Sign O the Times: or Buck-in-Hamm-Palace?

September 5 - October 5, 2005

Exhibition Reception, September 18, 2025

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the word, “print” as a mark made by pressure, a fingerprint is given as example. 

An exhibition focused on examples of rudimentary printing techniques with innovative image-transfer methods; frottage, drypoint and saltwater etching, embossing, transfers, mono prints, etc. Techniques that pertain to creative self-sufficiency-empowerment and the uncompromising will to problem solve, possibly disrupting socially accepted norms and customs out of necessity or a response to the tenor of the times. A large quantity of historical print examples of such work can be attributed to posters made by OSPAAAL (Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America, 1966-1989), Havana, Cuba, Bestias collective (1984-1987), Lima, Peru and Kearney Street Workshop (1963-2014), San Francisco, CA to name a few.

“A sight cut across by the rumble of drums and the raucous cries of insane tables at grips with the fury of physical laws more intolerant than a wagon of Jesuits painted in two colors”

- Benjamin Péret (Sign of the Times, 1959)

Self-taught artists, Tony Fitzpatrick, lou anne colodny, Andre Leon Gray, Purvis Young and N.Masani Landfair, share(d) a need to distinguish the temporal challenges of society by ascending with their own rumble, while transcending through the fibbers, fodder, and flies. Their work attests to the need to defy physical laws and create dangerously.

“Light up your spliff
Light up your chalice
Make we burn it in a Buk-In-Hamm-Palace
Lend me a paper
Lend me some fire
We ha' fe chase way vampire” 

-Peter Tosh (Buk-In-Hamm-Palace, 1979)

Juana Valdes, Mark Bradford, Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow, Rachel Eng, Elia Alba, Onajide Shabaka and Yanira Collado confront time through the anomalies of movement. Their unique steps light up and confront the underside of humanity. Provoking us to self-reflect and yet be cautious of the chupacabras.

“Baby makes a speech, Star Wars fly, neighbors just shine it on but if a night falls and a bomb falls will anybody see the dawn?” 

-Prince (Sign O the Times, 1987)

Nathaniel Donnett, Edra Soto, Mark Gibson, Wardell Milan and Liliam Dooley,

build horizontally like a speech across a classroom, across a street, flat frequencies bombing the suburbs, spinning to make us pause. 2 make us dive deeper into our own effect-cause-effect, to maneuver and create in spontaneous manner. Without these tools se cae el huevo.

“I have been created by my experiences, and I am recreated-over and over again- by each new experience.”

-Viola F. Cordova (Windows and Academics: How It Is, 2007)

-william cordova

LeRoy Neiman Gallery
Columbia University
2960 Broadway
310 Dodge Hall, MC 1806
New York, NY 10027