Drawing from the artist’s upbringing in 1980s Los Angeles, vanessa german’s “Sad Rapper” constructs a narrative of characters from the same neighborhood as a platform to challenge urgent and current issues of racial oppression, structural violence, commemoration, and community. Asking viewers to enter the exhibition as a space of redemption, german’s exhibition highlights topics within the context of Black life and the American dream, utilizing her singular sculptural practice to incite compassion for the rage and grief caused by the issues at hand. The detailed humanistic figures (with names like TV Man and the titular Sad Rapper) have been constructed from an amalgamation of found objects, everyday materials, and intangible elements detailed by the artist like “a groan,” “meanness,” and “the way it feels to need to cry but not be able to cry— for an exceptionally long time.”
The artist’s first solo exhibition at Kasmin Gallery, “Sad Rapper” will be on view from September 8—October 22. For its first three days, german will also be present, interacting with visitors and performing a series of oral traditional healing rituals.
