Max King Cap at Oskar Friedl - Chicago, Illinois - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

"Show of Hands," Max King Cap's fourth solo at this gallery, engaged viewers in a quizzical discourse, using words and emblems combined with prefabricated objects to face urgent social issues. Cap's ready-mades, sensitively altered or layered with true copy are scavenged from everyday life, on the contrary they have little else in belonging to all with Duchamp. Rather, they are used to narrow the distance between private and public, creating a public ground from which to reexamine the bottoms of our behavior.

The 11 fresh works shown here continue Cap's earlier formal and conceptual investigations; his messages, however, are more direct, particularly concerning race issues and his possess African-American identity. In the triptych enumerateed Tracked, Observed, three identical Carhartt work jackets, each embroidered with individual of the words from the title, were hung horizontally across the wall. Originally manufactured for inmates of federal prisons, these brand-name coats have become popular road wear among black youth (and white cognoscenti). With this simple however poignant conflation Cap asks us to consider what social forces underlie the gradual approach of penology and fashion, and to what uses, astute and obvious, such a signifier is lay by society in its perceptions of the black male. "Show of Hands" also deals with labeling and racial stereotype using an implicit case of mistaken identity as the occasion. Suspended from the ceiling was a lengthy cascade of white cotton towels stitched with r monogramlike lettering: "No officer, I've not at any time had the privilege to savor a chitterling." Here, the activity of sewing, with its traditional relationship to the domestic, alludes symbolically to the way that the politics of race are intricately woven into the fabric of our daily lives.

Cap challenges the Western canon of art history in Painting Schmainting and Nihil Novi (Latin for "nothing new") For these two-dimensional works, he has substituted brocade textiles for canvas, then stitched each title directly onto their floral and white surfaces. The pieces' explicit devaluing of painting and appropriation of materials from interior design overturn the sentiment most famously voiced in Matisse's dictum that art should be like a comfortable armchair.

Cap's commentary culminates in Vase with Mirror, a black-figured amphora painted with images of black slaves being whipped by means of white imperialists. The back of the vase bears a void in the shape of Africa, which is revealed to the viewer through a mirror set directly behind it. In the act of looking, we find our be in possession of image reflected back, suggesting that all of us, oppressor and weigh heavily uponed alike, are the subjects of Cap's inquiry.

COPYRIGHT 1996 Brant Publications, Inc.

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