NEW YORK—The Anthropologie gallery at Rockefeller Center has been transformed into a moment from an African marketplace, which is ironic, because the artist whose work is featured lives and works in New York and was raised on an apple farm upstate.
According to the bio included with the installation, New York-born Gordon Harrison Hull, was conceived after his mother was given a fertility dress made by an Ashanti witchdoctor in Kumasi, Ghana.
Titled “War Against Gravity,” the installation “was inspired rituals, mysticism and craft of Africa. Hull’s work is “based on an aesthetic concept he calls ‘lo-fi magic,’ which explores instances of natural magic, the supernatural, symbolism and ceremony, or in other words, the role of the artist as a trickster figure in contemporary culture.”
The project is about the “fight for flight” and makes reference to bees, wind and flying carpets. Laying on the floor and ascending the wall, the collaged rugs were made using as many as 10 different techniques.
Hull co-founded Surface-to-Air, a multidisciplinary creative agency. “War Against Gravity” is on view through March, 21, 2012.
All photos by Arts Observer
The rickshaw is called “Rick James” after the late funk-soul singer and the Hull describes the three-wheeler as “a roving dream disco nest.”
[…] Image: Installation by New York based artist Gordon Harrison-Hull in Anthropologie’s Rockefeller Center Store via artobserver.com. […]
The War Against Gravity is saturated with color, texture and fantasy. Gordon Harrison Hull’s exhibition fits the Rockefeller Center’s Anthropology mood like they no other.
Here’s a (mock) interview of the artist: http://jojapiposa.blogspot.com/2012/03/war-against-gravity.html