Karsten Schubert is pleased to announce Fred Wilson’s first solo exhibition in London. The American
artist’s work engages with issues such as cultural heritage, racial stereotyping, ownership and privilege.
With a focus on cultural and institutional critique, Wilson is best known for his collaborative interventions
in museum collections around the world.
Wilson is most celebrated for the landmark 1992 installation Mining the Museum in which he recontextualised
artifacts from The Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore USA. As part of the exhibition,
rusty slave chains were provocatively displayed alongside fine silverware and reward advertisements for
runaway ‘servants’ hung above an oversized, antique musket. Contemplative rather than didactic, Wilson’s
juxtapositions of museum artifacts interrupt entrenched prejudices whilst encouraging their gradual
deconstruction. As the American representative at the 50th Venice Biennale (2003), Wilson explored the
city’s historical relationship with Africa and Africans. Bringing attention to often marginalized aspects of
Venice’s history, Wilson selected 15th and 16th century paintings with African servants shown on the
periphery, Othello as a metaphor for loss, in our time and he even hired an African friend to guard Wilson’s
redesigned replica designer bags outside the pavilion, mimicking the vendors that can be found all over
Venice.
On view at Karsten Schubert, works such as The Mete of the Muse (2004–2007) distill the essence of
Wilson’s museum interventions and expand upon his work in Venice. Here, a black Egyptian figure stands
still and attentive by a self-absorbed white European nude. The contrast draws out culturally codified
notions of black and white identity whilst leading the viewer to guess the relationship between the two
figures as if they were present and real individuals. A Thousand Points (2009), an illuminated globe painted
over with black enamel, references the history of African migration and the present-day exportation and
exploitation of natural resources such as oil. Furthering his continued questioning of power, Wilson has
recreated the Diamond Diadem – worn by successive English monarchs since 1821 – out of black
diamonds. Entitled Regina Atra (2006), Wilson’s desire for the viewer to reflect is alluded to in his formal
use of reflective black surfaces, as in Quartet (2010), a blown glass sculpture reminiscent of flowing tears
and drops of oil – suggestive of the suffering caused by both exploitation associated with the mining of
natural resources and corrupt regimes.
These sculptural works are accompanied by the large-scale installation, Flags (2009), in which twenty-one
African and African diaspora flags have been drained of all colour and rendered in black on raw canvas;
each flag is accompanied by a text piece, which lists the symbolic meanings of the colours that have been
removed. Wilson’s paintings of the flags typify his appropriation of and adaptation of imagery or symbols
that are often taken for granted, or unquestioned. In erasing the colours, Wilson provokes a question about
the meaning and roll of colour in the formation of nationalistic notions of “blackness”, and comments upon
the significance of this set of flags, that developed as African nations gained sovereignty following World
War II.
On the occasion of this exhibition, Ridinghouse will publish Fred Wilson: A Critical Reader, an anthology
of critical texts and interviews covering Wilson’s work to date. The publication focuses on the artist’s
pivotal exhibitions and projects, and includes a wide range of significant texts that mark the critical
reception of Wilson’s work over the last two decades. Brought together for the first time here, these
reviews, lectures, interviews and essays are from sources that are largely out of print, and will be
accompanied by archival material such as invitation cards, installation shots and book covers. The volume
attests to the high esteem in which Fred Wilson’s work is held by art historians and cultural commentators.
Fred Wilson (b.1954, Bronx, NY) received his B.F.A from the State University of New York, Purchase,
and holds honorary doctorates from the both Skidmore College and Northwestern University. His work has
been featured in over 100 group exhibitions, including the 50th Venice Biennale (2003) as the American
representative, the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial Exhibition (1993) and the 4th International
Cairo Biennale (1992).
Fred Wilson will be at the Whitechapel Gallery in London on Thursday 19th May (7pm) for a lecture and
book-signing.
Karsten Schubert
5-8 Lower John Street
Golden Square, London
W1F 9DR
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7734 9002
www.karstenschubert.com
www.ridinghouse.co.uk
For more information on the exhibition contact: ben@karstenschubert.com
For more information about Fred Wilson: A Critical Reader contact: doro@ridinghouse.co.uk