Black Again

Classically trained as a painter, Charles McGill’s practice evolved to making sculpture using found objects, centering the game of golf as a symbolic framework for critiquing U.S. race, class, and gender politics. Best known for his deconstructed golf bag compositions, the bags in Black Again have been sewn onto a canvas stretcher, and their arrangement references early abstract painting styles. In similar works, McGill experiments with forms resembling Ku Klux Klan hoods, and in others, golf bags are arranged to represent perpetrators of violence and their victims. The abstract composition of Black Again invites close reading while remaining elusive. If the work is embedded with an allusion to American racism, McGill has strategically maintained its subtlety, leaving space for other complex associations. For example, many critics have made connections between the intertwined straps, studded bases, and metal buckles of McGill’s leather golf bags and the fetishistic bondage of S&M. (SSW)