It's not the easiest of rides for Jess Jones-Berney at White Cube's awesome exhibition New Order.
True to form, African American artist David Hammons' latest work continues to defy easy categorisation, keeping in line with a miscellaneous portfolio of taxidermied cats, chandeliered basketball hoops, a pink piggy bank bearing cowries and chilling electric chair iconography.
Part of New Order, at the Mason's Yard branch of White Cube, Which Mike Would You Be Like? (2003) has got Hammons' trademark interrogation of racial stereotypes written all over. A trio of vintage mics stand in for famous contemporary Mikes: Jackson, Tyler and Jordan, alluding to limited black role models and society's channelling of black masculinity. A spotlight illuminates their visibility but their unoccupied stance is strangely disconcerting, hinting at voicelessness.
At the opposite end of the upper gallery hangs Mark Bradford's Strange Fruit. This derivation of Billie Holiday's 1930s lynching lament is an almost entirely monochromatic cacophony of paint and collage on canvas. It's a fractured, snow-capped landscape of illegible words torn from posters and newsprint, layered in such a way that they appear like splintering ice, the ruptures of which are meant to symbolise the pressures of transient immigrant communities and race relations.
For me, the racial dimension of this piece is the most imposing; a sea of black and white punctuated by shards of fluorescent fleshy tones. It's as if blood that has been covered up is seeping though the canvas, bearing witness to guilty hands wiped clean. This, coupled with Strange Fruit's harrowing lyrics – “Southern trees bear a strange fruit / Blood on the leaves and blood at the root” – results in a poignantly haunting piece about the necessity of remembering.
Downstairs the mood refuses to lighten. Miroslaw Balka, who planted that massive steel void in Tate Modern last year, is here represented by the equally ominous Kategorie (2005). It's a long concrete tunnel, punctuated by five different coloured threads suspended from rotating motors. Each colour relates to uniforms used to categorise concentration camp prisoners. My movement stimulates a ghostly sway in them, while the faint machine gun-like hum of the spinning devices only add to the installation's foreboding quality.
Anselm Kiefer's adjacent large-scale photograph taps into the solemnity. At first glance it's nostalgically romantic; the German photographer stands atop a pile of rocks, looking out over scenic open waters. But the whimsical setting is perforated by Kiefer's Nazi salute, leaving a bitter aftertaste. And now I notice the image's frame: tarnished and scorched like a shameful memory someone's desperately trying to erase – evocative of the artist's concern with the blotting out of history and coming to terms with German atrocities.
Kiefer's work possesses an overwhelming sense of impending dread that makes for pretty uncomfortable viewing. Then again, this exhibition is not about an easy ride. It touches upon those most difficult and unforgettable narratives, from all over the world, which have almost become unspeakable. Above all, New Order is intensely intelligent, openly inviting scrutiny and speculation by tapping into heart-rending historical discourses which are uncomfortably necessary to hear.
New Order is at White Cube until 14th May 2011.
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