Thursday Idea replacement: Artist lecture, Sanford Biggers

The Bridge is Over (biddybyebye)., 2006

Prayer Rug, 2005

Blossom, 2007

Sanford Biggers is a former VCU professor who currently teaches at Columbia University. Going into the lecture, like most, I had zero knowledge of the artist or his work. Biggers talk started off like most lecturers, with a little bit of background. He started by showing a montage of found footage that he said basically summed up his life and way of thinking. The video was strangely all over the place but in a even stranger way made sense somehow. At first I struggled to see the connections but as the video went on I started to see that there is a bit of method to his madness. It's clear that he has multiple influences from different cultures that have made him and his art what it is today; Asian Buddhism, African tribe culture and American hip hop just to name a few. His diversity in knowledge and perspectives is truly what has made him as successful as he is.

What really took me by surprise was some of the random pieces that he showed us. He started with the montage, then played a video comparing his family videos to a Jewish girls family videos. While these pieces were definitely interesting they were in heavy contrast to some of his physical structure work. To go from showing a video montage to a massive sculpture of a tree with a piano stuck in it was a little disorienting. The scope and technical amazement that these sculptures had seemed so distant form the other pieces that it was hard to tell that they were produced by the same artist. It's always interesting to me to see an artists true physical skill or talent. I feel like every artist has some basic skill that they are able to build their foundation for success upon. Some artist display it more blatant then others, but Biggers chose to let it creep out about halfway into the lecture. It doesn't always have to be something as concrete as detailed physical building like Biggers is, but each artist has to have that technical skill to be able to fall back on, almost like their street credit.

Biggers gave an interesting lecture, he was a little all over the place at times but was very genuine and engaging. Some of his work was subtlety mind blowing and he kept me guessing as to what he would talk about next until the end.