Sam Durant has a tendency to turn history on its head. And, like all histories, his is essentially a rolling dialogue between then and now, open to interpretation. His work dips in and out of sources and influences to create conversations on mixed subjects, from high Modernism to rock music, all of which is informed by academic debate. Durant makes drawings, models, installations and photographs that cite, re-site, reflect, invert and juxtapose various cultural and political situations from the past thirty years. ‘work generates levels of association at the speed of light’ Massive influence of Smithson, particularly his writings on entropy. Smithson as a figure who is linked emblematically to the collapse of the countercultural ambitions of the late 60s and early 70s ‘reading a language ….. begs questions of literacy and legibility’.
The racial issues that Durant first engaged with the works around Altamont and the Rolling Stones and then with the Friendship Park/Southern Rock pieces inevitably led to a more sustained investigation of the history of the American South and the struggle for civil rights. In this major new work, Durant has again adopted a motif from the work of Robert Smithson- the upside down tree- and brought it into powerful proximity with the history of African American music Neil Young’s ‘Hey, Hey, My, My, Out of the Blue’ (1978) includes the line, ‘There’s more to the picture/ than meets the eye’ and might summarise Sam Durant’s work and the approach the viewer must take in order to unravel some of the myriad references and histories present in works such as Upside Down: Pastoral Scene.
An earlier version of the work at Galleria Emi Fontana established the tree explicitly as a symbol of the oppression of African Americans (from the earliest instance of slavery to the race riots and conflicts of the 1960s) by pairing a single inverted tree with black and white drawings of key figures from the radical Black Panther party.
Rootless symbol, infinitely mirrored, no finite space.
Upside Down: Pastoral Scene comprises a ‘field’ of 12 inverted tree stumps, roots uppermost, placed on mirrors. Music emanates from each stump, ranging from Billie Holliday’s ‘Strange Fruit’ to John Lee Hooker’s ‘Blues for Abraham Lincoln’ to Public Enemy’s ‘Fear of a Black Planet. The careful selection of break-through songs, all by African American artists, creates a politically charged, social comment to allow exploration of issues around the history of civil rights struggles.
As with much of his earlier work Upside Down: Pastoral Scene traces a variety of links and connections both within the musical composition and through the multiple symbolic meanings of the tree in American culture and history. Ideas of the family tree, the tree of knowledge, the symbolic significance of the parts of a tree; roots, the trunk and branches are re-oriented in Durant's presentation of the upside down stumps. In the soundtrack that courses through the upended trees and ranges across genres from blues to classical, jazz to punk and rap to spiritual, Durant has curated a survey of politically charged music. Each musical piece has been carefully chosen for its contribution to the overall meaning of the work, for instance the Sister Sledge song We Are Family introduces the theme of family and interconnectedness to the work with a nod to its producer Nile Rodgers, a former member of the Black Panther Party. Billie Holiday¾s song Strange Fruit marks the center of the sound composition. As one of the most powerfully moving political statements in musical history the song positions the tree as a site of unspeakable violence and provides a context for the entire composition.
Durant’s photographic series connect a number of the themes and strands he’s been exploring over the past three years - issues of race in American history, political resistance,protest marches and sit ins, music, iconic and symbolic representatioinsof a range of things from the history of the Black Panther Party to Robert Smithson’s Upside Down trees.
Frieze
Here allusions to the racial conflicts of the Deep South enmesh themselves within the references to lynchings and black popular music that appear more explicitly in Upside Down/Pastoral Scene. With its roots reaching into both earth and sky, and speakers playing music ranging from Billie Holiday’s ‘Strange Fruit’ to Public Enemy’s ‘Fear of a Black Planet’, usps presents us with mirrors and trees, bringing us back to reflecting on Smithson again, perhaps the one figure at the root of Durant’s system.
Artforum
Rather than romanticise the past, his work examines the nature of a longing; he doesn’t mourn the death of 60s ideals, but investigates what those ideals were and how they may have gone awry.
Direct copy….
Sam Durant draws from popular culure and art history to create his installation based works. His drawings and sculptures investigate social and political movements. Fusing literature, rock and roll, as well as specific movements in the history of art, the works are generally rooted in the music of the rolling stones and the earthworks of Robert Smithson. Durant weaves curious and poignant narratives that connects the parts. Duratn’s growing mastery of free association enables him to transform ideas into compelling room-sized installations.
Durant is interested in the social and the political and uses art and the works of his heroes to speak about the failed utopias and broken promises.