From September 15 through December 15, 2007, the Santa Monica Museum of Art will present William Pope.L: Art After White People: Time, Trees, & Celluloid..., a new conceptual video and large-scale installation created by the artist especially for the museum. The video portion of the work, entitled A Personal History of Videography, is a formally constructed cinematic performance about performance in a video about video. The large-scale installation, Garden of Earthly Delight, investigates the social, psychological and environmental consequences of the artistic act. Pope.L will construct an interior garden of potted palm trees, which he will then hand-paint and power spray completely black. With its investigation of themes of time, theater, creation and destruction Art After White People broadens Pope.L's artistic inquiries and expands the formal language of his oeuvre. This is the first West Coast museum show by the ironically self-dubbed "friendliest black artist in America" whose work has continually challenged and confronted constructions of race with dark humor and biting critique throughout his 20-year career. Pope.L has consistently worked on the edge of the art world, often literally integrating his vision into the physical fabric of our urban environments with his rich range of media including performances, installations, web casts, and writing. His work can be uncomfortable, confrontational and abject, but it is also human, humorous, and witty�often addressing Afrocentrism as much as the white American power structure. Pope.L teaches Theatre and Rhetoric at Bates College in Maine.

Sep, 2007	Project Room II: Black Magic Woman
	Loren E. Holland