Sanford Biggers
to
Chazen Museum of Art 750 University Ave., Madison, Wisconsin 53706
press release: June 28 to September 22 | Pleasant T. Rowland Galleries
closing reception 6-8 pm, 9/19: Join Sanford Biggers and his multimedia concept band, Moon Medicin, for a live performance featuring original compositions as well as re-imagined covers against a backdrop of sound effects and images of sci-fi, sacred geometry, coded symbology, film noir, minstrelsy, world politics, and B-movies. Mead Witter Lobby. Free admission.
Stick around after the performance for a 20-minute Q and A with the artist.
Sanford Biggers uses a wide range of media—including painting, sculpture, video, film, multicomponent installations, and performance—to encourage meaningful dialogue around narratives in American history. Works at the Chazen exhibition include sculpture from the BAM series, video installation, and textile collage featuring antique quilts.
For his BAM series Biggers draws from his varied collection of wooden African sculptures. He coats each figure with a layer of wax to obscure its individual identity before “sculpting” it at a firing range with gunshots. The figures are then cast anew in bronze and he renames each after a victim of brutality, imparting idiosyncrasy into the newly revitalized figures.
Biggers’s textile pieces encode his own symbolism into found antique quilts. The past and present commingle in a collaboration between Biggers and the often-unknown quilters.
Sanford Biggers was organized for the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis by Lisa Melandri, Executive Director. The exhibition and catalog are generously supported by the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, Dr. Daniel S. Berger, Hedy Fischer and Randy Shull, and Christy and Bill Gautreaux.