Re-Discovery 4

Under the impact of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, the oeuvre of David Hammond (b. 1943, lives and works in New York) repeatedly addresses political, social and economic ills. Recognized by the art world only late on, he became known in part through his painting of a white-faced Jesse Jackson in 1989 and his participation in the Documenta IX in 1992 – but has since then had no exhibition in Germany. With his roots in America’s black urban culture, David Hammons uses the street as his most important source of inspiration. One of his works is the “Bliz-aard Ball Sale” (1983), in which as a New York street vendor he hawks snowballs of varying sizes. Chicken legs, coils of wire, shards, dung, shovels – all are declared to be works of art. Be it hair from hairdressing salons, blocks of ice that melt in gallery spaces, or dirt-covered basketball balls that he bounces on large sheets of paper, allowing the dust of Harlem to create drawings – through his deliberate choice of objets trouvés and the use of inexpensive materials he has recourse to the strategies of Arte Povera, one of the artistic directions in whose tradition he sees himself.