A hundred years ago and more the Pioneer Works in Brooklyn’s Red Hook district
housed a massive heavy metal industrial site at which, among other things,
locomotive engines and cars were built and repaired. In many parts of the country the
architectural reclamation and imaginative repurposing of such industrial white
mastodons is one of the impressive cultural achievements of our own age. I have written about this one—on Pioneer
Street off Van Brunt, Red Hook’s main drag--once before, as
the venue of the wedding dinner of our son Richard and his bride Katie
Dixon. Six years later its evolution
toward its proposed artistic mission is much more articulate. On Friday last there was the opening at the
Pioneer Works of a striking new exhibition entitled “PòtoPrens—the Urban Artists of Port-au-Prince”. Its
principal curator, Leah Gordon, a leading expert on contemporary Haitian art,
is a friend of Richard’s.
Unfortunately
we were not able to make it to the opening, which was apparently mobbed, but as
the show will be running through November 11 we shall certainly have our chance
for a proper visit. What I did have is a
kind of privileged and informal preview a couple of days earlier. I was in the City for an appointment
scheduled at an upper-east-side venue for the late morning on Wednesday. I was able to stay with the Brooklynites over
Tuesday night and then hang out for about an hour at the Pioneer Works to watch
Rich help with the installation of his own imaginative contribution to the
show.
I
have a few times been in museums on a Monday, when they are usually closed to
the public but sometimes make special arrangements for visiting firemen in
the categories of donor, big-wig, or academic authority. You can easily guess my supposed
category. But even for those at the
bottom of the privilege chain, the feeling of entitlement is nearly
obscene. I had never before, however, experienced
a privileged survey of a large holding area crammed with the focused materials
of a substantial art exhibition in embryo--huge
sculpted stone heads, recycled bright bricolage of every genre (though with a specialized
subspecialty of multiform constructions made of old bicycle parts), and
importunate panchromatic panels of a sort guaranteed to make the vicar blush—all
of it, presumably, awaiting its carefully premeditated gallery deployment
within the next forty-eight hours. In
this exhibition of a collection of the work of more than twenty contemporary
Haitian artists, the Pioneer Works is breaking new grounds. The potential exhibition space—once an
enclosed quadrangular garage that could accommodate the assembly of a couple of
steam locomotive engines at a time—is vast, with walls soaring upward from a
shining floor of highly finished concrete burnished by diamond polishing pads.
But
Richard’s contribution is not mounted in the interior space of the Pioneer
Works, but in its intriguing outdoor garden.
In this surprising setting—essentially a patch of brownfield transformed
into luxurious Mediterranean greenery—carpenters have constructed a replica of
a typical Haitian barbershop. Barbershops, which have historically played
an important social role in the lives of various communities—including
especially, in our country, various African-American communities—are of
particular importance in urban Haiti.
Concerning the model building erected upon the gravel of the Pioneer
Works courtyard, the curatorial notes read as follows:
“The innumerable barbershops competing for
attention amidst the visual chaos of Port-au-Prince are the fundamental small
business of the city. Built from recycled shipping containers, box trucks or
sheets of plywood, decorated with giant portraits of celebrities and haircuts,
they are often a kind of neighborhood social club. They are also sculptural
objects in their own right.
“The Salon de Beauté Marie
Rogère at Pioneer Works extends a long-term collaboration between
documentarian Richard Fleming and Grand Rue portraitist Michel Lafleur, the
Amazing Barbershop Project. This Unisex shop honors Lafleur’s mother, Destin
Marie Rogère, who passed away in June.”
The
“Amazing Barbershop Project” here referenced is a continuing initiative which
my son has pursued on a long-term basis in Port-au-Prince. You can learn more about the project via
Instagram (@amazingbarbershop). It has
several thrusts, but one of the most important is the encouragement,
appreciation, and wider recognition of the Haitian barbershop painting—half
vernacular portraiture, half “pop art”—that is a distinctive feature of the
“visual chaos” of the capital city. When
I saw it mid-morning Wednesday a week ago the building was up and framed, but
that was about all. The speed and skill
with which the carpenters finished the job is evident from the photographs
taken a day later. I am told that it is
authentic in all respects, including the most important one. When you visit the show, if you happen to hit
things just right, you might also be able to get a haircut there at the hands
of highly experienced Haitian barber Patrick Goby, whose permanent shop is a
couple of miles away in Flatbush.
The
exhibition PòtoPrens runs at the
Pioneer Works, 158 Pioneer Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn, until November 11.
