Tony Cokes (b. 1956 in Richmond, VA; lives in Providence, RI) creates still and moving image works that feature text over multi-chromatic color blocks, usually accompanied by the sound of pop, experimental, industrial, or electronic music. The text fragments are drawn from speeches, lyrics, and other writing by politicians, comedians, and cultural theorists and address wide-ranging subject matter from racism to the notion of evil and megalomania. In a media-saturated culture whereby visibility is incessantly pursued, Cokes is interested in the practice of non-visibility, which moves away from the singular, iconic image and hyper-spectacle to a state of attentive awareness and fluid imagination. In the artist’s words, “non-visibility” is a “strategic withdrawal, or evasion of the mistaken identity that is certainty.”
Responding to the controversial conservatorship battle of pop icon Britney Spears, Free Britney? (2022) is an example of what the artist calls “word portraits.” Such works have been an ongoing interest of the artist’s and feature extensive quotes from single or various sources by or about one person. In addition to the presentation in Carnegie Museum of Art Theater, Cokes presents newly composed works for four billboards along Route 28 in Pittsburgh.
