Denim Jumpsuit and Red Lipstick

Denim Jumpsuit and Red Lipstick

Corbet vs. Dempsy Gallery
Chicago, IL

On Friday October 21^st from 6 – 8pm was the opening reception for Rebecca Morris and Cauleen Smith at the Corbett vs. Dempsey gallery in Chicago, IL. Upon arriving, the small gallery is on the upper level of a strip building. Walking up the stairs being greeted by posters from past exhibition shows. The first reaction to the space is astonished by the aesthetics.

Yellow hued hardwood flooring.

Red brick walls.

Reception Desk straight ahead through the bodies.

On the direct right wall is a register patterned painting that variates in mark, color, shape, and application. Rebecca Morris's works use oil paint and enamel. Rebecca Morris's use of soft suggestions leads the viewer to different fabric material as well as architecture. The positioning of the patterns can be associated with a horizon leading into a landscape. 

Continuing traveling through the space, around the right corner is the banner of Cauleen Smith used during her Black Love Processions: Conduct Your Blooming (2016). This particular piece behaves as a documentation for a performance. Left with only the banner and the information given to the viewer on the table. There was slight disconnect in that the banner could not be shared in its original state and now is simply pinned in the corner. As well as being in an entirely separate area from Morris.

Reentering the main gallery space, the viewer is in the presence of six large paintings that are strategically spread through the space. Three out of the five paintings involved a very large circle. All in reference to figure ground relationships yet maintaining a flatness that carries a puzzling experience of questioning what is reality and what is not. The circle behaves as a portal into the space but also as an object in the way of entering the flat grounded space behind.

The edges are soft on the forms taking up the space inside the sphere. These elements feel rather design. Using Gestalt principles such as similarity, translation, and proximity.
















Figure ground relationships and the paint application in references to the body as well as fabric, surface materials that have the potential to be altered in flatness or three dimension. These properties are intriguing and puzzling. The back and forth experience is suggested yet not overpowering. The significance is on the strokes themselves. Due to the scale of the work, it was very east to consider they work as object-like. 

Little strokes being held behind a tiny-square structure but then in it's entirety the strokes are being held behind this silver enamel screen. The screen acts as a protectant or a window to see inside. This painting is stubble yet carries a lot of anxiousness in the way the large two inch brown marks are frantically spread throughout the surface.

Blood splatter slide. 

Landscape with weird gold enamel breaking the surface. Black paint that spread out and became softer as the oil absorbs into the canvas. More in front and less in back creating a horizon. Light silver grey outline around inside the gold enameled shapes to heighten the figure ground illusion that Morris has a fascination with.

Leopard print and Dalmatians. 

Turns into Metal and Snow.

Rebecca Morris is taking over more space and frankly presence. The paintings can be experienced in real time as the banner is experiences as a documentation for the performance it had participated in. It was hard to become a part of the banner both for the lack of participating in watching the performance with the banner, along side being a white woman. There is a cultural difference that leaves an otherness. However, there was a free book provided by the gallery titled Human 3.0 Reading List 2015-2016. Human 3.0 Reading List 2015-2016 is the missing piece of the puzzle that the "Conduct Your Blooming" banner needed.

This book allows to reach her content more through social cultural references. It deserves more attention. Cauleen Smith is providing her audience with a reading list unlike any other. She hand drew the covers of the books on graph paper using colored pencil, marker, paint, and graphite. A collective of cultural discoveries that can reach beyond by engaging the audience to seek these readings for themselves. Of the entire show, this book...documentation of reading has made the most impact. It can be reached to an audience in real time. Consistently throughout the day or left on a shelf to rediscover later. Within each page is a new method, a new word to latch on to. Cauleen Smith finishes the reading list with a MANIFESTO. Some quotes include following...

BLACK PEOPLE ARE AT WAR WITHOUT THE PROPER ARMOR. WE REQUIRE INOCULATIONS THAT REPEL THE SEDUCTIONS OF CORPORATE SERVITUDE.

Our universities cannor exist without burdening students with debt.

We can rationalize the selling out of public property for higher property values and much needed neighborhood amenities (like fresh produce). We can occupy the streets in protest against state sanctioned violence against black people (however we perform and experience our genders). But without a weaponized, and generative Consciousness <<CONSCIOUSNESS>> we cannor save ourselves from the seductions of neoliberalism.

STUDY.
Deep and active study. 

Supplemented with CONVERSATION engaged in with the intention of producing RESISTANCE and earning the callouses that resistance demands.

Naw, this ain't no afro-pessimism shit. This reading list is for the Doers-Who-Think; not the academics who think there's no point. This shit is for Jimmy Baldwin's afro-optimist. Because the only reason to destroy this world is if we shar the fundamental belief that a better world is possible. 

These 57 books are, all that I am able to draw right now. These are some of the books that literally changed my life, saved my life and sustain my life, but also, (fair warning) make it difficult for me to
go along
get along
look the other way
and get mines.

Love.

Resist.

Read on.

Right on.



In the entirety of the show, Cauleen Smith's work has exceeded the amount of emotional being, intelligence, and life-changing-effectiveness that Morris's work lacks. I have the ability to carry this reading list and to read Smith's words over and over. Each time going further and further into an understanding I had not quite acquired before.