THE WALKER.(African-American artist David Hammons)(Interview)

At a Starbucks in Cooper Square one recent evening, I waited in vain to meet David Hammons, the charismatic, elusive African-American artist whose much anticipated current solo show, at the Ace Gallery, is his first in New York in ten years. As the minutes went by and Hammons failed to appear (it turned out that he was waiting for me at another Starbucks, across the square), I weighed the odds that I was being treated to a custom-designed artwork. Hammons's strangely moving new installation, entitled "Concerto in Black and Blue," consists entirely of pitch-dark rooms that visitors are invited to explore with tiny flashlights in the company of other visitors whose presence ...