Marcus Leslie Singleton: Soiled Tennis Elbow 101
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Works
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Marcus Leslie SingletonDaisy, 2022Oil on panel60 x 48 in (152.4 x 121.9 cm) -
Marcus Leslie SingletonOld Record, 2022Oil on panel60 x 120 in (152.4 x 304.8 cm)
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Marcus Leslie SingletonThe Spiritual Weight of America, 2022Oil and enamel on panel48 x 48 in (121.9 x 121.9 cm)
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Marcus Leslie SingletonThe Writer, 2022Oil on panel12 x 9 in (30.5 x 22.9 cm)
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Marcus Leslie SingletonWater Me, Too, 2022Oil on panel48 x 36 in (121.9 x 91.4 cm)
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Marcus Leslie SingletonHeavyweight St. Louis, 2022Oil on panel60 x 48 in (152.4 x 121.9 cm)
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Text
Soiled
This series of work was inspired and based on my personal archive. Referencing documents passed down to me by my grandparents, aunts and uncles. Old photos, letters, items, but predominantly and most importantly to me, their verbal storytelling. There are selected phrases from these stories embedded in the paintings like roots in the soil. These are the exchanges that develop culture—passed down generationally, through style, information, beliefs.
Soiled attributes these personal histories which I’ve taken as my responsibility to tell and include within the larger canon of African American history: through Black traditional art making as a way of survival, taking note of the innovations that are ingenius in our culture, from Gee’s Bend Quilts to Hip Hop. I aim to connect these ideas with my own practice to create images that tell a story.
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Installation Views
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Q&A
Your name
Jake Chapman
Your current location
New York
Your favorite pastime
Walking
Something you like
Walking
Something you dislike
Traveling economy
Your defining characteristic
Stubborn
What would someone close to you say your defining characteristic is
Just terrific fun
Your favorite artist
James Ensor
Favorite word or phrase
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What aspect of your work is most important to you
That it’s relentlessly ambivalent to the pain it takes to make it
Who do you admire the most and why
Jean Genet, for re-writing The Thief’s Journal on prison toilet paper after the first version was confiscated and destroyed
Your worst habit
Mockery, laughter, irreverence
The first thing you think of in the morning
The last dream I had and how absurd it was
What have you always wanted to do and have not done
Sounds like something I’ve neglected to do, and haven't done, like tidy my bedroom…
Your best decision
My best and worst decision cancelled each other out so now I’m left with a decisive void...
Your worst decision
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Your favorite street
Fashion Street in Spitalifields, London, because when I lived there it was a very fashionable part of town, and Gilbert and George lived in the next street, and I used to say hello to them every day
What made you become the person you are
A constant of variables and colliding events… and mummy and daddy Chapman
Something that you treasure
A volcanic rock from the DRC
What would the child you once were think of the adult you have become
The child I once was would be bewildered by the fact that a grown man could make a living by playing around and acting like a child
Your greatest fear
I’m too unimaginative to have a greatest fear—I have many petty fears, although I’ve agreed to row across the Atlantic in December, so that might all change…
