"Flip Flop"

May 14 - June 18, 2005

Reception: Saturday, May 14, 6 - 8 pm

In the project space, Nadine Robinson presents "Flip Flop", a mixed media installation of multi-colored lighting that beats to an audio-track mix of the Sugar Hill Gang’s hip hop anthem “Rappers Delight” and a musical score from the 1957 musical The Pied Piper of Hamelin.  “Rappers Delight” was released in 1979 from Sugar Hill Records, a production company synonymous with the beginnings of the music genres rap and hip-hop.  The music score of the "Pied Piper" is based on “Allegretto tranquillo egrazioso” (Norwegian Dances Op. 35) and was sung by the late actor Van Johnson, who plays the part of the piper.

The installation aims at shared relationships between the legendary character of the Pied Piper and popular music and dance culture. These shared qualities suggest the hypnotic, seductive nature of music illustrated by the Piper luring the rats out of the cursed town of Hameln in Germany, and the mesmerizing attraction of a dance audience to the hip hop DJ or rapper, or the pied rapper.  In the story, the Pied Piper leads the children of Hameln into an opening in a mountain by playing a special tune on his magical silver flute after the town refuses to pay him for exterminating the town of rats.  Most variations of the story end with the mountain closing and the children disappearing forever.

Whether it is to pay the piper or play the piper, the installation Flip Flop’s swirling band of the colors yellow, red, orange and blue references both the colors of the Piper’s costume, the colorful image of the cornucopia used to market Sugar Hill records, and the lights of Flip Flop, located inside a large mountain outside the town, the last place where the people of Hamel saw the children dancing to the music of the Piper.  It’s a dark tale for a dark place - the club or dance hall.  The exhibition space will be transformed as a club or mountainous cave, with music bumping to an unusual beat that also moves the bands of color around the room, and ultimately bursting from its doorways.

Nadine Robinson received her MFA in 1997 from New York University, New York.  Her work has been shown in solo exhibitions at the ICA Philadelphia, Philadelphia, and at Caren Golden Fine Art, New York.  Her work has been included in “Lost in Music" at the Johnson Community College Gallery of Art, Overland Park, in “Great White: Nadine Robinson and Kori Newkirk" at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, in “Hair Stories” at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, in “Sound Systems", Salzburger Kunstverein, Austria, in "Tempo" at the Museum of Modern Art, Queens, in "One Planet Under a Groove: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art" at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, in "Freestyle at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, and in "Rappers Delight - The Visual Avant-Garde of Hip Hop" at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA.  This is her first exhibition at the gallery.