, psychological, spiritual, and monetary - connects them all.
Click here Listen to Nari Ward talk about the exhibition.
Nari Ward
LIVESupport
Lehman Maupin Gallery - 540 West 26th Street
until April 17, 2010