Dub Down The Walls Of Babylon

Cedar Lewisohn
19 September 2001 to 19 October 2001

In his second London solo exhibition, Cedar Lewisohn used sound and image to create an intriguing exhibition that echoes contemporary realities.

At 198 Gallery, Lewisohn displayed images inspired by materials normally associated with other uses, such as day-glo pricing stickers and gaffer tape. He uses these readily available materials to create unselfconsciously beautiful abstractions that are bright, playful and rhythmic.

Complementing the Hip Hop aesthetic of these two-dimensional works, another room contained a new sound installation that suggests narratives, evoked emphatic emotion and seduced through the use of the human voice. Hearing the scripted dialogue spoken in Jamaican patois, the audience was caught in the crossfire of a verbal onslaught that had an ambiguous relationship to the images nearby, and at the same time served as a reminder of the exhibition’s local Brixton context.

Lewisohn has previously been commissioned by the South London Gallery to take part in the Route 12:36 buses project, for which he made a People’s Choice artwork in response to questionnaires that he had an actress in Victorian dress distribute on a bus. Other past works include placing a full-page advertisement extolling the usefulness of his mother in Frieze art magazine, staging an ambient boxing match in a church and paying a stripagram to keep her clothes on and distribute comic-book bibles.