To Dream Avant-Garde at Hammond Harkins,installation view (all photos by the author forHyperallergic)

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Thereare at least two schools ofthought around notions of theavant-garde. One defines itnarrowly as linked to theperiod of modernism incontemporary art, from the late19th century into the mid-20th century, while anotherassociates it more broadly by

the earmark of vanguardism — that is to say, a tendency to push the culturalstatus quo. Put another way: one version casts the avant-garde as a fixedcanon, to which entry is permanently closed. The other considers it a kind ofongoing party, which any like-minded and counter-cultural artist may join.

ART

What It Means toDream Avant-GardeTo Dream Avant-Garde acknowledges the artistic innovators of today —those who push the cultural status quo in their work.

Sarah Rose Sharp November 9, 2018

Three works by Lucia Hierro, installation view

One in a series of four hanging works by LeslieJimenez, detail view

As a number of the artists participating in To Dream Avant-Garde, curated byAlteronce Gumby at Hammond Harkins Galleries, are engaged in ratherexciting and extremely current practices, we can assume the avant-garde inthis case represents the latter view, rather than the former. The showincludes work by young guns like Aaron Fowler and Tariku Shiferaw, as wellas that of long-established practitioners like Faith Ringgold, who grew up inHarlem on the heels of the Harlem Renaissance — the centennial of which isbeing celebrated citywide in Columbus this year. To Dream Avant-Garde isHammond Harkins’s piece of dedicated programming within I, Too Sing

America: The Harlem Renaissance at 100, and unsurprisingly, every featuredartist and participant is reflective of the collective flourishing of artists ofcolor in the mainstream, due in part to the influence of that movement.

“As an acknowledgment tothose innovators, who werealso dreamers of an Americanidentity and country to calltheir own,” wrote Gumby in hiscuratorial statement, “theartists in this exhibition displaya survey of ideas, intention andmaterials that invoke thelegacy and culture of Harlem.”

Through a series of eclecticchoices, Gumby extends hiscohort beyond a sense ofkinship — which is ultimately acompulsory kind ofrelationship — into an air ofri!ng and conversation morecharacteristic of friendship.From Lucia Hierro’s digitalprint collages mounted on feltpillow-like canvases that were

expressly forbidden from being hung on walls, to a partition by Eric N. Mack,comprised of pegboard panels embellished with rope and acrylic, to a series

Eric N. Mack, “Earliest Partition,” installationview

Hugh Hayden, “23andMe,” installation view

of hanging blown-glass ornaments containing evocative hand-stitchediconography by Leslie Jimenez, and Tschabalala Self’s loose, figurative studyof cans of incense, there is a feel of abstraction on the edges of everydayobjects. This kind of culture-bending is, arguably, owed its own chapterwithin the mapping of the avant-garde, a kind of remaking and customizationof Duchampian readymades; a di"erent approach to cultivating the stu" oflife to the stu" of art.

Other works tap and warpcultural history more directly,like Hugh Hayden’s carvedwooden statuette in the styleof vintage statuary of BurkinaFaso and other Africantraditions; one of Fowler’s eye-catching multimedia worksthat resizes and re-contextualizes hip-hop stylebling as a giant hangingpendant; and of course,Ringgold’s jazz and dancehallscenes, rendered quilt-like oncanvas with pieced fabricborders. Perhaps here, theavant-garde does not coalescearound either style or subjectas artifacts of culture, but interms of their definition andplacement within the field offine art. One might argue that

the true vanguardism at work is the centralization of the art and curatorialpractices of all these artists of color, without explicit emphasis on the role ofrace in their work. Race and identity is inevitably particulate of the ideas andprocess, but hearteningly, not the whole or unifying truth at hand in thisexhibition.

Even among this group of avant-garde dreamers, there are a few who dared todream a little more wildly. A pair of portraits o"er the show some of its most

indefinable moments — one by

Tschabalala Self, “Incense Study,” detail view

David Shrobe, “Double Jointed,” installationview

David Shrobe, and the other byShiferaw. Shrobe’s choppy,conglomerate-materialportraits literally graftfragments of art history tocontemporary images andmaterials, carving a place forhis subjects out of a canonfrom which they have beencontinually excluded. Shiferaw,with a new work, “Rose inHarlem (Teyana Taylor),”pushes the envelope a littlemore, presenting a kind ofglossy-black, dimensionalcanvas, that reveals, within itsfathomless depths, a series ofhorizontal line-blocks. It isShiferaw’s way to reference

recording artists and albums in his works, but the direct correlation betweenthe piece and its titular inspiration is not overtly apparent. But then, theimage is arresting, and so is the song, and the potential for them to informeach other in the life of the artist or the mind of the critic seems to be a smallask from a playing field as vast and open as the type of avant-garde that allowsitself to continue to dream.

To Dream Avant-Garde, curated

by Alteronce Gumby, continues at

Hammond Harkins Galleries

through November 11.