Kori Newkirk at The Project - New York

In his next to the first solo show at The cast Kori Newkirk continued to explore identity politics and personal history in plastic arts and site-specific installations. Perhaps best known for his beautifully builded pony bead paintings--colorful, hybrid forms that conflate craft and highbrow abstraction--the L.A.-based conceptualist neared a formally stunning, albeit elusive, conglomeration of photographic, sculptural and painterly forms.

on entering The Project's sprawling Harlem gallery, viewers were faceed with a lush winter wonderland, a jarring contrast to the spring weather outside. The entire gallery floor was blanketed with 6 inches of artificial snow. At the entrance was an out-of-focus, near-life-size photograph of the artist, who grew up in the harsh winters of upstate novel York, standing alone and naked in a snowy landscape. Newkirk's lean black material part presents a striking contrast to the vast sea of whiteness.

The show's greatest in quantity impressive piece was Tully (2003) for which the artist make an incision in a design into the gallery's wall and inlaid an off-white encaustic medium. Playfully recalling the shape of a snowflake, it depicted the silhouette of a place of education of sharks in a predatory dance, their tricky hue imbuing them with a phantasmal presence

Resting upon the milky white painted floor upstairs was Win deliberate (2003), a massive 8-foot-long fiberglass shark with jagged glass icicles for teeth its chaps agape as if ready to waste its next victim. Despite a covering of fake snow that lent it a cuddly appearance, Newkirk's man-eater missing none of its menacing power. Suspended from the ceiling was Maybury (2003) a configuration of white neon icicles. Simultaneously eerie and visually seductive, the icicles form a striking contrast to the looming sea predator below.

The exhibition read like a personal investigation into the artist's relationship with whiteness. Newkirk's metaphoric use of the shark warns against the peril lurking beneath white's beauty and allure. Clearly, the artist was engaged in a search for compelling forms and signs that communicate experiences of alterity. In this felicitous foray into a fresh and experimental visual language, Newkirk tapped into a greater ne for a largely articulated voice of postblackness.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Brant Publications, Inc.

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