Header Image: IF THIS MEANS YOU, 2016, single channel video, color, sound, 5 minutes 45 seconds.
Opening reception: Wednesday June 29, 2016
Exhibition dates: June 30-August 14, 2016
Performance: Thursday July 28, 2016, 7:30PM
For his summer residency at LACE, Los Angeles based artist Jibade-Khalil Huffman presents a newly commissioned multimedia installation that explores the subject of spectatorship, systems of display, and narrative making.
Verse Chorus Verse is comprised of a suite of formally connected works concerned with the question of perception by exposing and foregrounding systems of image-making and storytelling. Here, the projector serves as a stand-in for the act of uncovering certain narratives. Huffman layers and complicates methods of display in order to create a space that favors no one part, where hierarchies are leveled, and the process of storytelling bears equal weight to the story told.
Colliding various strategies—the tracking shot in Hollywood cinema, the compacted narrative of music videos, and the nostalgic voice of television, and seductive imagery from advertising—Verse Chorus Verse considers the way in which form and mechanisms of display construct their own narratives, and shape how and what we collectively consume as the only story.
Drawing on his background in poetry, Huffman’s work plays with the meaning-making capabilities of image and text. His videos experiment with timing and pace to build suspense and skew expectations, while his poetry challenges syntax and style to explore the malleability and inaccuracy of language. His recent works appropriated familiar cinematic strategies, including the title sequence, subtitles, music cues, camera zoom-ins, that hold the story together and strategically evoke emotion.
MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST
Jibade-Khalil Huffman uses performance, photography, and video that pushes the capabilities of text and image to tell stories and convey meaning. Drawing on his background in poetry, Huffman plays with timing and pacing in his visual work to tease out suspense, tension, expectation, and release. He is the author of three books of poems, including his most recent publication “Sleeper Hold” (Fence, 2014). His art and writing projects, spanning photography, video, performance and poetry, have been exhibited and performed at MoMA/PS1, Mt. Tremper Arts, and Scaramouche, New York; Machine Project, Public Fiction, Night Gallery, and Eighth Veil, Los Angeles; and Southern Exposure, San Francisco. His other exhibitions include “Third Person” with Anthony Pearson at Marianne Boesky, “The Four People You Meet at Every Drug Deal” at Samuel Freeman, and his presentation at the 2014 Made in LA Biennial at The Hammer Museum. A graduate of Bard College and Brown University, he holds an MFA from the University of Southern California, and lives and works in Los Angeles. Huffman is currently artist in resident at the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Curated by LACE Assistant Director Shoghig Halajian.
SUPPORT
The LACE Summer Residency is made possible by a grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts, the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, and the National Performance Network: Visual Artists Network (VAN).
Read Artforum’s review of Verse Chorus Verse
Read Frieze’s review of Verse Chorus Verse
All installation photos by Chris Wormald.
