Artist Zak Ové brings 'granny psychedelia' to COUNTY gallery in Palm Beach

Call it “granny psychedelia.”

That is how British-Trinidadian artist Zak Ové refers to the intricate, brightly colored doily collages that are on display through Friday at COUNTY gallery, 375 S. County Road, Palm Beach.

Ové takes hand-crocheted and hand-knit doilies and turns them into wall pieces, with dozens of the vintage pieces making up a single work.

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The exhibition is named “Comments on Cosmology,” and includes one of Ové’s “Invisible Man” sculptures alongside the doily pieces that honor his Caribbean roots.

Ové grew up between the United Kingdom and the West Indies, with famous parentage — his father is the recently passed filmmaker Horace Ové, and his sister is actress Indra Ové.

As a child, Ové was fascinated by the use of delicate lace and crochet doilies among Caribbean women to represent “upwardly mobile aspirations,” as they sought better lives for their families and themselves, according to a release from the gallery.

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He also noted the colors and patterns they used, and how they were reminiscent of the cosmos.

Some of the colorful doilies were akin to “acts of rebellion” for women during the time period they were made, from the 1930s to the 1980s, he said in the gallery's news release.

“They certainly couldn’t dress that way, in terms of the code of mores of their environment, the church, et cetera,” Ové said, “but here they were making these out-there things that resemble astrological diagrams in lime green, orange, red, black and all these far-out colors.”

Such bright colors are common throughout Caribbean art and traditions, and hearken back to the work of Ové’s father, whose 1973 documentary “King Carnival” captured the beauty of Trinidad’s Carnival. Ové’s family members made some of the technicolor costumes for which the Carnival is known.

“They were very much involved in the Old World culture of Trinidad, and I think for me the epiphany … was the realization that a lot of these Old World cultures needed New World materials,” he said, referring to the doilies.

Alongside the doily pieces is one of Ové’s “Invisible Man” sculptures. The piece, which stands 6 feet, 6 inches tall, is part of the artist’s larger series, “The Invisible Men and the Masque of Blackness.”

The series originally appeared in London in 2016 during the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair. The figure is based on a sculpture given to Ové by his father following a trip to Kenya. It shows a man raising his hands in a peaceful gesture.

“Black and Blue: The Invisible Men and the Masque of Blackness” included 40 of the sculptures similar to the one now on display at COLONY. The installation was in the courtyard of Somerset House, where more than 400 years earlier, the Ben Jonson play “The Masque of Blackness” depicted racist caricatures of African people.

The sculpture and its benevolent appearance are in contrast to the tropes used in the play, Ové has said.

“I was interested in these pieces as a rebuke to that situation, and also to speak to the future of an African diaspora,” Ové said in a 2018 interview when the installation appeared in San Francisco.

If you go

What: Zak Ové’s “Comments on Cosmology”Where: COUNTY gallery, 375 S. County Road, Palm BeachWhen: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. through FridayInformation: 305-713-7588, county.gallery

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Artist Zak Ové brings 'granny psychedelia' to COUNTY in Palm Beach