Melvin Edwards: Brighter Days
Until 28 November at City Hall Park, Manhattan
The Public Art Fund has organised a landmark survey devoted to the contemporary American sculptor Melvin Edwards, who combines abstract forms with symbols evoking themes around race, labour and the African diaspora. The show includes the newly commissioned sculpture Song of the Broken Chains (2020) and five seminal works made in the last five decades like Ukpo. Edu (1993/1996)—a steel sculpture referencing Igbo tradition and the insidious history of the transatlantic slave trade (the latter was last shown in the public sector of Art Basel in Miami Beach in 2015 by the artist’s long-time dealer Alexander Gray Associates). Each sculpture features a raw or stylised chain, a recurring motif in the artist’s work that represents oppression, unity and liberation; some are welded while others are broken. The show opened this month after a yearlong postponement due to the coronavirus pandemic. It has new resonance at the Financial District park, a centre of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations last summer.
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Read full article at theartnewspaper.com.
