Kumasi J. Barnett, Who Will Ruin The New America?

Kumasi J. Barnett
Who Will Ruin The New America?
October 22 - November 14, 2020

Lowell Ryan Projects is pleased to present 12 new works by Kumasi J. Barnett, that continue to expand the narratives in his practice utilizing the comic book genre as a means of political and societal commentary. These new works explore both serious and sincere topics while also allowing for humorous reflections on ourselves, society, and their evolution. Kumasi discusses these new works and the political climate with Virginia Martinsen, Lowell Ryan Projects' owner and director.

Hi Kumasi! It’s been quite a year so far with the pandemic, the election, societal change, etc., to say the least! In March we presented a grouping of works at The Armory Show in New York, that you had been working on for several years beforehand, addressing among other issues police brutality, systemic racism, and our relationship with the media. Pretty much immediately after the fair the world went into lockdown due to the pandemic, can you tell me a bit about your experience since that time and how it has had an impact on your work?
Since the lockdown began right after the Armory show in March I really examined what I was working on and where I wanted to push. I’ve been particularly interested in the American power dynamics that surround money. How the money moves around. Why it moves like it does and who’s pulling the levers. I’ve been especially focused on the dealings of the government and the corporations in bed with them. Because the first thing we saw when the stimulus happened for COVID-19 was who got the money—of the 2 trillion dollars, we the taxpayers got some 300 billion or so? Americans in general got their $1200 checks, but corporations got two-thirds of that money. Unemployment benefits doubled that $300 to $600, but the rest of the money went to corporations with no responsibility to show what they did with it. As an artist, it seems like I’m in the wrong business.

But the other answer is I’ve been spending the bulk of my time with my daughter who is pretty young. So I’ve been taking her to the park, the playground, the woods, and figuring out what her favorite foods are when we have lunch and dinner. It’s just been really nice to have this amount of time to hang out with her and my wife.

Addressing Donald Trump directly seems like a natural direction for the work to follow. Can you tell me a bit about these new works and their creation through the lens of Walt Disney and its characters?
I really enjoy working with Disney characters. They are hard to understand in a modern context so altering that content makes them really fun contemporary figures. Because they’re from an era of idolized utopia, they are like mascots without a framework. They’re like the pop-culture version of Thomas Kincaid paintings. They are mascots in search of an advertisement—as if Tony the Tiger just existed as a thing running around screaming, “They’re Great” without the ads for Frosted Flakes. In a sense, that’s what Donald Trump is—an advertisement for success with no real success.

You have to enjoy the Walt Disney Company as a corporate entity. It’s a staple of American branding. I don’t particularly like the cartoons or the movies. I wasn’t raised on them so I don’t have any sort of nostalgia for it. But I love the idea that they had this vault of products and treated intellectual property as a rare artifact to be hoarded and only sold every 8 years. They traded on nostalgia and invented FOMO with that shit. I think the Walt Disney Company is one of the most American corporations in that sense. It’s right up there with Apple, Nike, and Hollywood. It’s product wrapped in sentiment. You’re not buying things. You’re buying feelings. Isn’t that what we all want?

What are your feelings on Cancel Culture? Is it an effective means of facilitating change?
Cancel Culture is one of those things that got branded so people could talk about it in a negative light. And by people I mean celebrities, politicians, and corporations who have done shit that would now get them “canceled.” It’s a Fox News product. Let’s be real Matt Lauer needed to get canceled. Charlie Rose needed to get canceled. Harvey Weinstein needs to go to jail. They’ve seriously hurt people. So a few other people have to have some uncomfortable conversations about tweets from 10 to 15 years ago? You have to explain why you used the ‘N-word in every tweet up until you graduated college? Okay. I’ll make that trade. (Insert the word that first comes to your mind in the place of ‘N’, it’s the N-word for me.)

With that said, I fully expect to get canceled one day. And I probably have it coming. We all have it coming. I’m trying my best to be the person my mom thinks I am and I’ll mess up along the way. I do need to pay for those mistakes. Sorry isn’t a get-out-of-jail card.

While it feels like a lot of attention has been paid to the issues and devolution of the Republican Party, your new works also provide commentary on the issues that the Democratic Party faces as well. What are your thoughts on Joe Biden?
Democrats are…I want to say pussies, but that’s disrespect to pussies. I guess because I am registered as one I need to suffer the blame for them as well.

Joe Biden. Joe Biden exists. He’s the guy your parents introduce you to when you’ve been through a nasty breakup. Is he better than the douchebag of a guy who lied to you, stole your money, and fucked your best friend? Technically, yes. Will you settle for Joe Biden? I guess. For a date or two. Or maybe until the holiday at your parent’s house is over. He’s the hallmark channel’s idea of what a boyfriend for your grandma should look like.

I honestly think we need to vote out Trump. And then we can work on voting out Joe Biden. At least now Democrats believe black people exist.

I was an Independent up until I moved to New York. In New York, you cannot vote in primaries unless you are registered with a party. Whoever won the Democratic primary was the de facto winner. So I registered to have my vote Democrat because that was where the decisions were made. In the process, I really saw how few people vote. You can really swing a local election with a few hundred people. It’s insane.

What are your feelings on the effects of the media—social and traditional—on society?
I think the media is just a mirror of society. We are social media. I think the effect is a little more than amplifying voices. It’s not evil. This is just who we are.

Can you tell me a bit about the impetus behind the work: America #71, Whiteman is Dead...who will ruin the new America?
America #71 is hope for the future.

Some of your new works explore gender identity, what led you in this direction?
I want to normalize having a discussion about gender and sexuality. I want to make it a normal part of conversation to ask for people’s pronouns, like asking how much people pay rent in New York City. This is an attempt to start that conversation and what you’ll see in these works is an evolution of understanding as I learn from others, and I wouldn’t ask for grace. I would ask people to check me if they want to. It’s not your job to teach me. It’s my job to learn. I need to learn just like everybody else and to do that I have to put in the work. So I’m starting with what I know and how I speak, painting.

What does the Philip Guston exhibition delay tell us about museums and the state of the art world?
The Philip Guston delay tells me one thing, they’re afraid. They’re afraid to have a conversation about race. They’re afraid to have the conversation at the same time as society has the conversation. They’re essentially waiting for things to settle before they make any comment whatsoever. So they see that we as a society haven’t agreed on the solutions to these problems and instead of moving to actually be a part of the answer to these questions they want to sit back and wait until they can document. It’s like the art historians who constantly say they will never study a living artist.

Kumasi J. Barnett received his MFA from The Ohio State University, and now lives and works in Baltimore, MD. Influenced by the aesthetics and narratives of comic books, his work subverts and imbues the often timeless genre with a present day social consciousness. Barnett frequently paints directly over old copies of comic books, changing their narratives into critiques of social and political issues including police brutality, racial profiling, and more broadly systemic racism.

Barnett’s works have been exhibited both in the United States and abroad, including exhibitions at Lowell Ryan Projects, Los Angeles, CA; BravinLee programs, New York, NY; the SPRING/BREAK Art Show, New York, NY; City Lore, New York, NY; Con-Artist Collective, New York, NY; The Arsenal Gallery, New York, NY; Sulphur Bath Studio, Brooklyn, NY; and The Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn, NY. Museum exhibitions include the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town, South Africa; The Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, FL; and most recently the Verge Center for the Arts, Sacramento, CA. Barnett presented a solo booth with Lowell Ryan Projects at The Armory Show 2020, in the Focus section curated by Jamillah James. Barnett currently teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and his work has been featured in Artforum, Ammo, Vibe, Hyperallergic, Huffington Post, Autre, Artnet News, and The Guardian, among others.

For more information please contact: info@lowellryanprojects.com