New York Times

July 12, 1996 Art Review: In Connecticut, the Old Meets the New By ROBERTA SMITH

In a completely noncombative way, Connecticut's summer shows oscillate between what might be called the old guard and the new. At one extreme is an exhibition of 18th-century Massachusetts silversmiths in New Haven, and at the other, a show in Ridgefield of emerging black artists, one of four exhibitions that together wend their way through several generations of minority artists, black and Hispanic.

Aldrich Museum Of Contemporary Art

One of the stronger shows in the region is "No Doubt: African-American Art of the '90s," an exhibition of 10 young black artists organized at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield by the artist Renee Cox. What is most striking and exciting about this show is its diversity and the resulting sense of liberation. These words apply not only to the different ways the artists here tackle issues of identity and self-representation, but also to the extraordinary range of styles and media in which they express themselves.

There are the richly embellished paintings of Kerry James Marshall, which present disquietingly fractured images of black life in the midst of white society. Radcliffe Bailey, a talented young painter from Atlanta, is represented by big bright patchwork paintings that include blown-up photographs of black children and adults.

There are also Conceptual works: for example the photographic montages of Ike Ude, a Nigerian artist living in New York, who sardonically insinuates his changing visage into the covers of popular magazines and big posters for fictive movies.

Also in the Conceptual vein is a video installation by X-PRZ, a collaborative of four young artists using still and moving images, texts and recorded speeches, including those of Malcolm X, to attack white hypocrisy. It owes a bit too much to Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer but nonetheless shows promise.

Between these poles there is much to look at and think about, including one of Kara Walker's bitter visions of black and white relations in the antebellum South, satirically expressed in the black-on-white silhouettes endemic to the period. Gerald Cyrus' tender documentary photographs of black middle-class family life are presented in grids so that they play off one another effectively; Ms. Cox's big color photographs recast such Christian staples as the Last Supper and the Madonna and Child with black actors, starring the artist herself as both Jesus and Mary.

Ancillary to the show is "Blues Room," a small room painted red and covered with verse, soliloquies and sharp exchanges on the subject of love by the poet Trish Benson. From a purely aural point of view, it is very impressive.

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