Brett Cook-Dizney at P.P.O.W - Brief Article

Brett Cook-Dizney is an unusual figure, trained as both an educator and an artist, who mines his life experiences to comment on the larger social and cultural realities of contemporary America. His installations combine painting, stylish line drawings and all manner of personal memorabilia, and reveal a fascination with graffiti, street culture and sculptural form.

This show included seven of his large, quirky, shrinelike installations, which are broadly reminiscent of certain works by artists such as Renee Green, Karsten Bott or Jason Rhoades. But Cook-Dizney's are arranged around a giant mural-sized painting, usually a self-portrait based on a snapshot from, say, his high school prom or some family gathering, or any other minor milestone. These iconic portraits--executed with impressive representational skill using spray paint--are surrounded by an array of personal odds and ends grouped together in a symbolic order of time, incident and social meaning. (His mother, something of an amateur archivist, apparently managed to save nearly everything her charismatic son ever touched.)

Documentation of a White X-mas features a large painting of a white Santa Claus holding a somewhat apprehensive black child (the artist). The work is adorned with a variety of Christmas gewgaws--an artificial Christmas tree, ceramic Nativity scenes, plastic elves, cards, lights. It is a shrewd visual investigation of the contrast between the mythic, monocultural presentation of the "whiteness" of Christmas and the opposite social reality of many of its celebrants. Cook-Dizney's own celebration of the semiotics of Christmas is really, as he notes in short commentaries strategically tacked around the installation, an effort to make cultural "whiteness" appear a little less normal and a little more strange.

Documentation of Cultural Pluralism looks at the emotional and social issues of a biracial upbringing; Cook-Dizney's father is black and his mother white. Documentation of a Chameleon examines the split in the artist's racial consciousness in sports--basketball was black, lacrosse was white; he loved to play both.

Cook-Dizney complements his studio work with a variety of conceptual public projects that involve individuals from urban communities in both the theoretical underpinnings and physical creation of his complex works; some of these projects were represented in this show by a documentary video and a number of drawings on Mylar.

Despite the autobiographical focus and the sometimes intrusive notations that appear in each installation, this show was neither a festival of narcissism nor a misplaced classroom, but a stirring reflection on society. You can't really process Cook-Dizney's social history without comparing it to big chunks of your own. In works that pack a visual wallop, Cook-Dizney deftly points to the larger social currents that shape our lives for better or worse.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group