Casey Kaplan
CRITICS’ PICKS
Igshaan Adams
BLANK PROJECTS
10 Lewin Street, Woodstock
January 22–February 28, 2015
Last year Igshaan Adams showed a recording of his performance “Please Remember II,” 2013, in which the artist lies prone on a green burial cloth while his father performs an Islamic funeral ritual, at the Paul Klee Center’s annual Summer Academy in Bern, Switzerland. Appearing again in this new exhibition, titled “Parda,” after the veil prescribed by Sharia law for women, the green cloth printed with yellow Koranic verses, “Plate 7,” 2014, is now embroidered with one of psychotherapist Hermann Rorschach’s psycho-diagnostic inkblots, which Adams researched before going to Bern. Part of his 2014 “Neoscope” series, all eight of the exhibition’s wall-hung fabric pieces feature a Rorschach inkblot. The most compelling piece is “Plate 2.5,” 2014, for which Adams, assisted by his mother, a seamstress, created ridged undulations in the fabric by tightening individual threads, forming a vestigial inkblot pattern.
Adams, an observant but liberal gay Muslim, makes abstract work that investigates racial, cultural, and sexual identity. Similar to the work of other young South African artists Moshekwa Langa and Nicholas Hlobo, his output also sometimes applies domestic materials to sculpture. Of the four ceiling-hung sculptural forms here—pendulous constructions made from lightweight wire, plastic beads, metal rods, and other decorative bric-a-brac—”Plate 5,” 2014, is the most fragile. It also charts a different mood from works like the stridently political fabric piece “Plate 9,” 2014, which incorporates the old South African flag into its embroidered inkblot motif. However, these two pieces are reconciled by their use of cheap materials, a purposeful strategy that the artist neither lionizes as a constraint nor self-consciously tries to hide while fashioning his absorbing constructions.
— Sean O’Toole
CRITICS’ PICKS
Igshaan Adams
BLANK PROJECTS
10 Lewin Street, Woodstock
January 22–February 28, 2015
Last year Igshaan Adams showed a recording of his performance “Please Remember II,” 2013, in which the artist lies prone on a green burial cloth while his father performs an Islamic funeral ritual, at the Paul Klee Center’s annual Summer Academy in Bern, Switzerland. Appearing again in this new exhibition, titled “Parda,” after the veil prescribed by Sharia law for women, the green cloth printed with yellow Koranic verses, “Plate 7,” 2014, is now embroidered with one of psychotherapist Hermann Rorschach’s psycho-diagnostic inkblots, which Adams researched before going to Bern. Part of his 2014 “Neoscope” series, all eight of the exhibition’s wall-hung fabric pieces feature a Rorschach inkblot. The most compelling piece is “Plate 2.5,” 2014, for which Adams, assisted by his mother, a seamstress, created ridged undulations in the fabric by tightening individual threads, forming a vestigial inkblot pattern.
Adams, an observant but liberal gay Muslim, makes abstract work that investigates racial, cultural, and sexual identity. Similar to the work of other young South African artists Moshekwa Langa and Nicholas Hlobo, his output also sometimes applies domestic materials to sculpture. Of the four ceiling-hung sculptural forms here—pendulous constructions made from lightweight wire, plastic beads, metal rods, and other decorative bric-a-brac—”Plate 5,” 2014, is the most fragile. It also charts a different mood from works like the stridently political fabric piece “Plate 9,” 2014, which incorporates the old South African flag into its embroidered inkblot motif. However, these two pieces are reconciled by their use of cheap materials, a purposeful strategy that the artist neither lionizes as a constraint nor self-consciously tries to hide while fashioning his absorbing constructions.
— Sean O’Toole