BEMBE at Nina Sagt Galerie, Düsseldorf
November 27th - December 24th 2010
Finally I find some time to post photos from my current exhibition “Bembe” at Nina Sagt in Düsseldorf. This is the first time I’ve made an exhibition purely of my mask work, so I was very nervous about how it would turn out. I was pretty happy with it. It looked like an “art” show, which was an interesting experience for me, though I think this had a lot to do with the collaboration pieces I made with Michael De Feo.
I had sent some masks to Michael in New York in the summer, and as they had been shipped back directly to the gallery I didn’t see them until I arrived three days before the show was due to open. Luckily Michael had done a great job!
Initially I had planned to hang all the collaboration masks on one wall together, but after I’d started to put Michael’s on the wall and saw how powerful they looked alone I changed my plan.
Michael is well known for making self-portraits, and I had a loose idea he would make them on these masks. I had the idea to then have myself photographed wearing them and calling the pictures “Portrait Of The Artist Dave the Chimp As The Artist Michael De Feo” or some such nonsense, but instead he created these much more abstract pieces. I think that they work much better with the rest of the show this way, especially the print experiments I showed on the opposite wall, and they have a tribal feel which fits with the research drawings I showed in the back room.
If you have the chance go see the show for real - my photos are not very good :-/
