Sol Sax at The Why Emcee Ay!

Right now, through the end of June, the Bedford YMCA is not just a place to work out and stretch your body. Now, the Y is featuring an art exhibit that gives you a chance also to stretch your mind.

The center has started featuring, along its usually bare white walls, an art installation by local artist and sculpture Sol Sax entitled, “Yes, We Can. A Free Can, A Merry Can.”

“I did this installation specifically for the YMCA,” said the 41-year-old artist. “And one of the main reasons I chose the YMCA is to surprise people who traditionally don’t see contemporary art work in their day-to-day.”

In the downstairs corridor, Sol Sax’s work – small figurine characters made of food cans, resin, molasses, paint and paper – can be found hanging from the walls, nestled inside of empty milk crates.

Sound a little hard to envision? That’s because you should see it for yourself. As dissonant as the sculpting materials may sound is as dissonant as it looks on first glance. But nothing about Sol’s work is haphazard. In fact, everything is intentional.

Cans are the centerpiece of his work. But also, the word “can,” signifying the ability to realize free will, is used liberally in the exhibit’s title, “Yes We Can. A Free Can, A Merry Can,” inspired by the election of President Barack Obama, as an underlying message of “Yes, we can, African American.”

The milk crates: They serve as an altar for each sculpture.

“The stool as a spiritual seat has a long tradition as a very important part of worshiping in Africa,” said Sax. “Here in New York, these plastic carts are often used as stools and makeshift memorials, or to hold candles of those that passed away. So it made since to continue that tradition of the stool being an altar.”

Again, every part of Sax’s exhibit has intention. And while some of the greatest artists and sculptures we know – Miró, Warhol, Gaudí, Picasso-- let their creative impulses guide them on an extemporaneous journey, that’s not Sol Sax.

For Sax, the creative impulses do exist, but there is a heavy deliberateness in the direction he takes. African, African-American and Yoruba culture play a big role.

“The works speak to the strategies that I feel have their roots in western and central African culture of avoiding violence and promoting civilization,” said Sax. “Modern art is rooted in classical sub-Saharan cultural tools. And that culture that was categorized as primitive during the 1800s ended up in the 1990s as the cultural progenitor of modern art.”

Dismiss his outlook as mumbo jumbo, if you want. That would be easy. Or take a minute to observe his point of view. The exhibit is potent, edifying and inexplicably seductive.

One piece of the exhibit, entitled, “The Samo Sol Triptych,” he says, is a celebration of the minstrels of the 1700s and 1800s. It’s a series of three, screwy, black faces with large, brightly colored red tongues hanging from their mouths. They represent Eshu, an angel of all language.

“One thing the God Eshu does is when you insult him, he laughs, because he believes in his own beauty regardless,” said Sax. “…Similar to Shakespeare’s phrase ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’"

“It’s about the ability to be used and abused but somehow become the hero of your enemy,” he said.

Reading between the lines is a big part of appreciating Sol Sax’s exhibit. But once you catch each meaning, the lessons grow more gratifying.

“Yoruba language has more puns than any other language in the world,” Sax said. “The exhibit is physical poetry that is played out in the same way that Yoruba plays on words, except it is in English.”

One of the heads in the triptych is made from old basketball shoe and reads: “THE SAMO SOL LIKE A SHOE IS USED AND ABUSED TILL IT’S SOL ‘SPEAKS THEN IT‘S A SHOE WITH AN ISSUE.”

Eshu… “A Shoe…”

The third in the series has a head made from a basketball painted black that reads: “THE SAMO SOL IS A BALLER THAT MOVES LIKE A ROLLING STONE THROUGH MUDDY WATERS.”

“For example, blues musicians, such as Muddy Waters and others from the 30s and 40s had such an impact on these young musicians from England, that they themselves became bluesmen out of reverence for that culture."

“Muddy Waters used to sing, ‘I’m a man, I’m a rolling stone.’ And so the group called themselves, ‘The Rolling Stones.’ Their logo, absent of a face with just lips and the tongue out, is a shout-out to minstrel culture.”

As Sax puts it, his art is a demonstration that “you can make even the most foreign person identify with you, because of your humanity.”