It is tempting to view Arnold J. Kemp’s new work strictly in formal terms: modest collages with black paint, glitter, and googly doll eyes that form abstract patterns and pleasant landscape arrangements. Yet the paint used in each piece seems not simply an aesthetic choice and suggests further musings on the elasticity of Black representation, as well as the personal biography of Kemp, an African-American artist. In several small monochromes, such as Vampire (Titled), 2009, one can see evidence of bright primary colors that were applied prior to the surface coat, a black “skin” of paint. In other works, Kemp affixes groups of googly eyes together, which rummage through the picture and impede on dense patches of black glitter, the mixture both kitschy and mildly foreboding.
The title of the exhibition, “This Quiet Dust, Ladies and Gentlemen,” is an adaptation of an Emily Dickinson poem. Dickinson’s original line reads, “This Quiet Dust was Gentleman and Ladies,” implying quiet dust is the resting ground where men and women now lie. The slight alteration in the text wryly casts Kemp as a host, announcing the entrance of the dust to the audience.
In another series, “(Them) Changes and (Them) Trees,” 2009, photographs extend for the length of a wall. All the images depict a dense crowd of tangled, leafless tree branches at the top of the sheet and reaching beyond the pictures’ frames, as well as a muted sky in the backdrop. Each offers a different composition of the same branches, implying a shift in perspective as one strolls along. The subject might also be someone lying on the ground, gazing at the varied configurations on an overcast day. Or perhaps Kemp is trying to mimic the perspective of the actual ground, the quiet dust exerting its own point of view, after its proper introduction. — Micah Malone
