Chris Christion
Your Pigmentation Ain't Shit
2014
Shoe polish on panel, speaker with audio
A minimalist square made with shoes polished layered on a panel. The panel also has a speaker which plays audio snippets from a viral video of a passenger on a subway train angered by another passenger. At timed intervals, the painting blurts out a composition of the woman’s angered responses to her perceived dismissal throughout the gallery space. The target of the painting's anger is unclear; seemingly yelling at the viewer, the gallery space, as well as the artwork it shares space with.
Your Pigmentation Ain't Shit 2014 Shoe polish, plexi, motion sensor and audio clip
Your Pigmentation Ain't Shit 2014 Shoe polish, plexi, motion sensor and audio clip
Your Pigmentation Ain't Shit 2014 Shoe polish, plexi, motion sensor and audio clip
Your Pigmentation Ain't Shit 2014 Shoe polish, plexi, motion sensor and audio clip
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Some Key References for
Your Pigmentation Ain't Shit:
Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square (1915) is often credited with being among the first abstract works ever painted. In 2015 the State Tretyakov Museum in Moscow announced they found a caption-like text on the face of Kasmir Malevich Black Square painting that is believed to read, “Battle of the Negroes in a dark cave” it’s speculated to be in reference to a racist joke in a monochrome painting by Alphonse Allais, a French writer, humorist and cartoonist popular in Russia at the time Malevich made the work. In 1882, Allais’ “Battle of negroes in a deep dark cave at night”. My interest in alluding to this history is to highlight an inherited social perspective on race relations that the conceptual and foundational history of abstraction is built on.
A visitor looks at Malevich’s ‘Black Square’ at Tate Modern (Micha Theiner)
Kasimir Malevich, Black Square, 1915 version 79.5×79.5cm, collection: State Tretyakov Gallery, Moskow
Alphonse Allais, from Album primo-avrilesque, 1897, image: wikipedia
A visitor looks at Malevich’s ‘Black Square’ at Tate Modern (Micha Theiner)