October 9, 2017 - 22:28
Franny Condon, Marisa LaBarca
Oral Description of: Untitled (Black 1968), 2017 + Untitled (Dad’s Mugshot), 2016
After walking down the right side of the art gallery, you’ll come across a rather large work of art (approximately 58in x 44in) situated in the center of other paintings, which are smaller in comparison. It’s an untitled piece of work, but its meaning is still portrayed in its simplicity. For one, the entire portrait consists of only 2 colors and 4 words. The word ‘Dear’ is beautifully scripted in thin, white print on the top left hand corner. The date 1968, printed in white and rounded, bold numbers, lies underneath the word ‘Dear’ with a slight indent to the right. The top two-thirds of the portrait’s background is black and was meticulously created by using long and even strokes of black ink down the length of the top of the portrait. The transition between the black background to the white background at the bottom of the portrait consists of short strokes of black that fray at the end, as if is was overlapped with torn white paper. On the bottom right of the portrait, in the white section of the portrait, there is the word ‘Love’ in the scripted font as above, except it’s in black and is tilted a bit to the left. Directly below the word ‘Love’ is the black and rounded, bold date of 1984. The portrait as a whole resembles a letter she wrote to her father; the potential content of which is left up to the interpreter.
On the wall directly to the left of the gallery entrance, there is a slightly smaller work (28in x 36in). The majority of the canvas is occupied by a white background, with the portrait itself occupying an area (approximately 6in x 10in) just below the center of the piece. The graphite illustration depicts a mugshot of Rodney Barnette, the artist’s father, in black and white. The lack of a gradient amplifies the already sinister nature of the image, with half of the subject’s face cast in shadow and features highlighted in white, and the other illuminated in perfect white, with features in black. The figure appears slightly hunched, with his eyes staring out of the piece in indignation, holding a sign at chest level which, instead of a name, identifies the subject as “K6”. His shoulders and body are dark, potentially alluding to the black leather jacket that characterized the Black Panther Party and the subject’s within the organization. The only piece of information identifying the man as Barnette is the faint outline of letters outside the pictorial illustration, which together in blocky capitals read “RODNEY ELLIS BARNETTE”.
The two black and white pieces in conjunction can be interpreted as representing the current state of Barnette’s relationship with her father’s memory; the two walls showing some semblance of reconciliation between the man she saw him as, and is figuratively “writing to” in this exhibit, and the man his oppressors took him for and stripped of humanity.