Dave McKenzie

Rearranging older works in new contexts is typical of Dave McKenzie. Though the artist is already well known in the United States, “Citizen” marks his first solo European exhibition. There are many noticeable differences between this and prior installations of the works on view (made between 2004 and 2008), all of which investigate what it means to be a citizen of a nation, and, more fundamentally, ponder an individual’s place in the world while exploring notions of belonging and togetherness.

The show’s centerpiece is a two-room work, Good Looking Out, 2008, which consists of seventeen outmoded television antennae mounted side by side on the wall. Instead of receiving radio signals, these spindles bear, at their tips, hard-to-decipher aluminum block letters. The nonsensical text, according to a press release, derives from an accidental conversation the artist had with a foreigner: “ ‘Good looking out’ he said. ‘They broke my teeth out,’ he said. ‘They are trying to push us out . . . .’ ”

The Jamaican-born, Brooklyn-based McKenzie decided to become a US citizen after September 11 in order to avoid a potential deportation. He reprises his naturalization in the work Politics Is the Art of Compromise, 2008, two piles of copied text placed on a table in the foyer for visitors to take. In fragmentary superimpositions, the texts form a “compromise” out of the letters of welcome issued by the Clinton and Bush administrations respectively.

Meanwhile, in the video We Shall Overcome, 2004, the titular protest song plays while the artist, anonymous behind a Bill Clinton mask, walks through the streets of Harlem greeting people. The piece seems to provide commentary on Clinton’s publicity-driven decision to move his operations to Harlem, where he has in fact never been seen. And now, with Obama in office, an artwork depicting a black, politically engaged artist “doubling,” so to speak, as a white president takes on more meaning than ever before.

Translated from German by Diana Reese.