The Cairo Speech: Dennis Black

Once again the critical audience and regular gallery viewers will have the opportunity to attempt to decipher the seemingly contradictory and borderline irresponsible graphic work of Dennis Balk. The exhibition at Gallery VER is comprised of a dozen or more large-scale pictures and painted canvases, theatrically installed, which appear to have been left behind when somewhere, for some unknown reason, a traveling circus has abandoned them upon leaving town. For now, these pictures and leave-behinds are warehoused until some future time when they regain a purpose. Other references are engaged in the work, some from within the cannons of contemporary art, but taken as a whole; the viewer is presented with an array of references that give even the skilled gallery goers a run for their money.

For this exhibition, as with previous work, Balk engages issues of narrative and the potential for static work to bring a piece of story, however fragmented, into a particular focus. For sure leaving most of the work for the audience. And also, like previous installations the work is in service of animating a particular ideological perspective that appears to have nothing in common with the gallery material. Here we find paintings masquerading as pictures posing as circus props and other detritus of a bygone era.

Balk’s work is often concerned with narrative tendencies as a historicizing process of the present. In the past he has written and produced theater pieces, (performed in New York), that were sometimes meant to be considered in relation to his gallery installations, often pitting contemporary characters as antagonists attempting to decipher significant historical moments. The work for this exhibition is a component of a larger project produced in Bangkok titled: Dennis Balk, Hurlyburly, a play by David Rabe. Rabe’s play, produced in the eighties, was a scathing immersion into a contemporary reality where none of the characters had any discernable handle on their present situation. The installation at Gallery VER is roughly titled “The Cairo Speech Warehouse”. President Barack Obama’s first significant speech after taking office was dubbed the “Cairo Speech”. It was delivered at Cairo University, on June 4th 2009. Seeking to “reach out to the 1.5 billion followers of Islam, to set forth a new beginning between the Unite States and Muslims”. Needless-to-say it was a radical departure from existing U.S. protocol. For this work, Balk presents an ideological agenda as a warehoused, static and lifeless idea waiting to be pitched to an audience primed for discussion and heated debate.