Who Are You Looking At?

I’m still checking out William Cordova. From my somewhat narrow perspective his work seems to rescue history and culture. He shifts through the misinformation that has been heaped upon it and restores it to a presence even greater than its experienced life. That’s not to suggest that he makes the memory of the past or the reflection of today better but, instead, he makes it more truthful. Cordova goes below the surface of the sensational to reveal very factual information. He presents these histories and events with compassion to those who lived them and with kindness to those who are unaware, by wrapping his work in subtle metaphor, allowing the viewer to come close to what they were taught to believe and what they were taught to fear.

I love Cordova’s commitment and thoughtfulness. He has given me new ways of seeing. His work is not about the aesthetic in the literal sense although, once examined, it turns out to be very beautiful. Instead, and what I appreciate most, is that it invites and even challenges the viewer to investigate for themselves what’s being offered.

Since my introduction to William Cordova I have wondered how people become informed about art and what keeps them engaged to any particular body of work and how all of it pans out for audiences of color.
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I especially like this older piece entitled STAND UP NEXT TO A MOUNTAIN.


The piece addresses appropriation, co-opting and sampling of culture through image. The plastic wrapper suggests "product" but the Black men in it are defiant in that they are non participatory via the act of looking away from the viewer or spectator.
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William Cordova has been selected for the 2008 Whitney Biennial.

Who Are You Looking At?

A must see!!!

EXHIBIT: the house that frank lloyd wright built for Atahualpa, fred Hampton y mark clark

ARTIST: William Cordova

On view until February 16, 2008

SPECIAL EVENT: Artist Talk: February 15, 2008 at 7:30 pm [includes catalog release]

LOCATION: Three Walls
119 North Peoria #2D
312-432-3972
www.three-walls.org


--From the Three Walls website

William Cordova's work has woven itself into the public's conscious as of late, through sculpture, drawings, installation and public art projects that investigate and deconstruct the cultural landscape; marshaling new material, knowledge and readings of the architecture, sites and media that are marginalized by the forced predominance of other, status quo perspectives. For his ThreeWalls exhibition, the house that frank lloyd wright built for atahualpa, fred hampton y mark clark, Cordova developed projects that echo people and events in recent Chicago history while linking them to past histories from different parts of the world. In doing so he challenges the way we assume, consume and many times erase what is relevant or beneficial to our social make up and survival.

The combination of Cordova's research and the evocative work it manifests, comprise a palette that articulates both personal and shared experience. Including public site markers that continue his ongoing Landmarks series, a billboard project with BASE (a collective of artists, writers and activists that Cordova frequently works with) and a small publication set alongside discrete work at ThreeWalls, Cordova's gestures act as provocations which, according to New York based artist/writer (and sometimes collaborator) Leslie Hewitt: "force new readings, translating back and forth the convergence [of] image, text, and material [that] capture[s] seemingly dormant battles of ownership and conquest."