SculptureCenter presents Sanford Biggers: Cosmic Voodoo Circus, on view through November 28, 2011.
In Cosmic Voodoo Circus, Biggers exploits the carnival aesthetic to address profound issues of identity, the power of objects, as well as spiritual and cultural transmigration. At the center of Biggers’ installation is a new video titled Shake, the second part in an odyssean trilogy about the formation and dissolution of identity. Shot in Brazil with a Creative Time travel grant, Shake follows Ricardo Castillo, a Brazilian-born, German-based choreographer, clown, stuntman and DJ, through a transformative journey. From the ocean through the favelas, Castillo travels to a colonial palace and eventually returns to the sea as an androgynous, silver-skinned figure. (The first video in the trilogy, Shuffle, currently on view at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, beginning September 23, 2011 as part of the survey exhibition Sanford Biggers: Sweet Funk–an Introspective.) The installation at SculptureCenter features several new sculptures including an empty trapeze swinging overhead, a large scale female figure inspired by African fetish sculptures, and a billboard sized minstrel-like toothy grin, a recurrent image in Biggers’ work.
Sanford Biggers has been included in several notable exhibitions including Prospect 1/ New Orleans Biennial, Illuminations at the Tate Modern, Performa 07, the Whitney Biennial and Freestyle at the Studio Museum in Harlem. He has also had solo exhibitions at Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, Santa Barbara; Grand Arts, Kansas City; Triple Candie, New York; Contemporary Art Museum, Houston; and Matrix/University of Berkeley Museum, Berkeley. A solo exhibition will open at Mass MOCA in December 2011. Biggers currently lives and works in New York City.
Cosmic Voodoo Circus is made possible with the support of Beth Rudin De Woody, Toby D. Lewis Philanthropic Fund of the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, Jeanne and Michael Klein, and a grant from the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation.
