BEAT

In the group exhibition BEAT, each artist integrates music or sound into their practice as a means to tell stories, discover universal patterns or confront history. Several are invested in the retelling of African-American history. In Crystal Z. Campbell’s video “On the Way to the Moon, We Discovered the Earth,” she manipulates the image of the New York Times to retell the story of Hip-Hop’s birth. Michael Paul Britto recasts the music video of pop idol Britney Spears’ “I’m A Slave 4 U” to illustrate common slave practices. And R. Armstrong’s uncanny sound installation combines a recording of a chain gang at Mississippi’s oldest prison, Parchman Farm, and her own footsteps.

The work of Keith O. Anderson and Glendalys Medina materially begin with music’s accessories. Anderson appropriates a music stand to symbolize the cleansing of his spirit in “Purification, My Melody,” named after Rakim’s song “Melody.” In her paintings, Medina illuminates the universal patterns of music and language through various tones of gold and the shapes of a boombox. In her video, she captures the intimate sounds of her abstracted body breathing and breakdancing. Daniel Santiago Salguero interprets and plays the musical language weaving across his photographs of electricity towers and cables.

Performance is central to the work of Jeff Kurosaki and Tara Pelletier, and Devin Kenny and Drag Lomax. Using sculpture, video, music and performance, the collaborative duo, Kurosaki and Pelletier build multi-layered narratives exploring human designed systems and fundamental rhythms of life. Drag Lomax’s folk or “social music” is highly influenced by his conversations with Devin Kenny, who he met in Bed-Study about 2 years ago. Together they often speak about how Black erasure in music (rock and roll, folk, and even hip-hop) is akin to the gentrification happening all over New York.

Curated by Stephanie A. Lindquist, BEAT is a multimedia exploration of the influence music and sound have on the practices of contemporary artists, leading them to reveal forgotten histories, to expand our sense of spirit, and to perform new stories.