Rashawn Griffin

In the film The Matrix (1999), originally written by African American author Sophia Stewart, we are presented with two possibilities - one embedded in the matrix and the other existing in the real world. For those who choose to continue to exist in the matrix, the world is pre-constructed and each action is predetermined. For those who opt for the uncertainties of the real world, there are the risks of self-determination within a chaotic, largely unregulated universe. But how do you negotiate reality in an environment invented by illusion?

Rashawn Griffin's diverse practice thrives on such sublime subversions of reality. Through investigations of the real, he presents a framework where relationships of cause and effect can be alternatively understood. He uses poetic tools to unveil the physical world and construct points of reference to the material. Divided into moments of improvisation and surprise, Griffin's work draws on artists ranging from Jean Dubuffet, William T. Williams, David Hammons, to Roni Horn.

Making use of spectators, Griffin’s Untitled (room) (2005) is a space occupied by sculptural works that make us question our senses. Participants enter a room of objects that come from all directions and bedazzle sight, smell and sense of space. When gazing into the air, the viewer comes across a parade of monumental banner-like “paintings" that are charged by patchwork color and derelict materials such as bed sheets, fabric, and curtains. They're like secret messages from outer space that only inhabitants of another planet, like Sun Ra or Rammellzee, can understand and decipher. Walking in an orbit strewn with bits of grass, debris, fuzzy pompoms, and stale jelly beans, we are not quite sure what to expect. Adding to this mélange is the fact that, even before we can see it, Griffin’s huge fig newton pile inserts itself into our consciousness with its olfactory component. Déjà vu does not just arise in glitches in the Matrix, it occurs here, now. The accumulated fig newtons create a swollen territory of bodies that speaks to issues of consumption, rot and repulsion.

Griffin shows us how our naturalized associations of fused personal and cultural mythologies can be challenged by our imaginations. One point of reference is our legends of Yetis and abominable snowmen that purportedly dwell in the wilderness, attested to by odd footprints and blurry pictures. Griffin’s allegorical departure in to bring love / terrible things (2005), a single channel video, documents an eerie performance by a subject that is both gentle and alarming. The life-sized form, dressed in a dark, air-filled garbage bag suit, saunters cumbersomely in a pasture. The figure that slowly picks flowers brings to mind a gentle Frankenstein - a masculine creation that is intelligent and sensitive but yet hideously grotesque and rejected by society. It is here that the setting becomes a surreal backdrop. Griffin's work exists between the illusory world of the matrix and that of the real, where Griffin plays medium to the two realities mirrored in the contradictions of human ideology.

Rashawn Griffin’s work, like science fiction, falls along the same axis as the idea of flipping the real and making it surreal. By doing this he makes new strategies to explore ideas of experience. Sometimes you have to be in a system far, far away to be understood, as things too close can be unseen and overlooked.

Rashawn Griffin Frequency, Catalogue Text Written by Lori Salmon

Pressetext

Rashawn Griffin: Lours et les deux negociants