“But there are no cows in Brooklyn.”
Artist and teacher Brett Cook-Dizney stated the obvious at a gallery talk Tuesday after showing a photograph of two fiberglass cows on a Brooklyn street corner. The pair were a part of 2000’s “CowParade New York,” a work of public installation art in which hundreds of painted cows were placed around the city’s five boroughs. Cook-Dizney showed the cows as an example of what he tries to avoid in his own art.
“[CowParade] was a piece that was not contextualized in the site,” Cook-Dizney said.
His work is the basis of the Zilkha Gallery’s latest exhibition, “Brett Cook-Dizney: Meditations,” which opened Wednesday. The exhibition highlights Cook-Dizney’s work as a painter informed by society, community, activism and hip-hop.
Cook-Dizney first started drawing as a youth of biracial upbringing in San Diego, California.
“I was doing drawings, and I said ‘Hey, I want to do my drawings outside!’ That would be off the hook!” He paused. “I probably didn’t say ‘off the hook.”
However he said it, his intention was clear: he wanted to expose his art to a larger audience, and his method was graffiti.
“[Unlike other art forms,] graffiti is not like being in a white [studio] with a latte,” he said. “You’re working in the dark, hiding from the police.”
Creating the works in high-traffic public spaces, he almost instantly found a broad audience for his graffiti, which dealt with social issues and community.
“In a gallery, 600 people get to see a work,” he said. “I do something outside, and 600,000 people can see it. Then we can have a dialogue.”
Though he now shows work in galleries as well as in public, Cook-Dizney still hopes to provoke dialogue through all of his creations.
“In the history of art, the model never talks,” he said. “I let the people talk. The other thing about Western art is that it is so connected to the identity of the artist. I don’t sign my public work, it’s not about me.”
Brett-Dizney is best known for his large shrine-like installations that incorporate drawings, text, photographs and biographical materials. Two of these are on display in Zilkha.
“Documentation of a Grandma” incorporates knickknacks, birthday cards, therapeutic shoes, jewelry and towels that Cook-Dizney collected from his grandmother’s house after her death.
“I wanted the skillets she cooked me pancakes on, I wanted her shoes—only grandmas are rocking these shoes—and I wanted her medication,” he said. “It is a [monument] to my own grandmother, but really it’s everyone’s grandma.”
The other large work, displayed in the far end of the gallery, is “Documentation of Blackness.” In the background, a large spray-painted self-portrait of Cook-Dizney looms over books, photographs, quotes and other symbols of the black experience. Names of public black figures, including Nelson Mandela, Sonia Sanchez and Sun Ra, hover around the work.
“Much art relating to the black community is based disproportionately on images of rape and crime,” he said. “Here, I celebrate the good. It is a diasporic image of blackness that is proud.”
A series of spray enamel drawings on transparent acetate add color and movement to the large windows of Zilkha. The series, entitled “Images of Hip Hop,” explores the origins of what Cook-Dizney considers one of America’s most popular cultural exports.
Most of Cook-Dizney’s art springs from his interest in academic research.
“All of my work is really a research project,” he said.
The best example of this may be found in two pieces from his “Models of Accountability” series, which resulted from an ongoing study of the avatars for social change. Portraits of César Chávez and Arundhati Roy painted on mirrors allow the viewer to recognize themselves within, rather than separate from, these two advocates of human value.
“I want to show the greatness that is in them is also the greatness that is in you,”he said. “Unfortunately, today we know more about 50 Cent than about [Chávez or Roy].”
Mirrored shelves at the base of each piece hold published works on the two luminaries, inviting gallery patrons to continue the learning and research process.
Also included in the exhibition is a collaborative piece made entirely during Cook-Dizney’s stay at Wesleyan while installing the work. Nina Felshin, curator of the Zilkha and instructor of the “Issues in Contemporary Art” class, developed the work with Cook-Dizney. Members of her class contributed words and images to the piece, which focuses on statements about dialogue and Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.”
“When he met everyone in our class, he hugged them,” said Lola Pellegrino ’08. “He was a very soothing character. The experience was both collaborative and very, very meta.”
Cook-Dizney took photographs during their class discussion, and made line drawings from the images. He transferred the images to large yellow paper and attendees at Wednesday’s opening were able to color the drawings with oil crayons, continuing his goal of moving beyond the identity of the artist and representing all people in his work.
“So much of our society is based on fame,” he said. “I don’t want to be famous, I just want to be great.”
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