Outside Influence
Ernest Jolly, 2x2 Solo @ Pro Arts Gallery
Ernest Jolly. Outside Influence, installation view, 2013. Wood and screen dome, single channel video of historical Oakland footage projected on disco ball, pool of water, hold in sheetrock exposing view out of gallery window onto Frank Ogawa / Oscar Grant Plaza. Photo courtesy of Pro Arts Gallery. As a guest curator at Pro Arts Gallery in Oakland, I commissioned Ernest Jolly to produce a new work responsive to the site overlooking Frank Ogawa / Oscar Grant Plaza in the wake of Occupy, protests over the loss of Black lives including Oscare Grant, soaring rent and displacement throughout the Bay Area, and historical movements including Black Panthers who also used it as a site of protest in decades past. After nearly a year of conversations and studio visits, the exhibition- ran from Oct 8 to Nov 15, 2013. It was accompanied by a catalogue for which I commissioned an essay by art historian John Zarobell, and a talk between Jolly and I within the installation.
Curatorial Statement:
The qualities of shared public space, both rich with opportunities to gather face to face and rife with the inequities of embodied politics, are driving themes in Ernest Jolly’s installation, Outside Influence. Architecturally inspired domes evoke sacred and civic constructions, imbuing the work with similar power. The dome’s sphere figuratively encompasses all in a symbol of unity, and the circular shape of its footprint evokes a site where all within it are on a level field, can see one another; the implication of which is to hear one another, as well, through social discourse. Use of this form is, at its core, an aspirational gestrure. A site responsive installation looking out from Pro Arts’ gallery windows onto the storied Frank H. Ogawa / Oscar Grant Plaze, Outside Influence beckons visitors to enter it, to activate this node for coming together. In so doing, the work frames the experience of the existing site, throws its visible historical layers into relief, and projects a possible future of being together, enacting a new history of encounter in the making.
More about Pro Arts Gallery
2x2 Solos 2013 Catalogue available here: PDF
