In his first solo exhibition, artist Ralph Lemon, a renowned choreographer and dancer, presents drawings, paintings, sculptures and video works exploring a cultural history and proposed future of the American South. Revolving around Lemon's long-standing collaborative relationship with Walter Carter, a 100-year old former sharecropper from Yazoo City, Mississippi, the works in the exhibition are connected by a complex personal iconography made up of references to writer James Baldwin, conceptual artist Bruce Nauman and historical figures from the Civil Rights Movement, as well as twentieth century icons of American jazz, rhythm & blues and gospel music. The central figure of Walter ties these threads together, raising questions about memory memorialization and transcendence.

The works presented in (the efflorescence of) Walter are the ongoing results of Lemon's sustained inquiry into the politics of culture and the power and reliability of cultural memory. This inquiry was the original impulse for the monumental Geography Trilogy (1995-2004), Lemon's quasi-anthropological exploration of movement across three continents, whose last installment, Come Home Charley Patton (2004), specifically addressed the complicated history of the southern United States. Some of the works on view in this exhibition were presented at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, as part of OPEN-ENDED (the art of engagement), in May 2006.

Ralph Lemon has been a vital force in the international dance scene since the early 1980's when he performed with Meredith Monk. A winner of a New York Dance and Performance "Bessie" Award both in 1987 and 2005, Lemon has also been the recipient of eight choreographer fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the 2004 NYFA Prize, the 2006 United States Artist Fellow, and in 1999 was honored with the prestigious CalArts Alpert Award in the Arts for Dance. In 1985, he founded the Ralph Lemon Dance Company which, during its ten year life span, was presented by venues such as JacobÕs Pillow Dance Festival, The Kennedy Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and The Joyce Theater. In 1995, Lemon dissolved his company and formed Cross Performance Inc. to explore new forms of presentation and performance, and has produced myriad projects, including the Geography trilogy; three books published by Wesleyan University Press: Persephone, Geography: Art/Race/Exile, and Tree: Belief/Culture/Balance; a film entitled Three (1999) created with choreographer Bebe Miller and filmmaker Isaac Julien; and Mirrors and Smoke, a DVD collaboration with Philip Mallory Jones, among many others.

Exhibition curated by Claire Tancons & Anthony Allen.

Additional support for (the efflorescence of) Walter is provided by the Peter Norton Family Foundation, the Newcomb Art Gallery at Tulane University and the Creole Gardens Bed & Breakfast.