This biography from the Archives of AskART:
| The following is from the "New York Times," 3/18/2001
"In John Bankston's Art, Satyrs, Slaves and Monsters in the Colors of Childhood"
ART
By LESLIE CAMHI
THE childhood activity of coloring is beneath notice for most artists, but not for John Bankston, whose paintings and drawings evoke a world of cyberfiction, slave narratives, fairy tales and leather-bar fantasies played out inside the lines of a coloring book.
His series of 17 drawings, "The Capture and Escape of Mr. M, Chapter 1," is on view at the Studio Museum in Harlem. It tells the story of Mr. M, a drunken Everyman who is relaxing on a city street corner when he's abducted by aliens. In one drawing, "Dropped Into a New Reality," he finds himself prey to a masked figure sporting a leather jockstrap and bullwhip.
Luckily, a satyr spying on this scene of domination alerts a fox in seven- league boots, who gathers armed members of the animal kingdom to battle for M's liberation.
Mr. Bankston's line is bold and squiggly, his coloring scratchy and gestural. A sly, camp sexuality peeks through the storybook fantasy---a tiny splash of red marks the satyr's erect member, and Josephine Baker's banana-skirt adorns the body of a man-boy.
Raymond Pettibone and Mike Kelley come to mind, but also Winnie the Pooh and Br'er Rabbit. The work suggests a hybrid of mechanical and handmade imagery, of fragmentary identities and alternative masculinities cobbled together from multiple sources and ruled by a free- floating sense of whimsy.
Are the roots of Mr. Bankston's work autobiographical?
"Well, I've never been abducted," he said in an interview with a childlike
smile that makes him seem younger than his 38 years. "But I'm interested in ideas of transformation, like the way people create their own identities through the Internet and enter another world with its own language and rules. Also, in reading slave narratives, I was struck by the way the now-free person looks back upon their life as an enslaved person. It's almost like an out-of-body experience."
Mr. Bankston was drawn to coloring books for their loopy narratives and formal properties. "I like the way they combine painting and drawing, figuration and abstraction," he said. "The line delineates the form, and the color can work with or against it." Before beginning a piece, he stains his paper with a wash of instant-coffee grounds, making it look like cheap newsprint. The work's startling content plays off this faint aura of neglect, like
something left to molder in the recesses of consciousness.
Mr. Bankston was born in Benton Harbor, Mich., and majored in biology at the University of Chicago before studying painting at the Art Institute of Chicago. Seven years ago, he moved to San Francisco and found studio space among hundreds of other artists in the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. He has shown his work there during Open Studio weekends and at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, where his drawings were included in an exhibition of local
art two years ago.
Thelma Golden, deputy director of the Studio Museum, came across Mr. Bankston's work while doing research for a nationwide survey show of about 30 emerging black artists. (The show, "Freestyle," opens on April 29.)
"As a curator, I was formed in the moment of multiculturalism and identity politics," Ms. Golden said. "I was curious to explore a younger generation's approach to these issues. When I saw John's work, with this interesting mélange of art theory and painting practice, an acute interest in and knowledge of visual tradition, combined with an ironic take on identity and sexual politics, all mixed together so that no one thing rises up to give it the stamp, I was very intrigued. And I loved the fact that it's so funny and
irreverent, heartfelt and very sincere."
Mr. Bankston finds the democratic element in coloring books appealing. "The lines give you a road map," he said. "But when you're filling it in, you can make any kind of decision ---you can choose to color one little part of it or totally ignore the image and just do your own thing. With coloring books, everyone gets to recreate the image in their own way."
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