Sam Durant's works address utopias and their failures. They cross past events to create relationship between art-historical, pop- cultural, and political phenomena that have come to define popular, particularly American, culture during the last thirty- five years. Durant's conceptually conceived, multimedia installations refer to specific guiding figures and ideas; artist Robert Smithson and his work on entropic processes, rock stars Mick Jagger and Neil Young, as well as Black Panther co-founder Huey Newton, are in different ways integrated into his work. The enormous enthusiasm with which Durant's work has been received in Germany thus far is surprising on first sight, given his preoccupation with specifically American issues. However, when considered in relation to Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Dennis Hopper, or Mike Kelley, Durant extends Germany's fascination with American art. The publication provides a fundamental survey on Durant's work and contains a detailed and knowledgeable essay by Michael Darling, an enlightening interview between Rita Kersting and Sam Durant, as well as a poetic text by Kevin Young.
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