Hair Stills

When the smallest bit of oneself, be it skin turned to scab or a single strand of hair, is viewed as an extracted part, it provides one the opportunity to squint and concentrate on it or step back and re-imagine it as part of the original whole. Separated from its origin, it can quickly become unrecognizable as it is re-patterned into otherness. What does the smallest increment of this stuff tell us about the totality of ourselves? And do the sums and parts act as a metaphor for the gulf as well as the proximity between, say, a single cell and the so-called global village? This new body of work attempts to address these questions by examining the stuff of my own body (hair), of language and of pattern, via the work of British Op Art painter, Bridget Riley.

Like many, I am strongly drawn to the magnetic directness of Riley’s work…so much so that I have oftentimes felt connected to it on a cellular level. The activity of “redrawing” several of her mathematically patterned works with my own dreaded strands of hair allows me to give physical expression to that primal feeling of a shared aesthetic. In this work-in-progress series, I have appropriated her seminal black & white works: Blaze 1 (1962), Movement In Squares (1961), and Fall (1963) to make Blaze of Dread, Box Fade and That Black Girl respectively. Like the original source paintings, these newer works operate on an optical level and can become dizzying over time. But because they are constructed out of the knotted, unpredictable yet very tactile strands of my hair, they also function on the level of haptics in spite of the fact that the images are super-flat and printed on photographic paper. This duality of function creates a visual dialogue between the macro and the micro, which then opens the floor to questions of genetics, heritage, history, race and identity.

Pattern also informs the other images on photographic paper that make up the “Definition” series. Each of these utilizes a word or phrase taken from the dictionary in the defining of the word “black.” The works created thus far in the series includes Evil, Gloomy, Wicked, Tragic, Dismal and Deeply Stained With Dirt. To be clear, these words are generally located in the figurative (as opposed to literal) definition of the word but they still represent an uncomfortable if unintended residue of meaning. The original hair patterns in these works function as a specific visual manifestation of that residue.

The Natural Way of Things (for Barbara) [DVD] (2005) utilizes a scene from the 1977 television drama “Roots” which caused a sensation at the time by being the first widely viewed filmic work to give flesh to the centuries long institution of slavery in America. In this scene, assumptions about identity and identity roles turn murky. By cutting up the scene into geometric shapes that correspond to the negative spaces between the tendrils of a mass of disorganized dreadlocks, the video itself attempts to address whether there remains a residue of identity murk in our consciousness today. The work was made in direct response to disparaging remarks made by former first lady Barbara Bush in the wake of the Katrina tragedy in the summer of 2005.

-Michael Cole-

Splitting Hairs: New Work by Michael E. Cole

Blaze of Dread

Blaze of Dread (Detail)

BoxFade

Box Fade (Detail)

That Black Girl

That Black Girl (Detail)

Evil

Evil (Detail)

Gloomyy

Gloomy (Detail)

Tragic

Tragic (Detail)

Dismal

Dismal (Detail)

Wicked

Deeply Stained With Dirt

Behind Beyond Beyonce 1

Behind Beyond Beyonce 2

Behind Beyond Beyonce 3

Base Pair 1

Base Pair 2

Base Pair3

Base Pair 4

Home Heat

Tragic Text

The Natural Way of Things (Video Still)

Self Portrait as an authentic black man

Virgin/Unrelaxed

Virgin/Unrelaxed (Detail)

Self Portrait as Barack Obama