Colby Chamberlain on the art of Dave McKenzie
Bobblehead from Dave McKenzie’s
While Supplies Last, 2003, performance, poly-resin figures, 7 × 2 1⁄2 × 2 1⁄2 .
“I KNOW YOU ARE DAVE, but who is Dave?” Sixteen years ago, in these pages, the artist Glenn Ligon recounted how a stranger once posed this question to Dave McKenzie’s face. Or rather, she posed it to a papier-mâché approximation of his face, which McKenzie wore while he handed out bobblehead figurines of himself during an opening at SculptureCenter in New York. Ligon floated a few possible rejoinders: Dave was a dancing machine; Dave felt your pain; Dave wanted to be like Mike; Dave believed he could fly; Dave was a dime-store Jesus, for whom made-in-China tchotchkes were the bread and wine of a secular communion. These musings riffed on McKenzie’s various attempts to embody public figures, such as when he marched through Harlem sporting a rubber mask of Bill Clinto
Thursday, February 18
12:00 p.m. - 12:45 p.m. EDT
Join us for a special conversation between photographers Renée Cox and Ayana V. Jackson, moderated by curator and writer Monique Long. The event will include a special introduction by Elizabeth A. Kahane, Aperture trustee and chair of the Paul Strand Circle Committee.
Renée Cox has reimagined art historical tropes, historical narratives, and referenced popular culture primarily using her own body and occasionally those of her children, friends, and family. Many of her earlier works stand in direct opposition to the preceding generation’s notions of feminism and the movement’s desire to obfuscate traditional representations of women. For example, works in Cox’s iconic