Boomshakalaka

About

The show borrows its title from the lyrics of the Sly & The Family Stone track, I Want to Take You Higher, from their 1969 album, Stand!. Among Sly & The Family Stone’s most-acclaimed albums, Stand! was lauded both for its commercial success and its engagement with the social and political upheaval of its time. The record had a lasting influence on popular culture: introducing the phrase “different strokes for different folks,” and the expression “boomshakalaka” into the American lexicon. Mosby cites accessibility as his main curatorial objective, stating that “art should be accessible for people in every class and social group and should not only be made available to those of a higher socioeconomic class.” Mosby gravitated toward ‘Boomshakalaka’ as the exhibition title for its connection to the accessibility of pop music and for the feelings of excitement the expression connotes.

Mosby’s curation connects Ahn, Madison, and Robinson along three planes: abstraction, praxis, and influence. The selection of works converse most obviously through abstraction - discrete voices speaking a common visual language. Ahn, Madison, and Robinson all work between performance, sculpture, painting, writing, and installation - a distinct synthesis of multiple disciplines recognizable in each practice. Mosby’s choices highlight the specific cultural references from which the three artists draw: Autumn Ahn recalls diasporic reinventions of language, immersive dream exchange, botany, philosophies of time and space, and spiritual rites founded in ancestral Korean mountain workshops; Reginald Madison cites his parents’ love of jazz and artists like Sun Ra as influences on his decades-long painting and sculpture practice; Jamel Robinson’s work is influenced by Harlem, where he was born, raised, and lives today.

Boomshakalaka unites selections from these three diverse practices to offer a resonant, accessible whole.