William Pope.L: Black People are Cropped: Skin Set Drawings 1997-2011

"When Pope. L shakes his head he makes drawings that keep him from laugh-crying to death," writes Helen Molesworth of Skin Set Drawings, an ongoing series by multi-disciplinary artist William Pope. L (born 1955). Made with very humble materials, this extended corpus deals with the absurdities and perversities of intentional language, especially racist language and language associated with categorizing and naming color. "Black People Are Taut," "Brown People Are the Green Ray," "Blue People Are What We Do to Homosexuals," "Red People Are From Mars Green People Are From New Jersey," "Purple People Are Reason Bicarbonate," "Red People Are the Niggers of the Canyon" are some examples of this highly-charged series by the self-proclaimed "friendliest black artist in America." Black People Are Cropped offers a selection of drawings from 1997-2011, sketches, critical texts and the artist's own writing.