On View
Not on viewObject number2011.103
Kin LV (The Moral Compass)
Artist
Whitfield Lovell
(American, 1959-)
Date2011
Mediumconté on paper and wooden roulette wheel
Dimensionsimage: 22 × 12 in. (55.9 × 30.5 cm)
sheet: 30 × 22 3/4 in. (76.2 × 57.8 cm)
mount: 35 1/2 × 28 in. (90.2 × 71.1 cm)
frame: 36 7/8 × 29 1/2 × 4 1/8 in. (93.7 × 74.9 × 10.5 cm)
sheet: 30 × 22 3/4 in. (76.2 × 57.8 cm)
mount: 35 1/2 × 28 in. (90.2 × 71.1 cm)
frame: 36 7/8 × 29 1/2 × 4 1/8 in. (93.7 × 74.9 × 10.5 cm)
Credit LineElisabeth Claire Lahti Fund
Exhibition History"Embracing Diverse Voices: 80 Years of African-American Art," KIA Traveling Exhibition, Bakersfield Museum of Art (Dec. 13, 2012 – Mar. 10, 2013).
"Copley to Kentridge: What's New in the Collection?," KIA (Sept.14 - Dec. 1, 2013).
"Lasting Legacy: A Collection for Kalamazoo," Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, Michigan (Sep. 6, 2014 - Jan. 4, 2015).
"Embracing Diverse Voices: 90 Years of African-American Art," KIA Traveling Exhibition, Tyler Museum of Art, Tyler, TX (January 17 - March 20, 2016).
Round and Round, Ethel Denton Groos Gallery, November 4, 2017 - March 4, 2018Label TextEach work in Whitfield Lovell’s ongoing Kin series conjoins a found object with a precisely drawn portrait. Provocative titles unite the object and portrait, stimulating emotionally charged associations. The artist produces these portrait drawings from anonymous identification documentation (ID) photographs: vintage photo-booth snapshots, passport photos, and police mugshots of African Americans from before the civil rights era. Lovell urges us to contemplate the humanity of the forgotten, ordinary men and women depicted in these institutional representations.
Does this work present a stereotype of a broken man whose moral compass has failed? Or is Lovell offering a memorial to an “unknown” individual representing all those of his “kin” subject to the wheel of fate? What choices are available to a man whose life is guided by forces as capricious as a roulette wheel? Judgment turns to compassion toward our fellow men to whom Lady Luck delivers—by accident of birth, race, and circumstance—the misfortunes of prejudice and poverty, instead of the blessings of privilege.
