‘Some Kind of Love’ Explored in New Tang Exhibition

Skidmore’s Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery will present Nayland Blake: Some Kind of Love: Performance Video 1989-2002 from Sept. 27 to Dec. 31, 2003.

One of the Tang’s “Opener” series of exhibitions designed to introduce artists and new work to the region, Some Kind of Love features several examples of Blake’s performance-based work, including videos, objects, and large-scale installations.

Historically researched and often inspired by literature, Blake’s sometimes controversial works explore complicated and subtly mixed concepts such as identity, race, and relationships. His sculptural installations and performances address issues of race and sexuality through playful and subversive images often linked to childhood.

For instance, Feeder 2 is a life-sized cabin made of gingerbread squares fitted onto a steel armature. Like the gingerbread house discovered by Hansel and Gretel in the classic fairy tale, the 7-by-10 foot structure fills the gallery with an overwhelming aroma. Nearby will be an hour-long video titled Gorge, in which Blake is continuously fed doughnuts, pizza, an entire hero sandwich, watermelon, chocolates, Perrier water, and milk. With “Bunny Hop” playing in the background, the video exposes the intricacies of nurture and power, pleasure and pain, satiety and discomfort.

Over the past 20 years, Blake’s interests have ranged widely, “from popular culture to vanguard subversion; from Camp to the queer body in the age of AIDS; from Sadean and psychoanalytic texts to the toxic legacy of American racism,” writes David Deitcher in the exhibition’s catalogue. Like many American artists of the 1990s, Blake has often dealt with identity, says Deitcher, expressed as “a compound process rather than a fait accompli.”

A native of New York City, Blake earned an M.F.A. at the California Institute of the Arts in 1984. He has had solo shows at the Matthew Marks Gallery in New York City, the Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston, San Francisco Artspace, and other venues.

Nayland Blake: Some Kind of Love will be accompanied by three free public events: a noon curator’s tour of the exhibition on Tuesday, Sept. 30, followed later that day by a
7 p.m. “Dialogue” between Blake and Mason Stokes, a member of the Skidmore English faculty. A dance party, featuring the artist as D.J., will begin at 10:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 16.

Organized by Tang curator Ian Berry in collaboration with the artist, the exhibition received its premier showing last winter at the Center for Art and Visual Culture at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. The “Opener” series is made possible with support from the Laurie Tisch Sussman Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Overbrook Foundation, and the Friends of the Tang.

The Tang Museum is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, and from noon to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Admission is free for people with a Skidmore ID. For more information on exhibitions and events, call ext. 8080 or go to hudson2.skidmore.edu/tang.

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