Brandon Coley Cox

Photograph courtesy of Barron Claiborne

Portfolio of Artwork 908-913

What better way to introduce Brandon Coley Cox (b. 1985), a rapidly emerging visual artist, than with his own words, as he does himself on his current website:

Being thirty years old and having lived within the urban communities of Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City for my entire life, I have become keenly aware of being perceived by others inaccurately due to American racial constructions. Deep layers of billboard advertisements typically surround these communities and for nearly a decade I have used this material in my work as a meaningful layer of “paint,” referencing prejudiced views that are levied against black people. My current studio practice involves pulverizing these ads and creating a new form of paper which I then make various shades of black and embed with specifically chosen objects. Hammered pieces of metal, meteorites that fell from the sky in 1492, powdered tires, shredded steel bits, natural crystals, etched and inked copper plates, and royal purple velvet fabrics all combine within one piece to create an unexpected yet intriguing experience. It is my goal to not only slow down the reading of a painting, but to trump the historically given terms entirely. This directly relates to being able to perceive a kind of blackness that’s not so easily definable.

From figurative to abstract, my new paintings and prints look somewhere in between the asphalt of the street and the starry deep of space. This “pointing upwards” is crucial because it relates directly to the West African spiritual belief system of Ifa, which I practice. Ifa provides an African-based means of self-improvement and higher ascent towards one’s soul. This alchemical quality is something that I strive for in my practice and conceptually reference through my handling of materials and mark making. The overall project of radicalizing a new ground, presentation strategies, and forms of blackness via painting and print-making is further reinforced by negating their respective traditions. Decisions such as replacing cotton canvas with sagging funkadelic velvet, pouring black “urban pulp” on the floor as opposed to working from an easel, and not using paint are intentional conflations that are necessary for me to maneuver conceptually.

Brandon Coley Cox’s artist statement which precedes the current one on his website adds other dimensions as to how the artist wants viewers to read him and his work:

I am interested in creating work that can serve as a stage for specific dialogues to occur around topics of beauty, power dynamics, race, class, and history. These images tend be self-reflexive in my approach to making them, but speak to a more macrocosmic dialogue related to imaging Black bodies. Aware of the marred ways in which mainstream society has been trained to negatively value those who descend from imprisoned Africans in the West, I am attempting in my images to not only question these ongoing visceral relations, but to redefine and trump them. My efforts are to carve a space where the personal meets political which meets spiritual which meets potential.

I have often used imagistic invention as a means of deconstructing figurative histories. I am a Black gay man living in America, and my experience provides me with a unique opportunity to view the world from that of a perceived, super minority. Currently in my practice, invention lends itself to a more constructive exploration of potential, will, and desire. A palpable and poetic kind of truth-conjuring that plays with perceptions and reality is now at the heart of my practice.

In a previously unpublished interview, dated July 2, 2015, LeRonn P. Brooks asked Brandon Coley Cox to speak further about his practice as an artist.

BROOKS:

So, what do you think are the intentions of your work?

COX:

While I was in grad school there were so many non-indictments of police officers around the country who had killed black people that I began thinking of it all as a kind of anti-black terrorism. So in my work I have been trying to...