Donelle Woolford

Still Life with Logotype

Photograph: Courtesy Wallspace Gallery

Gallery handouts aren’t my favorite reading, but the one accompanying Donelle Woolford’s first solo show caught my eye. Titled Donelle Woolford: Responsibility and Insincerity, it was written by Ralph Ellison and Maria Gilissen (widow of Marcel Broodthaers)—my first inkling that something was fishy about Woolford, a female African-American artist who works in Harlem. My second clue was this puzzling mishmash of a show: The first gallery contains a large tropical plant surrounded by ten Cubist-inspired collages made of rough scraps of wood, while the second space features a grainy slide show of African sculptures interspersed with works by Picasso and Braque. After grilling the staff, I discovered Woolford’s secret. (Warning: Spoilers follow.)

Woolford is the alter ego of New Haven artist Joe Scanlan, who, besides being white, has an ongoing interest in consumerism and fabrication. Playing off Cubism’s centennial anniversary, and mixing in a splash of postmodernism, Scanlan takes the current state of identity politics and runs with it.

Fake personae are nothing new in art (see the career of Marcel Duchamp), but the salient difference here is Scanlan’s racial forgery, as if he’s attempting to reclaim Cubism’s African heritage. The marginal, cast-off quality of the collages and the critical overtones of the installation suggest as much, but his objects are far less interesting than the questions they raise: Is this a stab at fame? Blatant exoticism? Or is Scanlan taking a page from Broodthaers by creating an elaborate stage set where artworks function as props? It’s difficult to unravel his intentions entirely, but they do make you wonder: Is nothing shocking?

—Lauren O’Neill Butler