Anna So

COLLAGE CREATED ON THE OCCASION OF NADINE ROBINSON: ALLES GRAU COURTESY OF THE STUDIO MUSEUM IN HARLEM

cross from the H&M on 125 Street sits a glass and concrete building, home to the Studio Museum in Harlem. It's likely that Columbia University students haven't heard about the Studio Museum unless they are well acquainted with contemporary art by black artists. Its exhibition space, less than 3 percent of the Museum of Modern Art, makes it feel more like a gallery than a museum. Whereas the grandiose spaces and exhaustive collections of the Metropolitan Museum or MoMA often overshadow individual works, the Studio Museum's smaller space allows a meditative examination of each piece on display.

The Studio Museum strives to highlight issues often ignored by major museums. Its stated aim is to be the “nexus for black artists locally, nationally, and internationally and for work that has been inspired and influenced by black culture &a site for the dynamic exchange of ideas about art and society.” The museum attempts to fulfill this mission by questioning the relationship between identity and aesthetics with two exhibits on view until October 22: “Quid Pro Quo,” works by the artists-in-residence, and “alles grau in grau malen,” a “sound painting” by Nadine Robinson.

“alles grau in grau malen” confronts the spectator at the first gallery with its imposing blackish gray carpeted wall that emits throbbing beats and Gregorian chants. The piece stands at a grand scale  11 by 45 feet  but closer inspection of it reveals hundreds of speakers (ranging from the size of a small hand to the size of a large hubcap) strategically embedded in the wall to look like the arrangement of bodies from Michelangelo's Last Judgment. Sound waves reverberate through the spectator, most strikingly from the large center speaker, with the rhythmic surge and ebb of a heartbeat. The pulsating speakers lend an almost human physicality to a piece that would otherwise be a minimalist shrine to audio technology. The only other objects in the room are two benches where museum-goers can experience these apocalyptic sounds and images.

Though “alles grau” does not directly refer to Hurricane Katrina, it is strongly linked to the aftermath of the catastrophic event, which brought underlying racial and class inequalities to the surface. New Orleans' racist and classist segregation resulted in a disproportionate number of deaths, massive displacement, and economic devastation among marginalized communities. Crises like Hurricane Katrina elicit claims  often from religious fundamentalists  that the end is near. Robinson's use of Jamaican dance music in “alles grau” is an allusion to the Book of Revelation and the Rastafarians' belief that they are among the select few who will be saved in the Second Coming. In contrast to the devastating realities of Katrina, this belief presents a hopeful vision for black communities. Like Kara Walker's recent exhibit “After the Deluge” at the Met, Robinson's “alles grau” is a representation of destruction, social upheaval, and a kind of apocalypse that still bears hope for positive change.

The Studio Museum's exploration of the visibility of racial and class identities continues with works by the three artists-in-residence: Rashawn Griffin, Karyn Olivier, and Clifford Owens. “Quid Pro Quo,” as the Studio Museum's magazine puts it, can be translated as “I scratch your back, you scratch mine. Tit for tat. A favor for a favor. Something for something.” A focus on exchange, interaction, and substitution unites the works and encourages a critical examination of the dynamics between individuals and institutions.

Karyn Olivier's sculptural objects and photographs explore the tensions between the visibility and invisibility of race and class. Her sculptures of children's playground apparatus are at once playful and ominous. Objects such as her doubleslide were made for children's play, but there would be disastrous consequences if they were used. In Olivier's photograph “Red Shirt,” a very long clothesline weighed down with cheerfully colored clothing is suspended between two buildings. The threat of rain from the gray sky looms overhead and there is a feeling that the clothes are in danger of falling onto the street below. The run-down apartment buildings and line-dried clothing suggest that the invisible occupants are from the lower-middle economic class. The sense of danger created by the threatening sky and overburdened clothesline also extends in the uncertainties of the social world occupied the by these unseen inhabitants. Olivier's photography captures the precarious position of the lower economic class, where even blatant signs of their imminent jeopardy have been rendered invisible.

Olivier's fellow artist-in-residence Clifford Owens also examines the obscuring of pressing social issues. Like many multimedia artists, Owens questions the role of the artist and the spectator's relationship with a work of art, but with a particular emphasis on gender and race. In “Studio Visits: Studio Museum in Harlem (Joan Jonas),” which he documents on film, Owens lies on sheets of paper on the floor of his studio. Video/performance artist Joan Jonas manipulates Owens' body, making designs on the paper with the drawing instruments taped to his feet and hands. Because Joan Jonas is a white woman, the work raises questions about the fetishization of black men, the historically unequal power dynamics between blacks and whites in America, and gender and race-based oppression. Owens' work throws these pervasive but generally unacknowledged dynamics into sharp relief.

Rashawn Griffin's points to a possible escape from the oppressive social constructs that inform the other works in “Quid Pro Quo.” Such constructs, he suggests, are impermanent. He places ordinary mass-produced objects in a museum setting in the tradition of institution-critical artists like Marcel Duchamp, who flagrantly displayed a urinal in an art exhibit. Griffin creates “paintings” from jellybeans, faux denim sheets, and cookies. By doing so he compares objects made for popular consumption and high art, which is often seen as timeless and untouchable. His piece “la defense” is composed of various types of cookies. The title of the work and the ordered arrangement of the butter cookies with images of chess pieces imprinted on them suggest military strength, but the cookies themselves are fragile and crumbling. Griffin's works cannot be classified as simply painting, sculpture, or collage. By combining genres, and using materials that will continue to deteriorate over time, he elegantly suggests the possibility of collapsing hierarchies in reality.

The Studio Museum's exhibits engage with, and arguably transform, the political, social, and personal worlds of its visitors. The exhibits comment on the larger social climate in America, but also have an impact closer to home with their examination of specific instances where institutions oppress individuals. These explorations can raise social awareness about personal complicity and responsibility regarding the current tensions between the Morningside Heights, Manhattanville, and Harlem communities.