The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York acquires significant work by Denzil Forrester
We are pleased to announce that The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York has acquired Denzil Forrester’s ‘Dub’, 1985. This work has been installed in the new hang of the contemporary floor at The Met Fifth Avenue, Gallery 915.
Forrester's vibrant works immortalise the dynamic energy of the London reggae and dub nightclub scene during the early 1980s, a subject that has endured throughout four decades of his practice. Pulsating with rhythm, the artist's expressive depictions of dance halls and clubs capture crowds of people moving in unison with the beat of the music.
'Dub' was inspired by the vibrant "dub nights" organised by DJs such as Jah Shaka and held in clubs and converted cinemas in East and West London in the 1980s. (Dub music is a sub-genre of reggae that involves the remixing or "dubbing" of existing recordings). Forrester attended these dub sessions, but he mostly spent them sketching, channelling their propulsive energy into forms and colours. Afterwards, he extracted and translated pieces of his drawings into paintings. 'Dub' represents a group of eight figures –dancing and socializing, one of them a blur of kinetic energy. At left, a DJ presides over a sound system. Decidedly non-naturalistic and schematic, the setting is shallow, like a stage, with the figures arranged across the canvas in the manner of a frieze. Instead of depicting a specific locale, Forrester recreates the visual, physical, and sonic impression of a place, using faceted planes of bright colour reminiscent of early twentieth century modernism. Because so little photographic documentation of dub sessions survives, paintings such as 'Dub' bear witness to an important aspect of Afro-Caribbean culture in 1980s London.
