Beschreibung:

Kelley Walker Black Star Press 2005 Silkscreened chocolate on digital print on canvas laid on board in three parts. 36 x 28 in. (91.4 x 71.1 cm) each. Initialed and dated “K 2005” on the reverse of the center panel.
Provenance Galerie Catherine Bastide, Brussels Catalogue Essay Using potent images culled from mass media, Kelley Walker’s works appropriate iconic cultural images, utilizing them to highlight underlying issues of politics and consumerism. In the present lot, Black Star Press, Walker blows up a photograph to fill the three canvases with an iconic image of racial unrest. The original photographs were taken during the Birmingham race Riots in the 1960s, and were then later used by Andy Warhol for a portfolio of silkscreens. Kelly silkscreened over the images of a white policeman and black youth with a faux splatter of light and dark chocolate, Walker’s gestures mimic violence and contrast, merging ethical corruption and graffiti pop. As a triptych, Black Star Press desensitizes through repetition, recalling mass media as a barrage of anesthetised brutality. "I think appropriation points to or suggests some sort of original—a locatable source that one appropriates and in many ways eclipses. With the Black Star Press pieces (the chocolate riots) I attempt to sidestep a familiar art source, Warhol, as a starting point. Looking back at artists dealing with appropriation in the ’80s, it seems the strategy of replicating in itself became the style or brand of the artist using it. In my works, I don’t escape the effects of branding but think of the processes associated with appropriation as a way of dealing with branding as a social space," (Kelley Walker in V. Pécoil, “Kelley Walker,” Flash Art, n. 247, March - April 2006). Read More