The Black Banal
de Tony Cokes, Elana Schlenker, Kaleb Hunkele, Image Text Ithaca Press, Greene Naftali Gallery
The Black Banal, a limited edition, hand silk-screened portfolio, is a graphic blast of found text sourced and sequenced by Tony Cokes. Cokes channels the intense boredom and extreme anger generated by his encounter with the source material into an act of "minor deconstruction." The fact that race was rendered marginal, and banal, in its original reading context makes the excerpts more resonant, intriguing in their isolation, producing new, broader connections in a different place and time. 15 leaves each in a different color with short texts on the meaning of being black in America and exploring being a black artist in a predominantly white culture.