Books by Antonio Sergio Bessa
Sanford Biggers: Codeswitch
by Andrea Andersson, Antonio Sergio Bessa
“What I want to do is code-switch. To have there be layers of history and politics, but also this heady, arty stuff—inside jokes, black humor—that you might have to take a while to research if you want to really get it.”—Sanford Biggers
Sanford Biggers (b. 1970) is a Harlem-based artist working in various media including painting, sculpture, video, and performance. He describes his practice as “code-switching”—mixing disparate elements to create layers of meaning—to account for his wide-ranging interests. This catalogue focuses on a series of repurposed quilts (many made in the 19th century) that embodies this interest in mixture. Informed by the significance of quilts to the Underground Railroad, Biggers transforms the quilts into new works using materials such as paint, tar, glitter, and charcoal to add his own layers of codes, whether they be historical, political, or purely artistic. Insightful essays survey Biggers’s career, his art in relation to music, and the history upon which the series draws. Also featured is a short yet powerful graphic essay by an award-winning illustrator that introduces the layered meanings inherent in the art and craft of quilting.
Published in association with The Bronx Museum of the Arts
Exhibition Schedule: The Bronx Museum of the Arts
(September 9, 2020–January 24, 2021)
California African American Museum, Los Angeles
(July 28, 2021–January 23, 2022)
Speed Art Museum, Louisville
(March 18–June 26, 2022)
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by Antonio Sergio Bessa, Rochelle Feinstein
Product Description
Literary Nonfiction. Art. Hybrid Genre. The work of Bronx native Rochelle Feinstein is deeply informed by abstraction, while also conveying a keen sensibility to contemporary culture, particularly to our everyday use of language. Over the span of the last four decades, Feinstein has probed the relevance of the abstract painting tradition vis-a-vis a rapidly changing cultural environment. She has used the lexicon of abstract painting to approach subjects of both personal and social import such as the televised police pursuit of OJ Simpson (El Bronco, 1994); the Iraq war (Hotspots, 2003-2016), and the economic downturn of 2008 (The Estate of Rochelle F., 2010). PLS. REPLY intends to give readers a broad scope of Feinstein's ongoing engagement with the subject, whether in magazine articles, personal writing, conference presentations, school assignments, or exhibition proposals.
Co-published with The Bronx Museum of the Arts and Stellar Projects. 16 full color plates. Letterpressed covers and bookmark.
About the Author
Rochelle Feinstein (born 1947) has long been influential as both an abstract painter and an educator (she was one of the first women to be tenured in the Visual Arts at Yale, where she still teaches). Her thrillingly reckless paintings, full of gestural edge, humor and pop-cultural allusion, present a kind of two-dimensional precedent for the deftly coarse sculptures of Rachel Harrison, or an American counterpart to Martin Kippenberger.
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Beyond the Supersquare: Art and Architecture in Latin America after Modernism
Beyond the Supersquare: Art and Architecture in Latin America after Modernism, which developed from a symposium presented by the Bronx Museum of the Arts in 2011, showcases original essays by distinguished Latin American architects, historians, and curators whose research examines architecture and urban design
practices in the region during a significant period of the twentieth century. Drawing from the exuberant architectural projects of the 1940s to the 1960s, as well as from critically engaged artistic practices of the present day, the essays in this collection reveal how the heroic visions and utopian ideals popular in architectural discourse during the modernist era bore complicated legacies for Latin America―the consequences of which are evident in the vastly uneven economic conditions and socially disparate societies found throughout the region today.
The innovative contributions in this volume address how the modernist movement came into being in Latin America and compellingly explore how it continues to resonate in today’s cultural discourse. Beyond the Supersquare takes themes traditionally examined within the strict field of urbanism and architecture and explores them against a broader range of disciplines, including the global economy, political science, gender, visual arts, philosophy, and urban planning.
Containing a breadth of scholarship, this book offers a compelling and distinctive view of contemporary life in Latin America. Among the topics explored are the circulation of national cultural identities through architectural media, the intersection of contemporary art and urban social politics, and the recovery of canonically overlooked figures in art and architectural histories, such as Lina Bo Bardi and Joao Filgueiras Lima (“Lele”) from Brazil, Juan Legarreta of Mexico, and Henry Klumb in Puerto Rico.
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