English Translation by Lisa Tuttle

Hard 2 Death
by Jean GLOB

To push open the door of a contemporary art gallery, on occasion, can prove to be a frightening experience. However, I would simply ask you to overcome those apprehensions  to push, and push hard the door of these galleries, and let yourself be surprised. And if, by some bad luck, you are not convinced, persevere, look, reflects, analyze, and I assure you, you’ll go back. So today, immersed in my habitual nonchalance, it is me who was surprised and the wonderful surprise is at Backslash Gallery.

For its fifth exhibition, this young Parisian gallery is presenting, for the first time in France, the work of the American artist Fahamu Pecou. At first glance, I squeezed out a weary smile.  I must say, I am not an expert on contemporary painting. In large paintings, with deep blacks,  Fahamu Pecou is shown in the center mimicking the postures of hip-hop culture. A stylistic and visual process takes place in four series of canvasses, three of which are shown here.  One says that that it’s simple, too simple? And yet in fact, no.  By avoiding locking into the first level of reading and the well-executed technique, the works of Fahamu Pecou reveal an acerbic and cynical look, a pertinent and ironic analysis of Afro-American culture. Yes, this culture is beautiful, good-looking, and it’s the sign of the times, so what?  And then on the first floor, there’s a video. And, certainly because I am more attuned to the language of the animated image, it is there that a shift took place.  It is in this basic choreography of a body struggling with a tee-shirt that the meaning of Fahamu Pecou’s work, the depth of his artworks, became apparent to me. The artist wrestles, fights, to fit into a tee-shirt that is way too small.  During long minutes, he struggles, pulls, turns, twists, tries everything, but his head never emerges from the red collar. Symbolic? Certainly.  It is like a birth, a battle to get out (or get oneself out), unpacking the conventions and the difficulty of the fight as something tragic and absurd at the same time. A comic situation reinforced by this cool tee-shirt printed with an image of Pokemons.

How to exist in a society where one is judged by one’s image, one’s behavior by stereotypes?  Where is the place for the individual? The video and the canvasses, in their simplicity and their starkness, offer a wonderful allegory about the dilemma of the black American male. By appropriating the codes and adopting the vocabulary which come out of hip-hop culture, Fahamu Pecou places himself neither in a simple and straight-forward criticism nor in a simple illustration of postures and attitudes. On the contrary, his re-interpretation incites a dialogue and re-questions these models. And, while using humor, irony and a certain remove, the artist distances himself from his subject matter and with the icons that he makes fun of, developing instead a calm commentary, reflective, less dictatorial, on the place and the role of masculine identity.
Fahamu Pecou is a mixer, even more a sampler. He assimilates and appropriates the landmarks of the black community, all the signs of street culture, all the attitudes, the stereotypes that come out of hip-hop fashion, to then regurgitate them and adapt them to his own artistic vocabulary. What comes out is a savory mixture made into art, of popular culture, fashion, sex, jokes, music, kitsch, and influences from many people (one thinks notably of Basquiat, Malick Sidebé, David Hammons….)

Hard 2 Death describes the difficulties of the passage to adulthood of a young black American, aware of the social-cultural dictates and in struggle with the caricatured archetypes of hip-hop culture (masculine domination, obsessive sexuality, financial success, objectification of women, heightened violence)  and who imagines himself being able to prove his strength and his bravery in a field of constant one-upmanship.  Somewhere between an identity quest and an envy for the tight knittedness of his icons, the individual identity gets lost, imitates, seeks itself.  Until what?  Until prison, until death, until absurdity?
So, yes, finally, to smile does some good too.