Kara Walker at Sikkema Jenkins

Kara Walker rose to prominence for her revisionist scenes of plantation life, especially violent and sexual interactions between master and slave, done in life-size cutouts. New work at Sikkema Jenkins in Chelsea displays the same rage, but the medium has shifted, and so has the restraint. Whereas the silhouettes forced viewers to figure out what exactly was going on, making us complicit in constructing meaning from the delicate yet provocative images, the drawings, paintings, lithographs, and mixed media collage veritably shout, the passion and anger as 3-D as anything you might see at the nearby movie multiplex, as constructed and almost as scary.  

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