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This paper delves into the recent 'paintings' of African-American artist David Hammons, which combine rubbish-like plastic wraps with the abstract-expressionist style paintings. In straddling between rubbish and art object, his works tend to blur the boundary drawn between two opposite categories in...

This paper delves into the recent 'paintings' of African-American artist David Hammons, which combine rubbish-like plastic wraps with the abstract-expressionist style paintings. In straddling between rubbish and art object, his works tend to blur the boundary drawn between two opposite categories in value, art and garbage, provoking the sophisticated taste of Upper-East-side white community in Manhattan, New York. Choosing the venue of his exhibition at a commercial gallery, Hammons's creative efforts is also a critique of what can be seen as the dominance of abstract expressionism and white elitism in American art history. The artist is known for his use of unconventional materials in art making such as black hair, barbecue bones, and elephant droppings, ones that are often associated with African-American experiences in all different levels. Since his debut in the art scene in the 1970s, Hammons has pursued the view of art-making as a medium for provoking contentious issues of racial relations in the States. On the other hand, the reception of Hammons's work as African-American art can be potentially quite limiting, overlooking as it does multi-faceted meanings of his art practice. His unconventional approach to art often took him outside art galleries and museums, where he was seen using a variety of common materials for site-specific installations and performances. Staged in different parts of Manhattan, these acts of art making traverse seemingly opposite communities and cultures, often blurring their boundaries. Hammons's artistic practice can label him what Abdul Jan Mohamed calls "specular border intellectual", revealing as it does the symbiosis of binary oppositions that is basic to the experience of communnal living.

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