ART: The Invisible Man and the Masque of Blackness (Zak Ové , 2016) at LACMA

British visual artist Zak Ové has created a small army of life-size black figures which have been touring around America before heading to their permanent home in a new sculpture park in Berkshire, England. Recently, the figures have invaded the Cantor Sculpture Garden at LACMA, to striking effect. The figures’ faces are African tribal masks, inscrutable and enigmatic. Their hands are raised at their sides, in a gesture of surrender, or perhaps “no offense”. Their abstract torsos have four large buttons suggesting a military jacket, but their abstract private bits are hanging out and their feet are bare. The form looks ancient but with subtle modern lines. The material is graphite, an intentional choice by the artist not to use traditional ebony, instead using a “future world black” material. And there’s something magic about the multiplicity. One of these figures would be interesting, but seeing forty of them in formation makes a substantial impression. The placement in the sculpture garden is brilliant. The figures are in an organized formation, in linear rows and columns, standing side by side, all facing the same direction, with a forward guard advancing out of the entry gate and a rear guard descending the stairs from the upper plaza. The Invisible Man and the Masque of Blackness”, referencing two cultural bookends of the black experience in the New World. (The Masque of Blackness was a 1605 Jacobean court drama done in black-face extoling he inferiority of black-skinned people. Invisible Man is a 1952 novel by Ralph Ellison illuminating the black experience in early 20th century America.) This work’s previous installations have been in open spaces on its own, but I think its intriguing insertion here into the existing sculpture garden adds another layer of meaning to this thought-provoking work. And yet this parade is not all standing cohesively together, rather they are all interleaved among the permanent residents of the garden – the Rodin sculptures and the palm trees. The comparison is really intriguing. The Rodin bronzes are also dark life-size figures, but where Ové’s figures are firmly vertical and stationary, Rodin’s figures twist and sweep with flowing movement. Where the Rodins are arranged “conversationally”, facing each other and facing the central walkway, the masked figures face forward, eyes forward, like soldiers at attention trained not to look at those who are looking at them. The occupying force mixes with the resident sculptures, close enough to each other to seem to be in dialogue, and yet they are oblivious to each other, as if they occupy different dimensions in the same space. The title of the work is “The Invisible Man and the Masque of Blackness”, referencing two cultural bookends of the black experience in the New World. (The Masque of Blackness was a 1605 Jacobean court drama done in black-face extoling he inferiority of black-skinned people. Invisible Man is a 1952 novel by Ralph Ellison illuminating the black experience in early 20th century America.) This work’s previous installations have been in open spaces on its own, but I think its intriguing insertion here into the existing sculpture garden adds another layer of meaning to this thought-provoking work.