To enter Derek Fordjour’s deeply visceral first solo exhibition at David Kordansky Gallery is to suspend disbelief. Behind mysterious curtains, old-fashioned turnstiles, and gallery corridors, the past, present and future merge into a fantastical tableau of interstitiality and multimedia, from painting to sculpture to a live magic show. Magic is the theme and in these works we feel the power of illusions, the power of disappearance and the ultimate power of reappearance. The title of the show, Magic, Mystery & Legerdemain, is taken from the semi-fictionalized autobiography of turn-of-the-20th-century illusionist Black Herman. Herman’s act included Asrah levitation where a participant, usually an assistant, is levitated under a cloth and then rendered invisible, only to materialize later somewhere in the audience. His routine covered the standard canon of tricks, like making rabbits appear from hats. But one of his signature acts was having himself buried alive in an outdoor area called "Black Herman's Private Graveyard,” and then exhumed three days later to finish his show. Black Herman’s magic and Fordjour’s artwork are metaphysical, or perhaps psychological, analogies to the Middle Passage, the Bermuda Triangle of the Black Diaspora, and the disappearance and reappearance of Black bodies across the globe. The legerdemain, or sleight of hand, of the Black experience. In a new suite of paintings, Fordjour wows us with his brilliant and exuberant use of artifactual materials like newspaper and cardboard that force us into current cultural realities as if to say, “Tada!” with a wave of his magic paintbrush. There is Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson in his Lakers jersey, reaching for an orange in the land of plenty, standing next to a Rolls Royce, the Spirit of Ecstasy hood ornament nearly middle-frame. There are also devotions to other Black magicians, like the Armstrong family, which consisted of J. Hartford Armstrong, known as the “King of the Colored Conjurers” and his daughter Ellen, who was one of the first female Black magicians. Or Goldfinger and Dove, a husband and wife duo who performed at Los Angeles’ Magic Castle. And, of course, Henry Box Brown, a magician and former slave who sent himself via USPS in a wooden crate to abolitionists in Philadelphia. The works are rife with breadcrumbs, easter eggs, and not-so-secret ciphers that celebrate Black cultural output through the lens of magic, both figuratively and literally. Fordjour’s largest painting to date, Meu Povo, which spans across eight panels, explores a carnival procession in real time, including rituals and dance inspired by Afro-Brazilian folklore, as part of a new series mapping Black migration. Magic, Mystery & Legerdemain is a thunderclap of an exhibition, proving that Fordjour is one of the most important voices and painters of our current surreality.
Magic, Mystery & Legerdemain is on view through May 7 @ David Kordansky Gallery 5130 W. Edgewood Place Los Angeles. Click here to read a conversation between Derek Fordjour & Torkwase Dyson from our FW2020 Sitting Issue.
