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The Shooting Gallery

June 12 - July 4, 2010

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839 Larkin Street San Francisco, CA 94109
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Whirl Trade Fahamu Pecou, Buy Blak(ness) Acrylic, Gold Leaf and Oil Stick on Canvas 48x60"
Opening Reception: June 12th, 2010, from 7-11 pm. The Shooting Gallery is proud to present Whirl Trade: New Works by Fahamu Pecou. This exhibition addresses issues of misguided cross-cultural perceptions and international black identity. Please join us for the opening reception on June 12th, 2010 from 7-11pm. Whirl Trade is a dizzying cultural exchange where exported ideas of African identity are misinterpreted across borders. Just as African American hip hop artists hold the microphone on an international stage, Fahamu Pecou paints his hypermasculine alter ego onto magazine covers to achieve the same platform. However, his microphone hangs limp to critique the commodified stereotype of young black men being projected by media. Equally misconstrued are American generalizations of African culture, creating a whirl of fallacy around international black identity. Fahamu exaggerates such typecast generalizations, challenging his contemporaries to project more positive images of African American men while pushing the audience to reevaluate their own expectations. Fahamu Pecou stages photo shoots with poses drawn from influential African photographer of the 60s, Malick Sidibé. In this series, Fahamu and friends model with clothing and set design that mimics perceived African styles. Pecou references these photographs to produce larger than life acrylic paintings that appear to be unfinished in certain areas, hinting at the “larger picture” beyond said imagery. Fahamu currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia. He earned his BFA from Atlanta College of Art in 1997 and has since completed residencies in Panama’s Taller Portobelo and The Caversham Center in South Africa. In 2008 he received the Fulton County Arts Council Caversham Fellowship and in 2009 the Artadia Award of Atlana, GA. He has exhibited in Cape Town, Basel Switzerland, Atlanta, GA, and Lyons Wier Gallery (New York City) and Conduit Gallery (Dallas, TX).