Arthur Jafa at Sprüth Magers

Arthur Jafa is a photographic collagist, someone who collects pop culture media (photographs, films) and stitches them together in new and reimagined ways. His works across video, appropriated imagery, sculpture, and installation highlight pop and music culture while shining a light on Black history as well as violence in America, thus presenting a revisionist kind of cultural history. 

Across the exhibition at Sprüth Magers, images of music legends like Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, Miles Davis, and Michael Jackson can be seen alongside violent crime imagery. Motorcycles are a repeated motif across the exhibition suggesting a kind of rebellious quest for personal freedom. Picture Unit (Structures) II is a room-sized Monolithic maze that includes larger-than-life gritty and pixelated appropriated imagery installed within its minimal and shrine-like environment. Central to the exhibition is BG, a 75-minute film that splices scenes of Taxi Driver together with others that Jafa shot, scenes that flip the violence in the original film to befall Black individuals rather than white ones. Throughout the show, Jafa’s complex blending and representation of cultural touchstones dually honors America’s robust creative and cultural history while unabashedly dovetailing with its violent and racialized past.

Photo: Arthur Jafa, nativemanson, Installation view. Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles, September 14–December 14, 2024. Photo: Robert Wedemeyer