{"id":8997,"date":"2021-02-19T13:02:49","date_gmt":"2021-02-19T13:02:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/media-archive.blackartinamerica.com\/?p=8997"},"modified":"2021-02-20T02:24:04","modified_gmt":"2021-02-20T02:24:04","slug":"abstracting-social-questions-the-work-of-juan-logan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/earthexhibitions.org\/media-archive\/?p=8997","title":{"rendered":"Abstracting Social Questions: The Work of Juan Logan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Abstracting Social Questions: The Work of Juan Logan<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
By Shantay Robinson\u00a0<\/span><\/pre>\n
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Juan Logan<\/p><\/div>\n
Juan Logan\u2019s social abstraction is not so much stating his position in his paintings as much as he\u2019s posing existential questions. \u201cI\u2019m trying to explore questions I\u2019ve had for an extended period of time, and I try to answer those questions in a visual context\u201d he says. Logan reflects back to an Elizabeth Catlett talk where she expressed the notions of the social as opposed to the political. He says she stated that the social means you\u2019re commenting on the things that are happening around you and the political suggest you\u2019re taking a particular point of view. Logan has been working in social abstraction for several decades now. He can remember a time in the 1960s where his perspective and art were not considered black enough because it was abstract.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\u201cThey were looking for hard core and angry,\u201d Logan recalls. \u201cWhen you think about all the imagery that came out of that movement, during that period, things were expressed differently. And the idea of doing things in terms of dealing with social abstraction, where I was, fed into a different path.\u201d Still, there were some museums and collectors that did acquire Logan\u2019s work at the time. He maintains some of his work from that period. Although his work has always been abstract, he admits they were more didactic then, which allowed him to use images that people would easily recognize. He created art about everything from nuclear war to abortion \u2013 the things that were happening in the United States at the time.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\u201cMy interest in all these things have never been to provide answers to these questions. My interest has always been to ask better questions. So, if you can ask a better question you can deepen your investigation. I try to ask better questions of myself, so the answers that I\u2019m seeking are not so much for an audience, but they\u2019re for myself. I need to know. I want to know. Then if I can put those questions in a visual context, you can ask yourself or seek those answers for yourself.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
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Artist studio<\/p><\/div>\n
Though he asks probing questions that lead to series of hundreds of paintings, Logan admits the answers to his questions sometimes escape him. \u201cI understand more about what I\u2019m asking at the end of it all. But I sometimes feel that the answer was incomplete, so I spend more time on it. And that\u2019s why sometimes it takes years. I listen to young artists talk about it sometimes, and they\u2019re working on a series of work. And I say well, how many paintings are in that series. They say well, I\u2019m up to five, but I\u2019m going to move on now. I say well I\u2019m glad you\u2019re able to answer all of your questions with five paintings, I wish I could do that.\u201d Logan\u2019s series can run from 60 paintings to as large as 160 paintings. \u201cThere\u2019s no hurry to leave it. It just evolves into something else that\u2019s no longer a part of that,\u201d he says. He works seven days a week in the studio and is able to make paintings as large as he wants, leave them in place for a time, and spend time on them. He\u2019s not working for an exhibition or on a timeline. He just works. Because of that, he has bodies of work that have never been shown. \u201cI figure they\u2019ll be shown eventually somewhere. But the main thing it allows me to do is spend time with it to develop it,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n
The head shape has been ubiquitous in much of Logan\u2019s work for, at least, two decades. The first time he used that head shape was in 1967 in a painting titled, <\/span>I Am Black <\/span><\/i>during the Civil Rights Movement. The head shape has appeared in many of his later pieces, especially in a piece titled <\/span>Unconscious Bias<\/span><\/i>, which is comprised of an installation of 1100 heads. The piece is inspired by a <\/span>New England Journal of Medicine<\/span><\/i> study that found, 90% of the time, white males were referred to specialists when they went to doctors for the same condition as African Americans or women who were given medicine and sent home. Logan has seen this phenomenon play out in his own life. His father had a heart attack, and the doctor didn\u2019t want to miss a baseball game, so his father died two hours later. His aunt went to a hospital for treatment and was given medicine and sent home. She died an hour later. His cousin whom he picked up from the hospital was complaining about chest pains upon leaving. The nurse told him to take antacid. He died of a heart attack in the passenger seat of Logan\u2019s car a block away from the hospital. He understands how unconscious bias plays out in his own life; the study just confirmed what he already knew. He says, \u201cAnd the interesting thing about the <\/span>Unconscious Bias<\/span><\/i> piece, look at COVID-19 today, more black and brown people are dying of that than anybody else. Then there are pharmacy deserts in our communities. Where are they going to get vaccines? They have no cars. Again, we are placed at a disadvantage. But again, trying to place all of those things in a visual context, what does that begin to look like? Those are the questions I\u2019m raising for myself.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
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Help Me, Save Me, Love Me, 2009, by Juan Logan. Mixed media: 5×16 feet. Courtesy of the artist.<\/p><\/div>\n
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New Orleans, Katrina crowds<\/p><\/div>\n
Logan\u2019s painting <\/span>Help Me, Save Me, Love Me<\/span><\/i>, about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, illustrates how he uses layers of ideas to convey some of the questions he raises. \u201cYou look at images of people at the Superdome where they waited outside for a long time to go inside. But it was not a place that helped and saved people. Murders took place in there and rape took place in there. It was not a good situation. And the Red Cross didn\u2019t do all that it should have done nor did FEMA.\u201d Using puzzle pieces in this painting replicates an aerial image of throngs of people waiting outside the Superdome to get inside. <\/span>Help Me, Save Me, Love Me<\/span><\/i> is an abstract piece, but the puzzle pieces in the artwork aptly stand in for what it looked like from an aerial perspective as people waited outside the Superdome. In addition to the representation of the people in this artwork, the puzzle pieces represent the Katrina situation as a large puzzle that had been taken apart and couldn\u2019t be put back together again. People were displaced, they had to move to other states, and places where many once lived, became gentrified. Logan says, \u201cThe interesting thing about that for the most part was they wanted someone to help them, to save them, to act as though they actually loved them and take care of them.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Logan\u2019s social abstraction asks that we relate his paintings to life experiences. By using tangible aspects, like puzzle pieces, the ideas come together to acknowledge the questions he is raising in his artworks. It is our job, when looking at his work, to make the connections. Of the Katrina situation, he says, \u201cBut how do you talk about that situation. How do you make it simple and easy because it wasn\u2019t simple and easy? And it was a very painful situation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
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Unconscious Bias, Juan Logan<\/p><\/div>\n
Overall, his artwork examines physical and mental landscapes that we exist in. He says, \u201cWhen you think about the mental landscapes, we have had to exist in a very difficult space that\u2019s been created for us sometimes or we create for ourselves.\u201d Although physical aspects are relatively easy to render, interestingly, Logan allows his painting to illustrate a space that we cannot really see \u2013 the mental space. He deals with the architecture of memory and how it exists in space. Of <\/span>Elegy LVII <\/span><\/i>he states<\/span>, <\/span><\/i>\u201cI painted 5700 heads and I did that to talk about all those children who were being held at our southwest border. And when you think about them, in no time at all they won\u2019t know where they came from. They won\u2019t know their language because we\u2019re not speaking it here for them. In some cases, they are. They\u2019ll forget about their parents, their culture, traditions, all of it. It will all disappear. They won\u2019t be able to recall in no time at all. In weeks or at the most months.\u201d Logan uses the head shape because everything takes place there first. To him, the figure of the head represents humanity. Logan\u2019s work focuses on three ideas \u2013 race, place, and power. He says, \u201cRace impacts black and brown people more than anybody else; power impacts us on how it gets exercised.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
Logan\u2019s exhibition, <\/span>Juan Logan: Creating and Collecting<\/span><\/i>, at the Bo Bartlett Center<\/a><\/span> at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia opens on April 9. The exhibition will feature his work alongside artworks from his collection. Though there is no thematic connection between his work and the artists\u2019 work from his collection, he mentions the curators wanted to focus not so much on how he responds to the work from his collection for his practice, but the work he responds to period.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\u201cI work in a particular way, but at the same time, I enjoy figuration,\u201d Logan acknowledges. \u201cSo, there\u2019s Robert Colescott, I love his work. There\u2019s Elizabeth Catlett and Kara Walker. I enjoy their work. So, they weren\u2019t so much influencing me, so much as I simply enjoy them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
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\"\"SHANTAY ROBINSON<\/b> was a participant in the inaugural class of <\/span>Burnaway<\/span><\/i> Magazine\u2019s<\/span> Art Writers Mentorship Program, a fellow in Duke University\u2019s Center for Documentary Studies Digital Publishing Project<\/span> Editorial Fellowship and was chosen for the CUE Art Foundation\u2019s Art Critic Mentoring program. In addition to writing for <\/span>Black Art in America<\/span><\/i>, she has written for <\/span>Washington City Paper,<\/span><\/i> Arts ATL<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>Nashville <\/span><\/i>Scene, <\/span>ARTS.BLACK<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>AFROPUNK<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>Sugarcane Magazine,<\/span><\/i> Number, Inc<\/span><\/i>., and <\/span>International Review of African American Art.<\/span><\/i> She also published a scholarly article in <\/span>Teaching Artist Journal. <\/span><\/i>She presented papers about art and education at SCAD\u2019s (Savannah College of Art and Design) Symposium on Art and Fashion, Georgia State University\u2019s New Voices Graduate Student Conference, Georgia State University\u2019s Glorious Hair and Academic Identities Conference, Northeast Modern Languages Association Conference, Mason Graduate Interdisciplinary Conference, and New York African Studies Association Conference. In 2019, she sat on a panel at Prizm Art Fair during Miami Art Week. In 2020, she served as visual arts judge in Shreveport Regional Council\u2019s Critical Mass 8 Art Competition.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n
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