EDITIONS | ARTISTS' BOOK FAIR
with DAVID KRUT PROJECTS, NEW YORK
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P A I D
A SOLO EXHIBITION
OF NEW WORKS BY
BRANDON COLEY COX
_ The University of the Arts - Philadelphia, PA
October 10-27, 2011
The word paid is American slang, stemming from hip-hop, for success through money-making. Getting paid and staying paid tend to be essential ingredients of success in terms of Black manhood. Not too long ago in history, however, Blacks in America were being paid for as slaves. Cox references this irony through the use of an accountants PAID stamp. Imagine .. one mark for every sold slave and their kin. Society has changed due to the struggles carried out by generations of Blacks determined to succeed in a country where the foundations are set against them.
Cox captures and questions this sense of progress and all of its possibilities. By realistically drawing popular notions of Black success and elements around it with just the stamp, he poses many questions to the viewer. How many generations did it take to shape this possibility? When is the image complete? Why?
As apart of an ongoing effort to contemplate the validity of popular imagery of Black men through a metaphorical means of creation, Cox presents a new animation. Years ago, he began taking photographs of young Black men, corrupting (damaging) the image several hundred times via computer soft- ware, and collaging them back together to make one digital print. In this animation, Cox has taken 3,488 of these collages and presents them all in an ongoing 2-minute loop.
Cox is also presenting for the first time in Philadelphia, what he calls, masocuts. The prints begin as photographs with models in the studio. He then combines these with scanned drawings and cuts the image into a piece of masonite with both his hand and a laser. When inked as relief prints, the resulting images contain photographic, vector, and handwork with soft brown tones. These more intimate prints reflect on ges- ture & position as a means of power.
Brandon Coley Cox (a.k.a. B. COX) is an award-winning emerging artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Cox moved from Baltimore, Maryland to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 2005 to attend The University of the Arts. From there he graduated in 2008 with a BFA in Printmaking, immediately started teaching and one year later was the second person in the schools history to attend the prestigious Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture.
Since moving to New York City, he has been awarded a fellowship at the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop in Times Square, served as juror for the BRIO Award on behalf of the Bronx Council on the Arts, and has been in numerous solo & group exhibitions nationwide. Cox also has work in several permanent collections including The International Print Museum in Southern California and the Museum of Paper & Watermark in Fabriano, Italy.
statement
Cox creates poignant metaphors and allegories whose meaning is reflected through the means of creation. His re-presentation of archetypal images spoon-fed to the masses aims to reveal the tensions existing between the individual and society in relation to internalized belief systems.
Cox uses innovative techniques to focus on contemporary issues revolving around racial politics in Western society, the op- pressed oppressor, queer culture, the value of institutional- ized learning, and capitalism. Humor & abstraction are often used as tools to address these ideas. Concepts respectively adhere to certain techniques which tend to be grounded in the use of painting & printmaking, the digital manipulation of im- ages, drawing, and collaging with found urban materials. Fig- ures & narratives created in ironic accordance with widely accepted distortions of Black men bring the viewer into a conversation about origins, repercussions, responsibility and possibility.
Cox_Brandon_CV.pdf
