2024-08-31 18:06:45
As a child, Melvin Edwards experienced the effects of racial segregation in America. He went down in art history as the artist of “Lynch Fragments”. His work is coming to Germany for the first time in a special exhibition.
“You can use a chain to anchor a ship,” says Melvin Edwards in an article for the Museum of Modern Art, “or to bind someone.” You should know.
Melvin Edwards is a blacksmith. A musician who works with metal. He is a Black American from Houston, Texas. And he doesn’t just know the history of racism in the US from hearsay.
Fridericianum Kassel presents Melvin Edwards
The artist began sewing and sewing “Lynch Fragments” in 1963, when racial segregation was still practiced in America. Chains, locks, weapons and tool parts can be found in small, compact and sometimes lumpy sculptures, which are usually placed on the wall. Another of his metal sculptures hangs from the ceiling, and in some installations he uses wire.
The most impressive “Lynch Fragments” are the immediate, heavy physical presence. There are areas of rusted and greasy patina, but also the special glow that heavy metal gets when it passes through the workers’ hands. Some of the sculptures appear menacing, others look like silent faces.
Edwards compares them to poetry. Of slavery and lynching? Of oppression and discrimination that continues to this day?
The actor studied at the University of Southern California. He has an interest in American football and has lived in New York since 1967. He does not want to put any conclusions in the mouth of the spectators of his team’s promotion games, but he wants to remind them that “we still have many to do.”
87-year-old is still continuing “Lynch Fragments” – works on paper are also part of them. “Some Morning Light” from 1963 is the first metal game in the series. Melvin Edwards refers to Ralph Ginzburg. In an essay in his 1962 collection “100 Years of Lynchings,” the author documents an African-American family’s self-defense against racial violence.
Edwards has long been represented by Stephen Friedman (London / New York) and Buchholz pictures (Cologne / Berlin), but the companies still have some catching up to do. In Europe, Edwards is now presented for the first time in a museum. The Fridericianum in Kassel is showing more than 50 works in an exhibition curated by Luise von Nobbe and museum director Moritz Wesseler.
“Melvin Edwards. Some Morning Light”August 31, 2024 – January 12, 2025
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