An experimental space with a mission to bridge social and cultural gaps within the field of contemporary art, by working with and providing resources for under-represented artists.
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Lee ‘Scratch’ PerryBlack Supremacy
Basel Social Club
11-18 June 2023
Nestle Factory
Horburgstrasse 105, 4057 Basel, Switzerland
11-18 June 2023
Sunday June 11th: 4pm - midnight
Mon June 12th - Sat June 18th: 2pm - midnight
Sunday June 18th: 12pm - 4pm
This project is in partnership with Suns.Works
Installation shots
Vodoo Doo (Blue Ark Window), year 2016-2021
Collage and spray paint on tempered glass, framed
90 x 140cm
Lee Scratch Perry – Black Supremacy Magic Air (Black Ark)
Undated Marker on cardboard
30 x 30cm
Lee Scratch Perry – Sphynx-Horoskop, 2020
Acrlyic, collage and objects on wood, framed
53 x 102cm
Holy Shit Belly, 2020
Ink on suitcase with 6x4 photograph of Henk Targowski
Biography
Lee Scratch Perry (1936 – 2021) was born in a remote Jamaican village in 1936 and moved to Kingston in 1961 to pursue a career in music after a divine voice directed him there. After founding the infamous Black Ark Studi he produced some of Bob Marley’s most renowned songs and became one of the pioneering forces in the development of dub and reggae music. The studio was burned down a few years later, and Perry led a nomadic life before settling between the Swiss countryside. Perry has worked with artists including Bob Marley and the Wailers, Junior Murvin, the Beastie Boys, and The Clash, among many others, and was awarded a Grammy for Best Reggae Album in 2003.
By the end of the Seventies Perry started painting occult symbols and dub-collages around his studio, which gradually developed into a multidisciplinary Gesamtkunstwerk practice. Often imbued with spirituality, Perry’s visual output had since taken the form of multi-layered clusters that continually shift and change; creating an ever expanding network of paradisal animals, cartoon figures and saints using paint, mirrors, rocks, photographs, video and computer-transmitted word-association poems – in a ceaseless quest to venerate the Almighty.
All works
Courtesy The Visual Estate of Lee 'Scratch' Perry
suns.works, Zurich
Additional works courtesy of Henk Targowski