MA Y/J UN E2 021
e t a v i r P erty p o Pr
Art Beyond
Participating Artists include:
Avantika Bawa, Ben Buswell, Nancy Baker Cahill, Alyse Emdur, Robby Herbst, Ryan Kitson, Terry Longshore, Michael Parker, Whistlegraph and more. Escape to the mountains of Southern Oregon this summer to experience Art Beyond in idyllic Ashland, OR.
May 15th – July 18th, 2021
sma.sou.edu/artbeyond
VIELMETTER LOS ANGELES
Yunhee Min July 3 - August 14, 2021
1700 S Santa Fe Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90021 +1 213 623 3280 vielmetter.com
DANIELLE MCKINNEY
May 22 – June 19, 2021 Danielle Mckinney, Corner Store, 2021
info@nightgallery.ca
2276 East 16th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90021
MOLAA Reopening to Members!
Become a member and be the first to visit the onsite exhibition HERland: Women Artists in the MOLAA Collection! The Museum of Latin American Art is pleased to announce plans to reopen to MOLAA Members on May 18, 2021. After a little more than a year we are eager to welcome you back into the galleries and garden. MOLAA will open onsite HERland: Women Artists in the MOLAA Collection. The exhibition features 43 women artists from across 15 countries. From May - September Herland Chapter 1 will show the first two of four axes in the exhibition – Surrealism and Representation. From October - December, HERland Chapter 2 will exhibit Boundaries and Distortion. The entire exhibition launched online since February 2021. This is your opportunity to see the artworks live!
Not a current Member? To become a member or renew your membership online visit https://molaa.org/become-a-member
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Smithsonian Affiliate
628 Alamitos Avenue, Long Beach, California 90802
DANI TULL TAKE A SINGLE LETTER FROM THE STREAM JUNE 5 – AUGUST 14, 2021 831 N. HIGHLAND AVENUE, LOS ANGELES, CA 90038 (323) 462-2790 | dianerosenstein.com
DIANE ROSENSTEIN GALLERY
Made in L.A.
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ON VIEW THROUGH AUGUST 1, 2021
a version Presented by:
hammer.ucla.edu | huntington.org
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FULTON LEROY WASHINGTON (AKA “MR. WASH”), POLITICAL TEARS OBAMA (DETAIL), 2008. OIL ON STRETCHED CANVAS. 24 × 18 IN. (61 × 45.7 CM). COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
Table of Contents VOLUME 15, ISSUE 5, MAY-JUNE 2021
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Private Property F E AT U R E S NFTs - by stephen j. goldberg Wende Museum - by tucker neel Women’s Center - by alexia lewis David Horvitz - by kate caruso Emily Barker - by julie schulte
F E AT U R E D
20 22 26 30 36
R E V I E W S
BOOKS: John Divola; Jona Frank - by colin westerbeck NY: Tim Simonds at Cathouse Proper - by peter brock
44 54
C O LU M N S DECODER: Owning Art - by zak smith SIGHTS UNSCENE: Frieze LA 2020 - by lara jo regan
C O N T I N U E D
16 18
»
ON THE COVER: Susan Butcher and Carol Wood, detail of their comic of the Hermitage Museum, 2021, courtesy Butcher & Wood, see p.61. ABOVE: Stephen Neidich, But They Should Never Be Buildings, 2021, courtesy Wilding Cran Gallery, photo by Ruben Diaz. RIGHT: Portrait of David Horvitz in his garden (detail), image courtesy of artist, photo by Olivia Fougeirol. NEXT PAGE, TOP: Image courtesy of The Wende Museum, photography by Daniel Dilanian; BOTTOM: Emily Barker, Untitled (Rug), 2019, plastic IV tubing, copper electrical wire, doggie bag, headphones, shoelace on steel mesh, 60 x 42 x 8 in., photo by Josh Schaedel.
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Table of Contents
From the Editor Dear Reader,
50 22 C O LU M N S
C O N T. 28 50
PROVENANCE: Senga Nengudi - by kelly rappleye BUNKER VISION: Dear Comrades - by skot armstrong
D E PA R T M E N T S SHOPTALK by Scarlet Cheng: LA Art News; Simone Gad POEMS: William Minor; John Tottenham ASK BABS: For Your Eyes Only - by babs rappleye COMICS by Butcher & Wood: Hermitage Museum RECONNOITER: Miranda Garno Nesler
14 52 52 61 62
R E V I E W S 56 56 57 57 58 58 59 60 60
Brenna Youngblood @ Roberts Projects Stephen Neidich @ Wilding Cran Gallery Amy Sherald @ Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles Lucy Bull @ David Kordansky Gallery “Loosely Stated” @ ROSEGALLERY Sula Bermùdez-Silverman @ Murmurs Johanna Breiding @ Ochi Projects Tarik Garrett @ Hunter Shaw Fine Art Vonn Sumner and Holly Elander @ KP Projects
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Spring is in the air, skies are blue, daffodils are blooming and the art galleries are opening up. Makes you want to paint or write poetry or string along happy clichés! Yes, the world— at least here in Los Angeles—seems to be emerging from a long dark year. And while it might be premature to starting singing Happy Days Are Here Again—I’m pickin’ up good vibrations. We’ve got people spending their stimulus checks, and just wanting to splurge. Galleries are responding to that, just like any other business that is reopening. Though the galleries (as opposed to museums and college art galleries) still operated during the pandemic, collectors weren’t as eager to spend money in an uncertain economy. What we learned is that we didn’t really need money to keep the art world going. It never stopped, stalled or even slowed down. Of course I’m referring to the lowest common denominator—the artists themselves. The pandemic provided plenty of time for artists to delve deeper into their art, and apparently they did. Many gallery exhibitions right now are filled with art made during the last year. Most artists don’t create work to make money; they know that they would be deluded to think otherwise. Most artists create because it’s how they function and survive. Take me, for instance: I knew I wanted to be an artist when I was a child. I wasn’t taken to art museums, I didn’t have an aunt that painted; I wasn’t even encouraged even though it was clear that I had talent. I begged my parents to buy me coloring books. I will never forget the bright neon colors that came with my Bullwinkle glitter paint-by-number set—on black velvet! I gave it to my grandmother, and I’m sure she eventually threw it away. But it didn’t matter. I just kept on making art. I won contests in school art shows: a psychedelic painting of my cat in a tree was held up in class as an example of what a good painting should look like. My college professor kissed me when he saw the finished AbEx painting I set up for class critique. I wasn’t ready to call myself an “artist,” though—it felt too elitist. Making art didn’t feel like work, so it was a privilege to make art all day. And was I really contributing to society? Those questions haunted me as I dared to continue my higher education in art. This issue explores that very conundrum. Are artists the property of galleries? And what about NFTs? Is that just another scam to appeal to people with so much money that we have to invent ways for them to spend it? All in the name of art? How relevant is art to today’s world? With the continuing disparity of The Haves (Lots) and The Have Nots, artists are looking toward closing up that enormous gap. Our theme, Private Property, explores how artists are addressing this and maybe it’s time the old system got shaken up. That would be as welcome as the flowers in May, and isn’t that what art is all about?
© Bruce Davidson
REOPENING
MAY 13
FREE ADMISSION LIFT YOUR HEAD: Bruce Davidson and the Evolution of Seeing FACING FIRE: Art, Wildfire, and the End of Nature in the New West ANALOGUES: Travon Free AND MORE...
3824 Main Street Riverside, CA 92501
ucrarts.ucr.edu
C O N T R I B U TO R S
Kate Caruso is a Los Angeles-based writer. Selected contributions include Artillery, Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles, Autre and Purple Magazine.
S TA F F Tulsa Kinney Editor/Publisher
EDITORIAL Bill Smith - creative director John Tottenham - copy editor/poetry editor John Seeley - proof/copy editor Dave Shulman - graphic design Frances Cocksedge - editorial assistant
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS John David O’Brien, Tucker Neel, Kelly Rappleye
Tucker Neel is an artist, writer, designer, and educator in Los Angeles. He’s an Associate Professor in the Communication Arts and Liberal Arts & Sciences departments at Otis College of Art & Design.
Julie Schulte is an LA-based writer. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from UC Irvine where she teaches a course on the rhetoric of motherhood. She writes about art and culture and her nonfiction has appeared in publications like The Atlantic. Instagram: @julesvernova
COLUMNISTS Skot Armstrong, Scarlet Cheng, Stephen J. Goldberg, Kelly Rappleye, C. Kaye Rawlings, Lara Jo Regan, Zak Smith
CONTRIBUTORS Anthony Ausgang, Lane Barden, Ezrha Jean Black, Betty Ann Brown, Susan Butcher & Carol Wood, Kate Caruso, Bianca Collins, Shana Nys Dambrot, Genie Davis, David DiMichele, Angela Groom, Max King Cap, Tom Knechtel, Alexia Lewis, Laura London, Richard May, Christopher Michno, Yxta Maya Murray, Barbara Morris, Carrie Paterson, Leanna Robinson, Julie Schulte, Cole Sweetwood, Colin Westerbeck, Avery Wheless, Eve Wood, Jody Zellen NEW YORK: Arthur Bravo, Peter Brock, John Haber, Annabel Keenan, Sarah Sargent
PHOTOGRAPHERS Lynda Burdick, Rainer Hosch, Tyler Hubby, Eric Minh Swenson
ADMINISTRATION
Born in England, Susan Butcher and Carol Wood met in Perth, Australia, and now live in the mountains of Central Victoria. They have been making comics together for 25 years, participated in Melbourne’s underground comix scene, and have been regular contributors to Artillery since 2006. Art Is A Lie, won a 2016 Ledger Award. Peter Brock is an artist and writer based in Brooklyn, NY. He has an MFA from Bard College, and studied at the Staedelschule in Frankfurt, Germany. His criticism has been published in Frieze, Art Agenda, Texte Zur Kunst, The Brooklyn Rail, and Artillery.
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S H O P TA L K
Digital Art Happening In April there was a moment when Yours Truly realized we were finally, at long last, emerging from the pandemic that has shut us in for over a year. It was Saturday night, and we were lured downtown by “LUMINEX: Dialogues of Light,” a one-night art happening of digital art projected onto building walls in DTLA. During COVID-time I’ve driven through these streets on various missions, and they were so empty it was apocalyptic. But tonight, lower Broadway was percolating with barhoppers and diners and, as darkness fell, art fans and those who had been pent up too long. We started our rounds a little before the 7:30 official time— first stop was Sarah Rara’s “Perfect Touch 2021.” In a parking lot at 11th and South Olive, there was towering projection equipment and a handful of people, including guards and tech who were running the show. It was dusk, and we were told there was another half of the piece on the “other” side of the building— that is on the other side of the block. By the time we returned to look at the first piece again, it was dark, and there was now a crowd enjoying the sight of gigantic hands playing cat’s cradle—the string burning with light—and a voice reading a poem so aptly addressed to this strange, strange year: “The year of distance, the year of loss, the lost year,” the woman intoned, “The year of acknowledging fragility, interconnectedness.” I think we will soon be seeing more work about what we’ve been through. It’s been a traumatic time, our shared annus horribilis—and we need to work it out through art: all forms of art, including writing and performance. And it was not only disease that captured us, but also a megalomaniac in power and his minions, bent on destroying the fabric of our civil life. That night in DTLA we saw mesmerizing op-arty work by Nancy Baker Cahill and cascading images by Carole Kim, and a couple others. By 9 PM there were throngs of people on the sidewalks moving from site to site—mostly young and mostly elated to be out and about. Around us, new buildings were sprouting on nearly every block, some finished, others almost finished. What’s so surprising is that many are residential, housing for the new DTLA Urbanites. For some, the evening had just begun.
Projection by Nancy Baker Cahill at LUMINEX, photo Scarlet Cheng.
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LA Museums (Finally) Reopen! Museums also began to announce their reopenings in April, hooray! LACMA had a long list of exhibitions scheduled to open last spring and summer but, alas, did not. The biggest and probably most popular is the Yoshitomo Nara retrospective—he of the big-eyed girls holding little knives. To this day I never know what to make of his work—which has strong cartoony kitsch elements that play on its own commercial success. Yes, he is one of the most successful Asian artists today—in 2019, his painting Knife Behind Back sold for $24.9 million at Sotheby’s. I did enjoy looking at Nara’s early work, as he searches for his central themes. There is a reconstructed studio filled with drawings and small collectibles, which we peer into through windows. Then, as his canvasses grow in size and his brush becomes more impressionistic—as he turns away from his roots in line and drawing— he starts to lose me. The Getty Villa has just reopened, with the exhibition “Mesopotamia: Civilization Begins.” I found the smaller show down on the main level, “Assyria: Palace Art of Ancient Iraq,” far more memorable. The subject matter is more focused (bas-reliefs from Assyrian palaces of the 9th to 7th centuries BC) and the images are so vivid, even brutal, in their storytelling: men hunting lions, soldiers storming battlements, kings lording it over everyone. These are on loan from the British Museum. Also open are the Hammer (“Made in LA”), the Huntington (“Made in LA’s” second outside venue), California African American Museum (Sula Bermúdez-Silverman and Nikita Gale), and Forest Lawn Museum at Forest Lawn Glendale. Yes, the cemetery has a museum, and it’s currently featuring a terrific survey of work from noted stained-glass maker Judson Studios, based in Highland Park.
Installation photograph, Yoshitomo Nara, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2020, art ©Yoshitomo Nara, photo ©Museum Associates/LACMA.
BY
S CA R L E T
C H E N G
O B I T
Saved by Simone Gad (1947–2021)
Simone Gad understood the tenuousness of appearances, their material possession and assertion. Her work as an artist was a conscious, deliberated and obsessive retrace of those assertions, an insistence upon their value and significance long after the fade-to-black, whether material or psychological (or for that matter cinematic—Hollywood actor and performer that she remained to the end). Among contemporary LA artists, she was a poète maudite, her work poised on a razor’s edge between redemption and remembrance; and she embraced it in full, transmuting loss and desperation into affirmation, affection, joy, mercy and defiance. —Ezrha Jean Black Please visit www.artillerymag.com/saved-by-simone-gad-andother-souvenirs/ for a full read on the remembrance of Simone Gad.
Comings and Goings
Frieze LA is cancelled, finally. It’s been reported that they had planned to have galleries showing art in various available spaces around town—Paramount Studios, its usual haunt, was already booked to the gills with productions trying to play catch-up after COVID delays. This meant lots of driving for Angelenos (who already drive too much). The wonky logistics of all this apparently collapsed a scheme which would have been pretty challenging, even in the best of times. They’ll be coming back in February 2022 though, in a tent next to the Beverly Hills Hilton. It was just a matter of time before New York mega-gallerist David Zwirner realized he had to open an outpost in Los Angeles—and Artnet reports he’s found a space near Deitch Projects in the West Hollywood area. LA galleries are making a move too—lots of well-located retail space is open around the city (the unfortunate fallout of COVID and the crippled economy). Moran Moran is moving to Western and Melrose. Luis De Jesus is leaving Culver City for DTLA and Lowell Ryan is moving from West Adams to West Washington Boulevard, in a building with a roomy courtyard. It’s always good to have outdoor space in LA, and of course so very useful for receptions and gatherings.
Simone Gad, photo by Lynda Burdick.
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Owning Art BY ZAK SMITH
D E C O D E R
Photo by Zak Smith
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Since the theme for this issue is “Private Property,” I assume someone besides me will be tackling non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and their sudden rise to collectibility—I’ll leave that to someone who can talk about them in some sort of intelligent, technical way and instead just talk about what NFTs are like. Depending how you look at it, they either smoothly continue (or emphasize the absurdity) of a practice that has been normal for half a century: buying entirely conceptual art—in particular, buying works of conceptual art that could be reproduced by any reasonably functional adult being paid minimum wage. I once heard a story on NPR about a middle-class collector who’d acquired an early Sol LeWitt for a few hundred dollars. The stunned host responded by saying he would kill (or was it die?) for that opportunity, which immediately begs the question: Why? Unless the plan is to sell it (in which case, why not just kill or die for the money it would bring instead?), you can have all there is to an early LeWitt wall drawing by googling “Sol LeWitt wall drawing,” picking your favorite set of 55-word instructions and pressing “print.” What did the host want exactly? Whatever it is, approximately the same thing is in an NFT. Now, one aspect of this kind of acquisition is it can claim to be a species of philanthropy: you’re not only supporting the artist to the tune of X dollars, you are, for the sake of their future, supporting the idea that they should be getting X dollars every time they do what they’re doing. On the flipside there is some form of bragging right—just as the Carnegies and the Mellons can say “As in Carnegie Mellon?” you can say you’re the one who bought the thing, and there are allegedly circles where this improves the quality of the parties you get invited to. These ways of owning have their uses, but not for me. My favorite piece of mine that I still have around the house is a mug. I didn’t make the mug—I didn’t even design it. It took very little thinking, really, in the ordinary sense, to get this mug to be. Some friends in the art business called me up and wanted a picture to use for their kid’s bar mitzvah, and they were very precise: We want blue and green and balloons; there has to be a breakdancer and everyone has to be cheering them on, in a video arcade. Since I liked them and their kid and I was not a smouldering psychopathic egotist from the 1960s, I passed up the opportunity to send back a long and scathing letter saying that this bar mitzvah frippery was beneath me—a true artist—and they should’ve known it, and that I was therefore severing all commercial ties. I drew it, liked drawing it, and promptly forgot I drew it. A month later I got a package with a mug with the bar mitzvah picture on it. A week or two after I put it on the shelf, a strange thing happened. I was drinking (as I so often do when in possession of a mug) and I looked down and realized this was a great mug. Really first-rate. Some excellent curatorial choices had been made: The outside, where my picture was printed, was white, like the paper, but the inside was that wonderful glossy dark blue you sometimes get in the tiles around the edge of swimming pools. It worked very well with all that blue and green I’d magic-markered on there. And the little figures standing on video game cabinets, forever at their party, and all so small and irregular (almost unreadable in industrial design terms—if you had proper Mickeys and Minnies on a mug, they’d be at least twice the size, parading properly around the cup). It was a nice, weird fun thing to drink from and I drank and I washed it, and forgot I had it, and a few days later remembered all over again. Since then I’ve gone through dozens of cycles of not remembering the mug and then being ambushed by its existence all over again “Oh yeah, the bar mitzvah—look at all those happy little guys.” That, as far as I’m concerned, is how owning art should work.
Cudra Clover June 5 - September 5, 2021
Artist reception: Saturday, June 5, 4 - 6pm*
Inspired simultaneously by the micro and the macro, Cudra Clover utilizes both digital and physical media to explore the tangible and intangible. From her biomorphic abstract silk paintings to her installation, Hysteria Room, Clover examines and highlights the nature of living processes. * Artist requests guests wear red
@LANCASTERMOAH
@MOAHLANCASTER
Lancastermoah.org | 661-723-6250 | 665 W. Lancaster BLVD, Lancaster, CA 93534
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Untitled, Los Angeles, 2020
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FEDERICO SOLMI: THE BACCHANALIAN ONES APRIL 24 - JUNE 19, 2021 INAUGURAL EXHIBITION AT OUR NEW DTLA LOCATION
The NFT Craze BY STEPHEN J. GOLDBERG, ESQ.
A R T
B R I E F
The digital artist known as Beeple sold an NFT for $69 million in cyptocurrency at Christie’s auction in March, 2021. The media treated this grotesque sale as if it revolutionized the art world, but if we separate reality from the hysterical hype, it clearly has not. An NFT stands for a “non-fungible token”—probably the most ridiculous acronym ever invented by digital geeks. An NFT is nothing more than a token on a shared digital ledger in the never-ending continuum known as blockchain. I’m not an expert on blockchain; however, suffice it to say, the owner of an NFT can signify his ownership by obtaining a token, or timestamp in a digital ledger that constitutes a blockchain. It’s important not to confuse ownership of an NFT with ownership of a copyright which is governed by copyright law. Common law copyright automatically attaches upon the artist’s creation of the work and statutory copyright is established by a filing with the US Copyright Office. The vast majority of the time when an artwork is sold the artist retains the copyright. The artist may also license the copyright if, for example, he or she wishes to merchandise an artwork’s image. An owner of an NFT does not own the digital artwork or the copyright that attaches to it (ownership is retained by the digital artist). The buyer simply owns the NFT of the first edition of the digital file, but nothing else. Is NFT a con? I leave it to those who have read about the 17th-century Tulip bulb craze in the Netherlands to decide. Beeple (Mike Winkelmann) had a successful career as a graphic designer of video games when he decided he would create a new digital image every day for 5,000 days. The digital file which set the record at Christie’s for a NFT contained all of those images and was titled Everydays: The First 5,000 Days. I’m not going to quibble about whether digital art itself is “art.” As far as I’m concerned, it is. The problem is that the NFT of a digital file is a digital ledger entry which does not constitute an artwork. Over the last few years NFTs have become things of value and can be bought or sold online. In fact, prior to the auction of The First 5,000 Days, Beeple sold numerous NFTs of still digital images he created, as the market for NFTs got red hot. Many of the images making up the The First 5,000 Days and other Beeple digital works are freely available to view online (featured here). A few weeks before The First 5,000 Days was sold, an NFT of Nyan Cat, a ubiquitous meme of a flying cat with a
pop-tart body, was sold by its creator for the equivalent of $580,000 in cryptocurrency. Recently, there has been a frenzy for NFTs of short clips of NBA stars making spectacular dunks or blocks. A digital token of LeBron James blocking a shot went for $100,000 in January. A company called NBA Top Shot has made a market in NFT sports clips achieving $43 million in sales in January, 2021, according to The New York Times. Anything digital can be an NFT. The Times reports that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey sold his first tweet for the equivalent of over $2 million in crypto. The insanity reached new heights in April as Vogue reported that super-model Kate Moss said she was selling NFTs labeled “Kate Sleeping” and “Kate Walking”— the proceeds, she says, will be donated to charity. The art world has already heard from the most mercenary of artists—Damien Hirst and Takashi Murakami declared they would be selling numerous NFTs of images of their works. Many other artists are sure to follow their example. Christie’s, deeply in on the NFT Beeple hype, clearly wants to establish a category of NFT auctions capitalizing on the craze. Christie’s proudly announced that the sale of The First 5,000 Days would be made in crypto—specifically in Ethereum—the second largest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, both of which have hit recent market highs. This was the first auction where Christie’s accepted crypto for payment, including the buyer’s premium. The buyer of The First 5,000 Days, billionaire Vignesh Sundaresan, who calls himself Metakovan (described by the media as a cryptocurrency “whale”), is the founder of Metapurse, an equity fund for cryptocurrency. Paying in crypto for his auction purchase helped bring legitimacy to Ethereum and other such currencies. Metakovan (does anyone use their real name in this “brave new world?”) plans to build a digital museum to display his collection of NFTs. He has also established a “public art project” known as B.20 (it contains certain Beeple NFTs Metakovan purchased in December, 2020 for $2.2 million) The Times reported that Metakovan has been selling millions of fractional shares (“tradeable virtual tokens”) in B.20—so he’s no fool. Neither is Beeple. Shortly after the sale to Metakovan, it was reported that Beeple converted all of his Ethereum into millions in good old US greenbacks, as the saying goes: “Trust your mother but cut the cards.”
VALUING THE VALUELESS The Wende Museum BY TUCKER NEEL. In the midst of the Revolution of 1917, fiery Bolshevik Leon Trotsky warned members of the Menshevik party that their moderate methods in the revolutionary world would relegate them to history’s “dustbin.” In an ironic appropriation six decades later, Ronald Reagan declared that Marxism and Leninism were destined for the “ash heap” of history. These two historical figures were, of course, speaking metaphorically about what happens to outdated ideology; they weren’t necessarily referencing the physical junk that collects with time. But ideology isn’t far removed from the everyday stuff it creates, the things it leaves behind.It’s in the places where these things are disposed of, neglected and hidden away, that history rests most authentically. And if you make the hour drive from The Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley to The Wende Museum of The Cold War in Culver City, you can see that while The Gipper was correct about the end of 20th-century Marxist Leninism as he knew it, there’s a lot of inspirational potential in history’s dustbin waiting to upset rigid systems of belief that linger with us today. The seeds of The Wende Museum began in the 1990s, when its founder Justinian Jampol began scouring basements and flea markets in Eastern Europe, seeking Soviet-era relics, particularly from the German Democratic Republic (GDR), essentially rescuing material culture from landfills. As people east of the Iron Curtain prepared for an uncertain future, many were quick to dispose of the state-sanctioned art, party memorabilia, outdated appliances and recorded remembrances that made up their previous lives. Everyone had their own reasons for the purge. Most simply wanted to make room, supercharged by promises of freedom, democracy and worldwide commerce. For oligarchs-in-the-making, the documented past was potential kompromat, evidence of the socialist safety nets that free-market crony capitalism wouldn’t supply. As the shiny hope of a ration-free future dissolved into authoritarian kleptocracy in countries like Russia and Hungary, proofs of the not-too-distant past threatened to become resonant reminders of what state-sponsored repression could—and often would—come to look like in the 21st century. Now The Wende Museum houses the most extensive collection of Soviet-era art and artifacts outside of Europe. With over 100,000 objects in its collection, this unique institution, whose name derives from a German term referring to the change that occurred up to and following the fall of the Berlin Wall, stands as an invaluable resource for historians around the world, and an innovative educational destination for younger visitors who only know a post–Cold War life. As an art
Courtesy of the Wende Museum. Photo by Daniel Dilanian.
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venue, The Wende hosts rotating exhibitions from its collections and works made by artists inspired by its archive. It’s a uniquely confounding and informative place, empowered by contrasts and contradictions that would probably piss off Ronald Reagan and his Evil Empire label-making progeny. I met Jampol and Joes Segal, the Wende’s Chief Curator and Director of Programming for a private, socially-distanced, masked-up tour of the museum and its current exhibition, “Transformations: Living Room->Flea Market->Museum->Art,” which re-articulates the journey objects undertake as they enter the institution’s archives. It’s unlike any exhibit I’ve seen before: Guiding the visitor through the very process that makes the museum, the exhibition employs a vulnerable transparency and a self-criticality that has come to mark many of its public offerings. Visitors start in a domestic space, a small apartment decorated with period wallpaper and framed artworks, a dining room table surrounded by sleek modern chairs with kangaroo-like legs, and various toys scattered about on the floor. As I peered through the suspended windows modeled on Cold War housing, I found myself thinking about the value attributed to mid-century modern design today, transmitted through the lens of tastemaker enterprises like Dwell Magazine and HGTV. While “form following function” reads more like a cliché sales pitch these days—a salve for conspicuous consumption—the Wende’s exhibit makes clear that many of the things on display look the way
they do because they were designed to make the most of the materials and technologies available at the time. The chairs, for example, are plastic because other raw materials were in short supply. Staring at all these objects activated in me a desire for things made to last, and I was reminded of one their many online talks The Wende has hosted since the COVID pandemic, particularly one about Private Space during the Cold War. During the talk Prof. Susan E. Reid, historian of material culture and everyday life in the USSR, noted that after the ’50s, during a state-sponsored turn to modernized noncommunal apartment housing, there were debates about where people would put all the new consumer products that would furnish their living spaces, with, “some architects and designers arguing that people shouldn’t have cupboards because they just shouldn’t have all this stuff ...to put away,” so as not to encourage “accumulating things just for the love of things.” As the Wende exhibition makes clear, there was no shortage of things or people willing to buy them. From the exhibition’s Home section, visitors move to the Flea Market, a facsimile including folding tables filled with objects like radios, textiles and teddy bears, walls displaying flags and surveillance equipment, and a clothing rack lined with military uniforms. As we pause and flip through a fascinating scrapbook of photos, postcards and written memories made by a cooperative of workers, Jampol notes, “If we (The Wende) weren’t here,
Above and opposite: Courtesy of the Wende Museum, photo by Daniel Dilanian; Right page: L-R: Justinian Jampol; Joes Segal
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a lot of these things would have disappeared …it’s endangered material.” Jampol and Segal point out that the museum actively collects things perceived to have little to no market value; once a certain kind of Cold War collectible becomes popular, they tend to move on to pursuing something else. The two men, bouncing ideas and observations back and forth with ease, tell me they actually get disappointed when the monetary valuations of things in the collection rise because “insurance costs and security costs go up.” Segal notes that developing their collection as a search for unearthed historical value is like a “secret sauce” that enables the museum to grow in a way that might be impossible for other institutions. It’s quite an accomplishment how they model the value in valuing the valueless. We then move into the exhibition’s Museum section, a simulacrum of museological space with Soviet realist paintings and sculptures of proud workers and model comrades accompanied by official-looking wall text, velvet ropes separating viewers from art, and even a fake colonnade attached to the wall. These particular formalized elements look conspicuously designed to make the viewer aware of how the things surrounding a work of art create auras of authority. It echoes The Wende’s 2016 exhibition, “Questionable History,” which discussed art and artifacts through conflicting didactic labels stating interpretive positions in opposition to one another. For example, a pink bust of Lenin could be both pro and anti-socialist, a spontaneous reaction to the falling Berlin Wall and/or a nostalgic joke made in the last decade or so. In the end, the viewer is left to live in the uncomfortable space of uncertain “truths.” From there, the exhibit transitions through a mix of scientific machines on loan from The Getty with the word “ART” placed hilariously on the wall above them. These instruments, which
measure material characteristics like tensile strength, sit as transitional objects—devices used to authenticate and stabilize artifacts as they make the journey from personal to public, ephemeral use into historical preservation. But things don’t end there: The exhibition then gives way to a selection of freshly made contemporary art inspired by items in the collection, the implication being that things in the archive start new journeys as catalysts for creative production after they find a home in the museum’s vaults. The inspirational potential is clear, for example, in Ken Gonzales-Day’s large photo mural composed of a collage of statues of leaders like Lenin and Stalin, recontextualized to reflect contemporary debates about what to do with monuments to the Confederacy in America today. Warmed by a fire pit in the museum’s sculpture garden, next to what will soon be a new community center, Joes and Jampol indulge my obligatory questions about how the museum positions itself within America’s politically polarized climate. Joes notes that some people get upset that the museum doesn’t demonize the GDR enough, while others want the opposite: “Other museums have the problem of getting people to care; ours is that often people care too much.” The museum responds to these demands to take sides with critical neutrality, which itself acts as a looking glass, a reflection of the biases—latent or not—in its visitors. It’s a tricky balancing act that deftly challenges dualistic thinking. “Complexity can scare people off,” Jampol admits. But it’s a worthwhile endeavor.” Joes adds, “If someone says ‘I get it,’ we’ve lost. Our success is in the confusion.”
The Wende Museum is located in Culver City, CA, and is reopening May 1. For more info, visit http://wendemuseum.org/
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GRACE AND GRIT Moving Forward with Women’s Center for Creative Work BY ALEXIA LEWIS
To incarnate is to become embodied in form, and form follows function. From the outset of the year 2020, leadership at the Women’s Center for Creative Work began the task of expanding its physical form because they had had the good fortune of having outgrown their existing space. Born out of a series of successful “site-specific feminist dinner parties” in the Los Angeles area, the wishes of the regular attendees of those dinners, and a $10,000 grant from SPArt, the WCCW put down roots in the Frogtown/Elysian Valley area in 2015 as a nonprofit. The function of this form: to foster an intentional, accessible community as publicly as possible. It’s fair to say that co-founders Kate Johnston, Sarah Williams and Katie Bachler (who is no longer with the organization) were extremely successful in doing so. One facet of this accessibility has manifested as a PDF you can download for free from the WCCW website called “A Feminist Organization’s Handbook.” The 75-page image–filled tome is a love letter to the work that they put into building their business: essays, flow charts, photos and documented processes available free and on demand for anyone in the world to download and peruse. By the act of compiling this handbook and giving the world a clear view into their mindsets as they began such a massive undertaking, they have made high-level business planning more accessible. Anyone with the will and courage can use their experiences outlined in the handbook as helpful guidelines to lay their own feminist business foundation without spending hundreds of dollars on coaches and consultants. With this intentionality applied to their core values, WCCW’s audience and community growth was inevitable. Those core values are radically intersectional and inclusive, with the safety of women of color, trans women and disabled women given the highest priority. When put into practice, these values dictated the programming they hosted in the space: workshops, book clubs, performances and more. It’s part of what motivated the center’s new Communications & Marketing Director, Kamala Puligandla, to move to Los Angeles from the Bay Area three years ago. “I would come down to LA to visit and go to all the workshops at the Women’s Center,” she says in a video chat. “There’s this beautiful way where things collide at the Women’s Center and I’ve always been really invested in that.” There’s so much more that can be said about the WCCW’s role in their community: partnerships with the local elementary school, partnerships with neighboring businesses, contributions to the local neighborhood council, the launch of their in-house
publishing platform “Co-Conspirator Press.” Yet it was the uncertainties that came with the pandemic, coupled with leadership’s commitment to intentionality, that led co-founders Johnston and Williams to make the decision to reverse all plans of adding to their space, and move out of their beloved home of five years. (The very week they were to sign a new agreement with their landlord to expand into the warehouse next door, the state government began the mandated lockdown.) Consequently, the WCCW downsized: the staff packed up and moved out of their multi-room warehouse space in Frogtown and into a much smaller studio in Highland Park. Yet the ramifications of letting go of the former site have been startlingly positive. Resources that once went into maintaining physical space for a limited number of present bodies have been redirected to creating print and digital space that accommodates hundreds of eyeballs, remotely. Thus, the Women’s Center for Creative Work has reincarnated: embodiment through online events has expanded its audience globally, and embodiment through SALIMA, a new print magazine just launched this year, keeps the community engaged in a material way. “It’s been a huge learning curve, but it’s been really fun and amazing,” Williams tells me. “There’s so many exciting people and voices and artists involved in all of these different ways. It feels like the [physical] space in a magazine, to me.” This is essentially a win-win for the Center and for people who—because of chronic illness, physical challenges or their location—were not always able to take advantage of the in-person programming available. This incarnation of the WCCW is the most accessible the organization has ever been. Williams and her colleagues are working on making some of these programmatic changes permanent while tweaking others. The membership subscription they offer— which makes up at least half of their pre-pandemic income—is being restructured to reflect the changes the organization had to make last year. Responding positively to something as momentous and unexpected as a global pandemic while still serving a mission of creating, maintaining and sharing accessible feminist space takes both grace and grit, which the leadership and staff of the Women’s Center have ably demonstrated. From left to right: Salima Allen, Em Walworth & Neko Natalia; WCCW staff members with one of the riso machines at the new Highland Park space, courtesy WCCW photo archive.
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PUBLIC RITUALS Senga Nengudi’s Ceremony for Freeway Fets (1978) BY KELLY RAPPLEYE
PR OV E N A N C E
Senga Nengudi, Ceremony for Freeway Fets, 1978. Chromogenic development print; series of 11, each: 12 × 18 in. © Senga Nengudi. Photo: Roderick ‘Quaku’ Young.
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What makes some spaces private and others public, if not rituals? In Los Angeles, a complex series of rituals reify our belief in private property. Property deeds, for instance, give physical form to a political notion; signing a deed a symbolic ritual that shapes spatial realities and delivers economic consequences. This is a ritual of exclusion, an agreement that this parcel of land is private and not public; it is mine and not yours. The pandemic greatly altered our daily rituals, sequestering homeowners to their private spaces, while those without a deed are left to live “private” lives in “public” spaces. Throughout modern history, few factors have had a greater impact on shaping urban landscapes than contagion. In 15th-century Italy, an epidemic led to the construction of leper islands; in newly industrialized 18th-century London, the outbreak of cholera resulted in modern sewage infrastructure. These upheavals remind us that urban spaces reflect rituals that are neither determined nor static. These spaces are daily experiments in collective living and continuously reconfigured by competing visions for the future, which contour the conditions and needs of the present. In her 1979 documentary Shopping Bag Spirits and Freeway Fetishes, Barbara McCullough interviews fellow LA artists of the 1970s Black Art movement (known as LA Rebellion) on the meaning of ritual in their work and practice. In the film, sculpture and performance artist Senga Nengudi describes her public performance work Ceremony for Freeway Fets (1978) as a ritual that used public space as its medium. In the performance, Nengudi gathered several artists from the Studio Z Collective (1974–1980s) together under a freeway on Pico Boulevard. The participants carried instruments and small talismans and tokens, while adorned in head wraps, sheet scraps and other garments constructed by Nengudi from the nylon mesh of women’s tights. During the performance, artists David Hammons and Maren Hassinger danced and dueled to free-form jazz, acting out the tensions between “feminine” and “masculine” societal poles. Nengudi—draped in a large sheet—presided over them to perform an impassioned and improvised ritual of healing between them. In a 2018 interview with Frieze magazine, Nengudi reflected on the performance’s freeway underpass locale, where “the energy of humans” was “already infused” by the unhoused people who had made it their home. A steep ledge beneath the freeway created a raised plateau where they had built encampments and left behind remnants of daily life. According to the artist, it was here, in a shadowy recess above LA’s privatized public space that people felt “protected,” and subsisted in an “almost ancient way of survival” akin to “Native American cliff dwellings.” Her performance sought to make these invisible rituals visible. Sengudi was exploring ritual as a means of transforming the mundane materials, bodily habits and forgotten land of everyday life into something sacred. Ritual can create a moment to acknowledge change and turmoil—but harness it towards collective healing, rather than strife. Today, when collective grieving, healing and recognition feel imperative and yet unattainable, Sengudi’s work reminds us to question the rituals that dictate urban space. Mass upheaval can open space to create new rituals, to choose how we change, and decide what is to remain sacred.
Entwined Roots: Symbiotic Relationships
Gary Brewer & Aline Mare May 12 – June 4, 2021 R EC E PTI O N Wednesday May 12 • 5–10pm A RTI ST ZO O M TA L K with Shana Nys Dambrot Wednesday May 26 • 6pm
Chimeric Universe, 48"×36" 2020, Oil on Canvas
“An erotics of painting permeates both their work: the pleasures of sheer beauty expressed in seductive veils of rich color, sensuous lines and organic forms infused with sexual and procreative innuendo.” — Constance Mallinson
621 S. Olive Street, Los Angeles wonzimerinfo@gmail.com
Right Sided, 36"×24" 2021, Unique photo based process on paper
SECRET GARDEN David Horvitz Explores the Balance Between Private and Public BY KATE CARUSO
I met David Horvitz three years ago when he hand-delivered me an edamame plant he had been offering to his community via social media. Now, three years later, we meet again to conduct this interview in the garden he has been building. The garden in question is a previously vacant lot in Arlington Heights, a neighborhood in Central Los Angeles, near the Underground Museum and his studio. The lot, which became vacant after the house on the property burned down, is roughly 5,000 square feet and, prior to Horvitz’ interventions, was mostly dirt, grass and weeds. “I’m always finding buried knicknacks from the house when we dig. A lot of marbles,” Horvitz tells me. Horvitz has worked with horticulture in several instances, though this is certainly his largest-scale and most ambitious plantbased work to date. The artist, age 39, who now lives and works in his native Los Angeles (after a stint in New York on graduating from Bard’s MFA program in 2010), first exhibited horticultural work when he planted seeds in a book that eventually grew into a tree. The seeds used were collected from Zuccotti Park during the Occupy Wall Street protests there. When making this work, Horvitz was “thinking about the trees as shelter and also as witness to this political moment that was happening in the background of the landscaping.” The tree was donated to, and currently resides at, Bard College, where it was planted in the ground and has since grown quite large. This notion of trees in the foreground, with bodies as subplot, persists throughout his oeuvre, culminating in his most recent work, his garden. When I arrive, the garden, which is still awaiting its concrete benches, is awash with midday sun. The space is entirely exposed, as much to the elements as to the street. The street, despite its proximity to bustling Washington Boulevard, is residential and fairly quiet. We walk through the garden while Horvitz gestures and tells me each tree or new bloom’s horticultural story—where they’re native to, where the seeds are from, and how they grow. He spots a new bloom—a tiny green leaf sprouting from the soil almost invisible to the untrained eye—and is visibly excited, placing a rock next to it to ensure “we (I know that in reality he means me but is too polite to say so) do not trample it.” After obtaining permission from the lot’s landlord, Horvitz teamed up with architectural design firm TERREMOTO to transform the derelict space into a garden. When planting they talked about holding a designated space reserved for people but decided, instead, to allow the trees to dominate. In urban gardens, trees typically exist in the background, activated by the bodies that visit—thinking of his earlier project, they wanted to consider how it might feel for bodies to take a backseat while the trees hold centerstage. So far, they have planted over 100 trees. The garden’s concept required rocks so Horvitz and David Godshall, of TERREMOTO, reached out to LACMA Curator Christine Y. Kim to gather rubble from the museum’s demolition site. The result is a zen rock garden, a transplant of urban ruins from a renowned longstanding art space repurposed to another (much
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Rubble collected from the LACMA demolition site. Image courtesy of the artist. Photo by Olivia Fougeirol.
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Early stages of David Horvitz’ garden. Image courtesy of artist. Photographer Olivia Fougeirol.
more transient) art space. If LACMA’s controversial and politicized demolition has been critiqued as a symbol of waste and excess, then Horvitz’ garden is the antithesis; a space lacking in financial incentive built up from the ruins of a domestic building and incorporating ruins from an institutional one. The Davids (Horvitz and Godshall) are unclear exactly how the location will be used. They may open it up to arts programming such as related talks, performance and happenings. Though it may just be a garden, open by appointment. He mentions its visibility to the public and that some neighbors have expressed wanting to have a BBQ or party there. While wanting the space to feel communal, there is simultaneously a need to preserve. The main rule is that it is a place for the plants, where the people are merely visitors. This tension of public vs. private continues to make itself known; the garden is visible from the street but behind a gate under lock and key. There have been several instances of graffiti which Horvitz is undecided on how to address. “I’m tempted to keep it,” he says. “Or incorporate it into a mural.” Horvitz has long been considering the boundary between public and private. Since graduating from Bard in 2010, he has become quite known for his mail art and virtual artwork, drawing on the influence of conceptual artists before him like Bas Jan Ader and On Kawara. His early film “Rarely Seen Bas Jan Ader Film” (2009) was uploaded to YouTube under the premise that it was “found in Ader’s locker at UC Irvine after his disappearance at sea in 1975, and that the film was assumed unusable because it abruptly runs out just as the figure enters the water.” The fewsecond-long black-and-white film depicting a figure biking into the ocean was then made into an artist edition book, published by 2nd Cannon Publications. This blurring of fact and fiction, or history and mythology, discreetly inserts itself into the narrative—thus questioning the bounds of privacy by pushing them. I was first introduced to his practice with his 2007 work, I will think about you for one minute, where one can pay $1 and Horvitz will think about them for one minute, emailing them the time he starts thinking, and the time he stops. With this piece (still ongoing) he challenges the intimacy and visibility between artist and audience, momentarily collapsing the distance between the two. Particularly notable is the second email he sends once the
minute is up: “I’ve stopped thinking about you.” Here, Horvitz draws a stark line between the public and private. Central to Horvitz’ work is the notion of access. Alongside many gallery and institutional exhibitions, including a group exhibition at the ICA Los Angeles this Spring, a solo at Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden in Germany earlier this year and exhibitions at Praz-Delavallade and Yvon Lambert in 2020, Horvitz extends his practice to inexpensive printed matter and free downloadable materials. His books are translated into 32 languages (so far), and his web content is downloadable via PDF, audio file or transcript from the website itself. He refutes the gate keeping oft associated with the arts and refers to his collectors less as “buying” his work, instead favoring the word funding. In one body of work, “Donations to Libraries” (2010), Horvitz donated archival boxes—one of which went to MoMA New York. The boxes, which appear as first-edition hardbound books but in reality contain a bottle of gin and a glass, were purchased by collectors who, in the acquisition contract, agree to buy a new bottle for the bookcases (which still live at the respective libraries) each year. Horvitz addressed the public property conversation headon in his two bodies of work: “Public Access” (2010–11) where he photographed himself on various California beaches and uploaded those images to the beach’s Wikipedia pages, and “Private Access,” where he did the same thing but on east coast beaches which are adversely privately owned. Exerting his public right both physically and digitally (in the case of the publicly gathered encyclopedia, Wikipedia) Horvitz explored the bounds between private and public access and the feeling of existence and visibility in both spaces. In a similarly terse video work made around the same time, A Walk at Dusk (2018), Horvitz walked through Trump’s Golf Club on the coast in Palos Verdes planting seeds from the Washingtonia robusta, a native Mexican fan palm. A gestural action in the face of the Trump presidency and his intended “wall,” Horvitz reclaims the land (which must, by California law, provide beach access to all 24/7) with native Mexican horticulture, collected from his grandmother’s garden. Horvitz, who has been working with galleries and institutions for the past two decades, has made a habit of pushing boundaries. For a Frieze New York Project in 2016, curated by Cecilia Alemani, he hired three professional pickpockets to attend the fair and stealthily distribute artworks to randomly selected fairgoers. At last year’s Frieze Los Angeles in Ruinart’s Champagne Room, he organized to gift glass artworks. The caveat being that in order to receive one you had to repeat the daily rotating password, which was shared without context by a mysterious gentlemen whose main role was to walk around the fair whispering the elected password into the ears of the public. Horvitz maintains that he does not eschew the traditional buy/sell market dynamic, rather he prefers to “make it a bit more difficult.” Horvitz’ garden, as yet untitled, includes an artwork (or group exhibition, as he sometimes refers to it) which is collaborative in nature. Dirt Pile (2021-ongoing) is a cumulative pile of soil, so far featuring contributions from international artists. Morphing his own work with the contributions of other artists, Horvitz shirks direct ownership and invites other artists to inhabit his garden, via the soil from their homes. The garden—to which the landlord could at any moment extinguish David’s rights—is a practice in cultivating the ephemeral. Throughout this project, and over the course of his practice, Horvitz explores the balance between private and public, relishing the tensions between the two. Participating in both public and private spheres, Horvitz straddles both sides and revels in their inextricability.
Portrait of David Horvitz in his garden. Image courtesy of the artist. Photo by Olivia Fougeirol.
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Luna Anaïs Gallery presents
CULTURAL UNDERTOW curated by Narsiso Martinez
A two-woman show featuring
Gloria Gem Sánchez & Tidawhitney Lek June 5–July 24, 2021 Tin Flats
1989 Blake Ave, Los Angeles
Luna Anaïs Gallery
www.lunaanais.com @lunaanaisgallery 323-474-9319
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MAKE IT NEW A Conversation with Emily Barker BY JULIE SCHULTE
Emily Barker (who uses they/them pronouns) is an artist and disability activist living in Los Angeles. They received their BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and have given talks at prestigious institutions including the Royal Academy of Art and UCLA. Barker adamantly refuses the low quality of life a disabled person is expected to endure and, although critical of the systems that measure a person’s value on their ability to produce, they are not without hope that things can and will change. Presently they are at-work designing and remodeling an accessible RV home that will be both affordable and stylish and a model for future dwellings. We spoke about constructing a meaningful life, the value of small-scale pleasures and friendship, and why radicalizing now seems the most logical thing in the world. They can be found on Instagram @celestial_investments. JULIE SCHULTE: I wanted to talk to you about the most overused pandemic phrase: The New Normal. I’m thinking of how your incredible 2019 exhibition “Built to Scale” for Murmurs LA placed able-bodied viewers in a replica of your kitchen and created an experience of what it’s like to have everything inaccessible and out of reach. I’m curious if you see this Covid moment as an opportunity for a larger conversation of people rethinking what normal actually means? EMILY BARKER: It’s a great question because it’s hilarious to me as someone who pre-COVID has been isolated in my house or a hospital for a total of two years of my life, stranded without transportation, and relying on people to give me rides; I am laughing because for me this is normal. In fact, my life has improved during COVID because I finally have transportation. Still, getting to my truck is a challenge because the sidewalks have electrical poles and lack curb cuts, so I have to ride down the middle of the street behind my apartment to get to my truck everyday because there is no accessible parking. I will say that I do have various degrees of independence now due to surgeries I’ve had. My truck has a crane lift because I have the privilege of using that technology versus a ramp; I have the privilege of being able to drive when I’m not having a CRPS [Complex Regional Pain Syndrome] flare; I’m immuno-compromised so I was wearing nitro gloves and masks to parties and events long before this whole thing and people would look at me like I was crazy. Could you speak about disability narratives being misrepresented and misused under neoliberalism? I think politics without class-consciousness is the neoliberal demise. When I became disabled 10 years ago these conversations weren’t happening. There wasn’t a “disability twitter.” There wasn’t a community you got to belong to and even now it’s splintered because we’re competing for scarce resources. And, the
Installation view of “Built to Scale,” photo by Josh Schaedel..
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people in marginalized communities are the people with the most needs and their labor and work to survive is then appropriated because identity politics is something you can capitalize off of. My friends and I joke that we have a myriad of diagnoses that could make our whole lives all about bemoaning how fucked we are. For me, that’s never the point. It’s how to create and analyze systems so that we can all survive this, because my lived experience isn’t some diaristic thing that is personal to me. My lived experience is something millions of people are experiencing. It doesn’t ultimately matter that I have a heart condition, scoliosis, ocular degeneration, paraplegia, etc.—what matters is that since getting those I don’t get to have any quality of life within privatized healthcare. But yeah, relying on other people: We do. It’s really messy and it’s really hard. So many people barely have the skills to care for themselves, so when you have someone with specific needs it creates tension. I have friends abused by parents because they need 24-hour care. They’re trolled for needing to pee too much! I experienced this abuse firsthand, and often it’s not even recognized as abuse. You know, being force-fed when I can’t stop vomiting because of all the cortisol dumped in my stomach. Ultimately, our society has normalized abuse to disabled people. Just the other day we had Disability Day of Remembrance where we honored those killed by caregivers. The people who are supposed to care for someone are the ones most likely to kill them—and still we live in a society where they should be grateful for what little care they get! Ableism is just so overwhelming that I want to focus instead on capitalism, because I know I can’t change people’s hearts. No matter how nice I am, I can’t make people give me dignity and empathy. Right, Marx speaks about there being no accounting for the health and well-being of the worker—just the ability to produce. Yes, and Marx also said “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” But people can’t fathom the economic need. Friends of mine have monthly caregiving needs within the tens of thousands, and they soon find—even if they get settlements—a million dollars won’t take care of them for long. I am surprised more disabled people aren’t radicalized! To me, it’s common sense. Your only value is the labor you can produce with your body. We aren’t allowed to make money. I have to be in poverty to receive the care I need. I do all this work for free so I can educate people because my survival and others like me depends on it. It’s like planting seeds in a forest.
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Emily Barker, photo by Jass Leuo.
It seems the shift to online shows is an afterthought/crisis response institutions benefit from for appearing accommodating. I don’t see this carrying into future design plans though. I read you’re presently designing accessible spaces. Could you tell me about where that’s headed? The pre-concept for the Murmurs show was the 3D modeling my dear friend Tomasz Jan Groza and I were working on. We wanted to build a space that debunked the stereotype which accessible equals unaffordable. It’s a myth disabled people will lean into, but it’s totally wrong. What’s unaffordable is that for new building they don’t consult disabled people! We’re an afterthought. If we weren’t it wouldn’t be expensive. The majority of people in their lifetime—especially in America—will lose their mobility. And yet we’re living in this fog. This odd idea of reality that ignores the body, ignores gravity. That’s why I am building my own accessible RV. I’m hoping to have the RV finished by June, which is when the moratorium on evictions will be lifted, but crip time, just isn’t the same. It’s a long way to go and I have to rely on people laboring for me. I don’t want to sound like a downer. I will say despite all of this I am happier now than I was before my accident. Before I was anxious and depressed, but now I see the things that frustrated me were out of my control and from the system itself. It’s something all of us are suffering under to varying degrees so all we can do is do our best to find ways to have a livable life and give our lives meaning. Buy all the teas. Own dogs. It may be small-scale but hey, you’re my friend and you want a Matcha latte with strawberry purée? You can have it. I’ve got that for you at my house.
A.M. ROUSSEAU
Billow, 2020, diptych, ebony pencil and ink on archival Hyacinth rag paper, 43 x 63”
2859 E. Coast Highway, Corona Del Mar, CA 92625 info@scapesite.com www.scapesite.com 949-723-3406 southern california art projects + exhibitions
www.rousseaufineart.com
ARTIST ESTATES PRIVATE COLLECTIONS MUSEUM DONATIONS
Michael Maloney Fine Art Appraisal Services www.MaloneyArtAppraisals.com 310.570.6420
Bruce Sanders, Chung-Ping Cheng, Rhonda C R Burton, & Sean Yang May 11-June 5, 2021 TAG Gallery 5458 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90036 • taggallery.net • 323.297.3061 • @taggallery
Sanctuary of the Aftermath On view April 10 June 12, 2021
Image: LA Art Documents
Join us on May 26th for “WE RISE - Healing Centered Art: Many Paths to Wellness,” in collaboration with the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health. For more information, please visit werise.la.
Visit the Virtual Exhibition or sign up for an in-person viewing at angelsgateart.org/galleries/
Home to Los Angeles' premier artist community since 1993. Tuesday-Saturday 11am - 5pm TAG Gallery 5458 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90036 • taggallery.net • 323.297.3061 • @taggallery
Exhibitions & Estates Contemporary & Historical Art
FAFF 2021 101 Films/48 Countries June 8-14 on Vimeo
Art Made Here. And Everywhere @veniceica veniceica.org
B O O KS
HIGH LIFE TO RUINATION SoCal Photographers Cover It All BY COLIN WESTERBECK
Jona Frank’s new book, Cherry Hill, came out this spring almost simultaneously, but coincidentally, at the same time as another book, Terminus, by another SoCal photographer, John Divola. The coincidence is as fortunate as it is fortuitous because their subjects and approaches could not be more different. Even the geography in which they worked is far-flung, with Frank’s attention focused nearby on a Santa Monica lifestyle, while Divola’s ranges northeast to an abandoned military base in Victorville, CA. Though Divola’s is the more esoteric work, each photographer is at the top of his/her game.
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In Frank’s Cherry Hill (above) the photographs are heartfelt but amusing. They could be straight out of a soap opera, if the episodes were soulful rather than facetious. What she has created is more of a sitcom. Movie actress Laura Dern plays a mom who is raising a daughter in a vintage Santa Monica home. We see the tussle between mother and daughter as the latter progresses from a bawling infant to an obstreperous 23 year old. Along the way, she assumes, naturally, that she’s much smarter, better, etc., than her mom. Dern sets the pace for the mutual frustration between mother and child as the daughter grows up.
John Divola’s Terminus is a book larger in format than Frank’s but with far fewer pages. All these photographs were, like the one above, made in abandoned houses on the closed George Air Force Base in Victorville. All were, Divola tells us, “exposed as b&w negatives in 2016.” Each looks down a narrow hallway toward a wall on which
Divola has spray-painted a black, sometimes mishappen circle. The deterioration that the hallways reveal is pitted against the indeterminant abstraction of the black circles. Little by little the camera advances down these halls until the image becomes just a vertical, black space—an inescapable end point.
Opposite: Home, from Cherry Hill, ©Jona Frank. Above: from Terminus page 23, © John Divola
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Gentile Bellini’s Portrait of Sultan Mehmed II: Lives and Afterlives of an Iconic Image By Elizabeth Rodini 224 pages I.B. Tauris
ABJECT OBJECT Gentile Bellini’s Portrait of Sultan Mehmed II By Elizabeth Rodini REVIEWED BY BARBARA MORRIS
B O O K
R E V I E W
After James Fergusson, color lithograph, The Palaces of Nimroud Restored, color lithograph in Austen Henry Layard, The Monuments of Ninevah, 2nd Series (London, 1853), pl. 1. The New York Public Library, Digital Collections.
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Elizabeth Rodini’s Gentile Bellini’s Portrait of Sultan Mehmed II (2020) landed on my radar through meeting Rodini last year at the American Academy in Rome, where she is the Andrew Heiskell Arts Director. Rodini’s recent object biography investigates a number of intriguing and complex issues. Gentile Bellini, brother of the better-known Giovanni, was a Venetian artist. In 1479, he was commissioned to travel to Istanbul to paint a portrait of the Sultan, Mehmed II. This Renaissance portrait of an Ottoman sultan has gained a broad mystique, its legend perhaps eclipsing the actual substance of the canvas itself. We may follow Rodini into the subterranean vaults of London’s National Gallery, where she finally encounters the portrait she has been exhaustively researching for so long ...in a state of neglect, an object so altered and eroded as to bear little resemblance to its original state. This abject object had been the focus of intense strife and controversy, fought over for centuries. Rodini brings this ostensibly dry and academic subject to life with the intensity of a gripping mystery novel…”Who done it?” Cultural patrimony—the premise that artworks belong in the culture, often the country, where they were made—was a budding idea in 1912 when the owner of the painting, Enid, widow of collector and archaeologist Austen Henry Layard, passed away. The Layard collection, then housed in a palazzo on Venice’s Grand Canal, was willed to her nephew, and London’s National Gallery. Before those parties could resolve who might have rights of ownership, they needed to get the painting to England—no small feat with Italy clinging to its treasured art objects. This question of individual’s rights of ownership is a challenging one: Is it better to support the claims of individuals’ (or institutions) to private ownership of artwork, or will the broader good be served by placing the artwork in a setting deemed more culturally appropriate? The Elgin/Parthenon Marbles are the “litmus test” for this issue, according to Rodini. Lord Elgin brought them from Greece to the British Museum in the early 19th century, where they have now resided for over 200 years. Greece, reasonably arguing that they were looted from the Parthenon in Athens, demands their return. The dispute has raged for centuries; Byron was among the first to condemn the looting. Once this is eventually settled, it may tip the scales for similar repatriation cases across the globe. Rodini takes a measured stance overall, weighing the value of the universality of priceless antiquities against the need to redress past injustices. Her description of studying an image in 2015 of an Assyrian winged bull in the British Museum, concurrent with reading news stories of ISIS defacing with power tools a nearly identical ancient sculpture in Iraq as part of a purge of imagistic artwork, definitely provides food for thought. Still, no excuses can be made for the colonialist and Orientalist impulses of these early plunderers, and repatriation will no doubt be one of the key challenges facing museums as they research the provenance of objects in their collections. Rodini’s thoughtful work offers us an eye-opening window into many enticing, interwoven and labyrinthine realms.
HOSTILE WITNESS 2021
LAD DECKER
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CODE ORANGE CURATED BY LAURA LONDON
Winner: Eric Axene, Armen, Nairi Fruits, Glendale, October 13, 2020, Glendale, CA; digital Capture/photo-collage. View our winner and finalists for our May/June issue on our website, along with info on how to submit your photo for next issue’s contest: artillerymag.com/code-orange.
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Back in the U.S.S.R. BY SKOT ARMSTRONG
B U N K E R
Revolting workers in Dear Comrades, 2020.
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V I S I O N
If you’re under 40 years old, it might be hard to understand the passion some boomers have about the evils of socialism. Scandinavia seems like a cool place to live. For all of its socialism, Cuba has a higher life expectancy than the United States, and even attracts medical tourists. So, how did the idea that socialism is awful gain such a foothold? The short answer is the Soviet Union and the Cold War. Before it collapsed 30 years ago, Ronald Reagan (who had released an LP about the socialist evils of Medicare) dubbed it “The Evil Empire.” Dear Comrades (2020) gives us a peek inside of this forbidden world. The movie is set in 1962, and uses an actual event—the Novocherkassk massacre—as the jumping-off point, to explore a world where private property was taboo. The story hits the ground running (literally) as a woman is rushing to dress for the store “before everything sells out.” When she arrives at the crowded and meagerly supplied shop, she is whisked to the back. She is a party official and she gets special treatment. After the harried clerk provides everything on her extensive list, she rewards her with a pair of pantyhose, smuggled from the west. These are received with the enthusiasm that an inmate in prison might offer for a carton of cigarettes. Her daughter doesn’t qualify for this special treatment, and joins a crowd that is protesting lowered wages, higher prices and shortages of goods. During this protest, shots are fired into the crowd, and the protest becomes a riot. Things get especially surreal when the authorities deny that the demonstration itself ever happened, much less the killings. When it proves to be impossible to remove the bloodstains from the pavement, a crew is brought in to lay a new layer of asphalt. When the party official’s daughter doesn’t return home, her mother assumes the worst. Much of what follows involves searching for unmarked graves with the mother’s boyfriend (a married KGB agent with a talent for getting them past checkpoints). Throughout all of this, Lyuda (the party official) keeps exclaiming that things have gone to Hell since Stalin died. Using these perspectives, the film presents a dystopian overview of what existence in the Soviet Union was like for the people in all strata of life. The party official’s apartment is definitely nicer than a room in a subdivided house. The KGB agent’s apartment is noticeably nicer than hers. We get a tour of lives further down the food chain, as she searches for her daughter. This isn’t the genteel socialism of northern Europe. But this is what Boomers were taught that the word socialism means. If you’re planning to engage one in an argument about socialism, it’s probably good to understand that they’ll be focused on Soviet-era communism. And private property. It always come back to that.
Remnants New Art Installations from award-winning fine artist
K Ryan Henisey June 8 - July 3
TAG Gallery 5458 Wilshire Blvd 323.297.3061 | 11am -5pm, Tue-Sat
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ENTERTAINMENT & THE ARTS ATTORNEY
Stephen J. Goldberg
A creative lawyer for the creative community (323) 740-2800 • Stephen@stephengoldberglaw.com
P O E M S
A S K
B A B S
The Lovers A man’s face may indicate a tendency towards despair, but it may also indicate a tendency towards nothing in particular. Sometimes a woman falls in love with a man with this face.
The Building A mental hospital is just a building, and a woman is just a person sitting in a building.
BY BABS RAPPLEYE
The Drawing There are men who like to draw and there are women who like to look at wagons.
The Journey It is easy to imagine a spiritual journey lacking in grandeur. —WILLIAM MINOR
I Could Have Written That Like you, I am tired of my own voice, these incessant I’s and me’s. But what’s the alternative? I don’t have the audacity to employ another he or she or We. Nothing could be worse, psycholinguistically, than that sententious and presumptuous first person plural, which despite its unifying intentions, seems to have an effect that is entirely exclusionary. —JOHN TOTTENHAM
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For Your Eyes Only Dear Babs, My spouse stopped making art after getting her BFA in painting 10 years ago and hasn’t touched a brush to canvas in the five years we’ve been married, but the pandemic got her painting again, and I’ve never seen her happier. I know nothing about art, but I think hers is very cool. The problem is she refuses to show her work to anyone but me. How can I support her art and get it out into the world? —Supportive in Scottsdale Dear Supportive, If your spouse didn’t have an art-school background, I’d suggest you nudge her into the limelight as soon as possible. A little praise goes a long way when you’re new to calling yourself an “artist.” But your spouse is in a very different scenario. Even though she’s been on a long hiatus, she’s already an artist, and it’s going to take more than Etsy sales and kudos from the neighbors to get her to be comfortable showing her work again. You are not the person to tell her how to be an artist. She already is one. The good news is she’s making art, you’re happy for her, AND you like her paintings. Consider yourself lucky that she trusts you enough to show you her work. Right now, your spouse needs the physical and mental space to grow and re-engage with the practice of making her art. Let her decide what that means. Only then will she be willing to show her work to other people. You have no idea how difficult it can be to emerge from creative hibernation. Back in college, she had plenty of people to talk with about her art. For the time being, she has you, so get to know her work and her artistic inspirations. Ask her to make you a viewing/ reading list so you can better understand the art that matters most to her. Get to know something about her materials, her techniques, why she paints what she paints. But remember, she doesn’t need a critic (and you’re not qualified to be one); she needs a comrade. Be her biggest fan. Trust that your informed enthusiasm will be infectious, and one day, your spouse will give you permission to spread the gospel about her work. Until then, be the support she needs and let her set the pace.
VIRTUAL SILENT ART AUCTION FEATURES WORKS FROM:
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artsy.net/veniceartwalk
KELLY AKASHI MATTHEW BRANDT BUMBLEBEELOVESYOU YASMINE NASSER DIAZ SAM DURANT AMIR H. FALLAH KIM FISHER JONA FRANK FRIENDSWITHYOU ALEXANDRA GRANT SAYRE GOMEZ HAAS BROTHERS CHANNING HANSEN EJ HILL FARRAH KARAPETIAN MILES REGIS ENRIQUE MARTINEZ CELAYA ED RUSCHA LIZA RYAN ANALIA SABAN GREGORY SIFF AND MANY OTHERS
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A GENTLE PULPIT Tim Simonds: Teachers Monarchs and a sound of teaching REVIEWED BY PETER BROCK
Tim Simonds explores the whimsical and political dimensions of pedagogy in his sparse installation of sculptures and drawings at Cathouse Proper. With large trays of bleached-out collard greens on top of semicircular children’s tables, the main room of the gallery feels like a Montessori meth lab—instructional and devious at the same time. All of the gallery lights have been removed and a large window remains open, allowing the breeze to enter the room and rustle the cluster of long, thin ribbons hanging from the ceiling. The space feels calm, and this atmosphere encouraged me to linger with these enchanting objects. These works possess a quality of self-aware meandering, committed yet indeterminate. Six unframed watercolors are pinned directly to the wall along the corridor that leads into the gallery. Short dashes and dots of oil
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pastel stand out from the more muted brushwork and pencil beneath. Loosely drawn butterflies fill these dimpled sheets of paper. Casual washes of soft colors enliven the wing shapes, with lots of elegant neutrals. In some places the pigments pool and separate from each other, creating gorgeous little gradients. At a distance, it becomes clear that the marks of oil pastel form rudimentary faces—two dots and a curving line—across the wings of these flowy creatures. Recognition of the butterflies and faces happens quickly, but they are floating in an undefined plane and so it’s just as easy to drift into a reverie of color and shapes. These playful drawings introduce the symbolic language of the exhibition, which enters a much stranger register in the main room of the gallery. Three curved tables stand low to the ground in a room with double-height ceilings with natural light flooding in from six
large windows. Each table has distinct finishes, but their design manifests the same intention: to distribute students along the outer arc while placing the teacher at the center. Their form proposes a gentle pulpit from which instruction can radiate outwards, a tender hierarchy. On top of each table sits a large tray-like sculpture made from clear plastic sheeting draped over a steel frame. These shallow containers have three straight edges and one curved side, and they each overlap the edges of the table beneath. Simonds titled these works Teachers Monarchs: Vents alighted on activity table #1-3 (2021), and they contain several clusters of translucent collard greens in shallow pools of water. A tangle of colorful zip ties binds together the stems of four leaves into the familiar shape of a butterfly. These broad leaves have lost almost all their color, with only a few pale yellow and tan patches. The stems are brown with occasional traces of dark green. Simonds accents this ghostly floating vegetation with thick lines of oil pastel, whose color seems unchanged by whatever reaction stripped the collards of their hue. With an unruly knot of colorful plastic straps at the core, these creatures look alien but also elegant—bathed in soft light. The clear plastic allows the surfaces of the ‘activity tables’ to show through, blending with the textures of the leaves and their liquid. One of the tables features a faux wood grain pattern. It feels strange to see the warm glow of fake wood through veins of a translucent collard. The arrangement has the internal logic of alchemy and mysterious transformations require a tolerance for unconventional combinations of ingredients. Each of these parts coexists surprisingly well with its companions, asking very little other than to share space and soak up the abundant glow of the windows. Three works consist of home-made ribbons hanging from the wall or ceiling in varying configurations. Soft, splotchy colors cling to these thin strips of plastic and tracing paper. Several seams are visible, and each of the strands I examined changed colors at least once. The most animated of these sculptures, Sound of Teaching (Leashes): The students act and the teacher has the illusion of acting through the actions of the students (2020) hangs by the open window. Nearly 20 feet of these tiny dangling streamers drift about and then heave themselves around when a gust comes through. This work enacts the collective breath of the room and manifests continual, unplanned movement. As with the bleached greens tied together crudely, Simonds sets up the conditions for spontaneous interactions, and then removes himself from the picture. His vision involves setting parameters more than delivering a fully rendered whole, inviting viewers to pronounce the syllables that his work insinuates. One of the reasons that education sparks such vigorous political debates is that teachers cannot avoid becoming role models to their students. Even the most egalitarian educators must confront the power of their example. The shape of pedagogy must account for the power of the teacher while also keeping it in check so as to avoid patterns of imitation. That all of Simonds’ sculptures appear autonomous, even from their maker, reflects his commitment to the agency of his viewer and his students. The abundance of translucent, transparent or reactive materials steers us towards the interdependence of these phenomena, while still allowing us our position as individuals. Moments where we can hold both of these concepts simultaneously—our agency and our mutual dependency—are rare, but thankfully this show provides just the right conditions. Tim Simonds Teachers Monarchs and a sound of teaching At Cathouse Proper
Opposite: Teachers Monarchs: Vents alighted on activity table #3 (2021); yellow activity table borrowed from JEI Learning Center Bensonhurst, steel, plastic, zip ties, water, paint, traces of bleach, watercolor, collards. Above: Sound of Teaching (Leashes): The students act and the teacher has the illusion of acting through the actions of the students (2020); acrylic paint, tracing paper, plastic film, neopastel, watercolor, metal
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R E V I E W S
Brenna Youngblood Roberts Projects By Eve Wood
How we balance our individual experiences within the larger scope of our lives in many ways determines who we are, and how we understand and relate to the world around us. Reflecting on the dense and often traumatic events of the past year, which included a global pandemic and a re-awakening to racial injustice, Brenna Youngblood, in her inaugural exhibition at Roberts Projects, mediates her personal associations to these very public events as all of the works in the exhibition comprise a space for both reflection and determined response. Blurring the boundaries between figuration and abstraction, and speaking directly to the title of the exhibition as a whole, “The LIGHT and the DARK,” i.e., the balance between light and dark,
with commerce. Youngblood’s use of everyday materials, including a pair of her own worn out shoes and an assortment of colorful buttons, constitute a grouping of assembled collage works that allow her to imagine a new-fangled topographical facade which she then enhances through a variety of processes including thick impastos, transparent washes and variously loose and smooth brushstrokes. Hourglass (2021) employs hundreds of black buttons pushed to the very top of the picture plane like small circular creatures, jostling each other to and fro, and desperately trying to come up for air. Metaphorically, this work specifically speaks to notions of disparity, prejudice and social inequality, and one has the sense that these buttons would rather be anywhere else than variously collected in this tightly claustrophobic mélange of darkness. A strange and hapless cloud floats beneath them, and one can’t be sure if the buttons are trying to escape it or are seeking reentry.
Stephen Neidich Wilding Cran Gallery by John David O’Brien
Brenna Youngblood, INCARCERATION,2020, courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects,Los Angeles, photo by Alan Shaffer.
works like INCARCERATION (2020), imply human culpability through the empty hull of a black-and-white striped sweater, the pattern of which is reminiscent of prison uniforms that date back to the 1820s. In this system, prisoners had to remain silent, walk in “lock step” and wear the distinguishing black-and-white stripes, which were meant to suggest the prison bars they lived behind. In Youngblood’s rendition of mixed media, the sweater appears to be trapped within its own incessantly theatricalized and poignant gestural sweep across the canvas, and yet it also appears strangely frozen in space, which further suggests the idea of opposites: of balancing the light with the dark, the good with the bad, the pain with the rapture. The fact that the price tag dangles from the bottom left of the frame in a gesture reminiscent of Rauchenberg’s dirty pillow in his seminal work Canyon (1959), further aligns the idea of prejudice and injustice
Upon entering Stephen Neidich’s solo show, “five more minutes please,” everything is stock still, until the clattering begins. It immediately becomes clear that one’s movements cause the Venetian blinds—hanging from the ceiling or against the gallery walls—to raise or lower themselves. Lamps are housed in the topmost part of the sculptures and vaguely ominous carmine red or neon blue lights pour down from the upper slats of the blinds, becoming darker as they fall, reminiscent of a nocturnal interior from an old film noir. Each blind is a separate work that represents a “window,” made from a series of giant steel belts, which incorporate both slippages and errors into the process. In a corner of the gallery, But they should never be buildings (2021) splatters acidic blue reflections up and down the moving slats with the machinery of the cranks more or less visible as it opens and closes. The oversized nature of this set of gears and motors are almost monstrous, and the coils of chain and power boxes are splayed out on the floor in disarray. The gallery is entirely dark except for the light coming from the (real) windows and from the moving blinds on the walls. All of the hanging sculptures appear to be moving in rotation, so that once the viewer has set off the sensor they just keep churning away. There are moments in Stephen Neidich, But They Should Never Be Buildings, which the individual me- 2021, courtesy Wilding Cran Gallery, photo by Ruben Diaz. chanics seem to catch and the metal has to be snapped back out of its arrested position. This stuttering performance heightens the decrepit and dystopian atmosphere. The question arises of what exactly is being evoked? More than the creation of a dysfunctional landscape, there appears to be an
R E V I E W S operatic celebration of how things actually keep going even though they don’t appear to be working much of the time. The chains, rollers and powering devices are colossal and ungainly but even with the occasional programmed glitch, the contraptions self-correct. The gallery itself, located in a converted industrial space with an exposed ceiling fitted with tubes, cables and weathered concrete floor, provides the ideal setting for the works of Stephen Neidich.
dress suggest the movement of wind. The largest and central painting of the show is titled An Ocean Away (2020). It was amusing to learn Sherald found her sitters for this scene with a quick search on Instagram, which led her to Lou, a surf instructor for youths at Rockaway Beach. Idyllic sand dunes with beach grass undulate before a cloudless, flat blue sky. The sun creates harsh shadows on the sand, where a man sits on his surfboard, surveying the ocean intently. A boy with a solemn look on his face stands nearby holding a large yellow surfboard. Is the man simply doing his job by keeping an eye on his students, or has something occurred in the ocean? A young couple from Brooklyn seen in As American as apple pie (2020) stand before a classic American car and a proud two-story home with a white picket fence. The man’s khakis, Converse sneakers and jean jacket, paired with the woman’s Barbie T-shirt—all pink attire and gold accessories—offer a more realistic alternative to Mattel’s iconic personifications of Americana, Barbie and Ken. Sherald’s show is like a much needed cold drink of water on a hot day, long overdue and refreshing.
Lucy Bull David Kordansky Gallery By Shana Nys Dambrot
Amy Sherald, An Ocean Away, 2020, ©Amy Sherald, courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth, photo by Joseph Hyde.
Amy Sherald Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles By Bianca Collins
Painter Amy Sherald became a household name in 2018 when her portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama was unveiled at the National Gallery of Art. Sherald’s unique approach to studio portraiture and practice of universally rendering Black skin in grisaille (an underpainting technique in which a painter uses a monochromatic palette in gray), often foregrounded before an opaque color field, distinguished her from her peers, while her mastery of form and precision with line earned her a seat at the table of contemporary blue-chip American artists. Sherald reaffirms that Black people are “The Great American Fact” (the title of this show taken from an 1892 book by educator Anna Julia Cooper) in her first West Coast solo exhibition. Five figurative paintings offer images of the spectacular banal, linking Blackness with the quotidian through Americana icons such as the surfboard, white picket fence and a beach cruiser bicycle, removing Black bodies from the scenes of violence and oppression they too often inhabit. In A Midsummer Afternoon Dream (2020), a serene young woman leans on a bicycle, its basket overflowing with flowers and a fluffy white puppy. The woman’s Grecian contrapposto and the Renaissance-esque fabric draping her body link her to powerful, monumental figures that precede her in the art historical narrative. Crisp blades of perfectly lush green grass add texture to the painting, while subtle shading in the dog’s soft white hair and on our heroine’s
There almost certainly are figures both human and animal, as well as a plenitude of botanical, arboreal, avian and possibly extraterrestrial apparitions inhabiting and defining the landscape-like spaces of Lucy Bull’s paintings. But closer contemplation makes it pretty clear that it has been the mind of the viewer which has placed them there, rather than the hand of the artist. Bull’s palette also lends itself to neuro-optical shenanigans, as its exponential hyper-artificiality collides with an intense experience of florid, fecund nature. Bull depoys a chromatic juggernaut featuring the radiant yellow-green of new spring buds, the sickly rosy-red flush of wounds, cool mint of magic hour breezes, emerald and teal prisms of oil slicks and ostrich feathers, explosive yellow of solar flares and astral smatterings like the pale lavender of wildflowers. This shifting kaleidoscope is further activated by her array of studio techniques, so that the multivalent texture of every centimeter of surface is alive in its own unique gathering of strokes, streaks, pools, drips, smears, daubs, swirls, slashes, dashes and the most exquisite feathering. Looking at these oil paintings on linen, like the majestic Stinger and the courtly Permission (both 2021), the optical effect is
Lucy Bull,The Bottoms, 2021, courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, photo by Jeff McLane.
R E V I E W S like a zoom lens on the camera inside your eye—it seems to reach off the wall, there’s a bit of vertigo and the feeling of falling into the pictorial space. Soon the edges of the compositions pass by your peripheral vision and the massiveness of its flourishing detail envelops your field of sight and you are all the way down in there, inside the deep space of phosphorescent galaxies. In Evening Switch (2021) there’s a sense of a classical grotto, a decadent place of Dionysian romping with tame peacocks, grape-laden trellises and secret magic. The dark heart of the image pulls the viewer’s body closer; the eye wishes to more fully enter and explore, to see in the dark. The most charismatic work of the exhibition is The Bottoms (2021), whose operatic melodrama is built on the tension between chartreuse and fuschia. The supernova center and string of fireball pearls both anchor and disrupt its expansive picture plane; the many forms of brushwork generate a universe of image and detail—but there is nowhere to rest the eye and nothing is finitely rendered. Neither reliably narrating nor entirely avoiding the phenomenological world, the work’s true subject is painting itself—both a scientific inquiry into the physical properties and behaviors of paint as a material, and a more esoteric, mindful investigation of painting as a way of expressing the inexpressible splendor of existence. Sula Bermúdez Silverman, Carrefour Pietà / Be My Victim, 2021, courtesy Murmurs.
“Loosely Stated” ROSEGALLERY by Daniel Austin Warren
With a large grouping of esteemed photographers— Jo Ann Callis, Tania Franco Klein, Kennedi Carter, Graciela Iturbide, Katsumi Watanabe and others— it’s the curator, not the artists, who moderates the conversation. In a world defined by schisms and polarities, and a yearlong hiatus on reality, “Loosely Stated” suggests a taciturn yet stimulating alternative to slackening mores, a pomerium free from constellated hatreds. With its many singlesubject photos of women and by women, of men and women of color by women of color, this exhibition is many things: an unlabeled feminism, a non-competing intersectionality, a polite insinuation of
unspeakable American horrors. It denotes without crystallizing into fragile definition. No image steals the spotlight; each contains depth and multitude without transgressing upon its neighbor. In Jo Ann Callis’ Salt, Pepper, Fire (1980) we see a tableaux: white tablecloth, full cup of coffee, one salt and one pepper shaker, and immolating dinner plate—but do we notice the orange-washed phoenix sidling to the left? In haste, we miss the escaping bird; without which, the work loses its horrifying implication; patience snaps the image into sublime revelation. More than simple fire, this is a scene of gripping violence: animal sacrifice fleeing unobserved ritual. Perhaps patience is still valued in a world of breakneck consumption, expedited biases and rewarded delusions. If we take time, reorient ourselves to the sensed world and begin to hear with our eyes, multiple dialogues are revealed. Pioneering Los Angeles artist Callis has clearly influenced the emerging Mexico City-based Tania Franco Klein. In another room, two opposing walls feature Black subjects in contrasting representations: Kennedi Carter’s Soon As I Get Home II, from “East Durham Love” (2019) is a cropped closeup, an Ono/Lennonesque portrait of a man receiving affection from a woman (she is cropped, and only emerges with patient viewing); it utilizes colors that are oil-painting-rich and connotes a re-seized colonial mystique. Opposite, selects from Melodie McDaniel’s wide-shot black-and-white portraits of rider and horse possess cinema verite sprezzatura. Yes, this room replete with female gaze doesn’t call attention to the label; it needs us to investigate and arrive at its reality. While not vying for huge exclamations or jaw-dropping denouement, “Loosely Stated” reminds us that the best conversations are never one-sided; that they are, at best, unresolved. It’s also a stark reminder of power exercised through inhibition; majesty, if you will. But can reconciliation of atrocities forge with this updated Neo-American ideal? Since we are formalized around a global anxiety, one that fissures into all aspects of our lived experience, inverts our perceptions, problematizes our instinct to care and to hug and to love, perhaps stillness represents the true act of defiance.
Sula Bermùdez-Silverman Murmurs by Angela Groom
Sula Bermùdez-Silverman’s solo exhibition “Sighs and Leers and Crocodile Tears,” at first seems to be a curious series of clichés, but Left: Jo Ann Callis, Salt, Pepper, Fire, 1980, courtesy of ROSEGALLERY.
R E V I E W S
Johanna Breiding Ochi Projects By Ezrha Jean Black
a story begins to unfold—through Silverman’s attention to detail— about the history of power, erasure, hierarchy and otherness that has been built into the very fabric of culture. Silverman seeks to expose the role of toxic masculinity, racism and colonialism in American culture by observing its various monsters throughout cinema. The body of work is a spectacle of elegant nostalgia that begs the viewer to question the true history, emptiness and destruction of imperialism; all the while, showing that the roads of terror point to a drive for power, a core tenet of toxic masculinity. A beautiful large tapestry, titled Carrefour Pietà / Be My Victim (2021) serves as a spectacular centerpiece where all the other elements within the show rise and converge. It portrays a still from the 1943 classic film, I Walked With A Zombie (directed by Jacques Tourneur), paneled alongside a depiction of Michelangelo’s Pieta; the Virgin Mary holding Jesus. Here, the artist has employed the juxtaposition of light and dark in a symbiotic way; a Black man/zombie/monster carrying a white femme between images of Mother Mary holding Black Jesus. The first room to the right of the main gallery floor is lined with small resin wall reliefs resembling ornate windows that expose rooms, each filled with a different classic horror trope. Michael Jackson’s famous zombie-look from the music video Thriller, is seen in Porthole 1 (Proteus) (2020) and in Porthole 7 (Death and the Maiden) (2021), where Death is a Black figure carrying a white woman. In the main gallery, another tapestry hangs on the wall of the bride of Frankenstein, titled The Monster’s Bride (She’s Alive!) (2020) directly to the right. Three kitschy cookie-cutter dollhouses, titled “Repository I-III” (all 2021) made of isomalt sugar and epoxy resin sit atop illuminated bricks of Himalayan pink salt in the center of the gallery. Glowing resin claws litter the corners of the room in zombie fashion, as if menacingly coming up from below. Turning Heel (2021), Lady With The Ring (2021) and Satan Arousing The Rebel Angels (2021) show the talons outstretched from beds of salt with found objects surrounding them. In some cases it’s a jar, a puffer fish specimen or carpenter bees. The use of light and epoxy resin seems reminiscent of the late Mike Kelley’s body of work—“Kandors” (2005–09) specifically, with its use of low lighting and glowing sculptures—that take iconography from pop culture to transport the viewer into a space of unflinching truth, beauty, memory, sadness and terror.
Johanna Breiding’s show of photography and ceramics at Ochi Projects defied singular characterization in favor of an enveloping tsunami of empathic correspondence—a tidal progression of images both intimate yet nothing less than oceanic. The exhibition’s slightly coy title, “Playing Submarine,” hinted more at Breiding’s narrative strategy, leading the viewer’s eye through brief image sequences that pushed larger perspectives alternately skyward and into a kind of collective unconscious with a pendant moment of self-confrontation. The images were all tightly framed, self-contained, specific. The first, a vacuum hose spiraling out of a deck-side hole and into a pool’s turquoise water, bore the title, Imago (all works 2020 unless otherwise indicated), to which both psychoanalytic and entomological meanings might easily apply. Crown, the second image in this sequence—a bald head emerging from a pool of water, the diffracted lower body visible beneath the surface—completed the “imago.” A glossy glazed black ceramic cat identified only as Vessel 57, provided a potent pause in the procession of photographs (digital C-prints, mostly color, but several in black and white), its open mouth echoing the preceding crowning, while signaling its communication with the installation as a whole. The next sequence sustained these motives of emergence, communication and containment: a deep recession in a snowbank against an alpine landscape in black and white; followed by color images of milk dribbling out of an open mouth; boiling milk bubbling stovetop from a small pot. Following a more chromatically intense visual pause, Breiding seemed to fold her subjects into the frame, including her own tightly locked left elbow and knee (Self-portrait with scars); a communion and confusion of the subjects’ respective fur involving a dog’s harness and a cleanly sectioned thicket of infinitesimally interweaving branches (Crutch). The placement of the largest image, a mylar sheet stretched Johanna Breiding, Vessel 57, 2020, across a shimmering body of water courtesy of Ochi Projects. (Second Skin), was a reversal—a shedding of skin for the aquatic domain, celebrated in the gallery immediately behind it. There, the balance of Breiding’s ceramic “vessels” (including a lobster, a sea turtle, sea snail and horse amongst other creatures or their shells) variously glazed in blues, white and sea-green, were gorgeously arrayed upon a long table. Against the wall, nine ink-and-charcoal drawings of body fragments and organs both human and aquatic, played like shadows of the hollowed vessels on the table. Breiding’s final images tested the limits of legibility while climactically complicating the larger exhibition narrative. Home was a paper construction peaked, folded and creviced into a floating mountain; Cloud 9, a dark curl of cumulus cloud billowing into the sunlight, oculus to a space without limiting definition. The viewer’s gaze was finally met head-on in a small painting of a bobcat hung just off-center to the rear of a bed foregrounding a nude body’s bended knee in Apex, which seemed to sum up the contradictory juxtapositions of legibility and actuality—the ferocity underlying the vulnerability.
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R E V I E W S
Tarik Garrett Hunter Shaw Fine Art
documents from official and unofficial voices with contemporary objects and images, Garrett frames prejudices both aesthetically and critically while taking his viewers on a journey through time.
Tarik Garrett’s compelling show addresses how the past intersects with the present. This minimal, mixed-media installation brings together appropriated documents, Polaroid photographs, junked wood, metal fragments, a partial tree trunk equipped with speakers and a portion of chain-link fence. Upon entry, the partially blocked space forces the viewer to navigate around a section of fence that spans the height of the gallery. Caught in the bottom of the chain-link fence are a narrow branch and a few brown leaves, suggesting the outside world where they may have once been subject to the elements. Located toward the front of the gallery and easy to miss are two
Vonn Sumner and Holly Elander KP Projects
Jody Zellen
Tarik Garrett, Installation view, courtesy Hunter Shaw Fine Art, photo by Ruben Diaz.
small white speakers embedded in the wall, from which a rendition of W.E.B. Du Bois’ adaptation of the patriotic song “My Country ‘Tis Of Thee” softly emanates. In the early 1900s, Du Bois’ augmented the original lyrics (written in 1831) to create a more honest depiction of the struggle of African Americans. A symphonic voice recites these altered lyrics and calls attention to racial and social injustices while simultaneously shedding light on how to interpret, or reinterpret, the other objects in the installation. At the far end of the gallery a sawed stump made from cherry wood sits on the floor—titled Moses of the colored man (all works 2021)—the stump functions as a podium with an absent orator whose voice is heard from small speakers that have been inserted into the wood. The soundtrack loops a 10-minute excerpt from Military Governor Andrew Johnson’s 1864 speech, announcing emancipation in Tennessee. In the speech, emotionally and sympathetically read by Garrett and overlaid with a percussive beat, Johnson announces to a Black audience (who are suspicious of the white politician’s promises and words) the end of slavery. Hung on opposite walls are two collage works, 1 and 2, made in collaboration with Kevin O’Neill, in which Xeroxed historical documents about race and property, including the “Virginia Health Bulletin to Preserve Racial Integrity” from 1924; pages from Cheryl Harris’ “Whiteness as Property,” 1993; and Supreme Court rulings on trespassing from 1805, are juxtaposed with Polaroids of vandalized, graffitied and fenced-in properties, as well as images of cinderblock walls. These odd-shaped assemblages are funkily framed with salvaged 2x4s or metal piping— materials that are used in ad hoc as well as sanctioned construction. Garrett’s works speak to the continued struggles and inequities that Black American and other people of color confront in a world of white domination. By weaving together historical songs and
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By Genie Davis
Artists Vonn Sumner and Holly Elander each offer astonishing exhibitions of intensely personal artworks, that coupled with intimacy also present a prescient commentary on current socio-political times. Sumner’s solo show, “Burning Down the House,” features oil paintings the artist began in 2019—eerily ahead of its times with its empty boarded buildings, fires and dumpsters. Exuding an air of abandonment and mysterious wildness, his images are licked by flames creating a sense of attractive but dangerous purging. In 2020, the idea of “burning down” the urban forest’s growth has a more purposeful attraction. The spare palette, with clean realistic execution of his images, creates a viewing experience that is lighter of heart. Dumpster Fire III (2019) is burning hot with destruction, but the orange and gold flames flare against a neon pink, graffiti-strewn wall as brilliant as any California sunset. Burned Out Building (2020) is an ashy, gravestone-gray, but the graffiti written across lower floors is brightly colored; a rainbow of words, the sky a brilliant dark-periwinkle. Internal flames, perhaps the psychedelic, appear the subject in works such as Byzantine Anonyme (2019). Fire destroys but also resurrects. Elander’s exhibition “Our Home” is quite different in subject and approach, but it too speaks of change to the natural world and the dichotomy of its human imprint. In part inspired by incidents from Elander’s childhood—including a raccoon on the roof, a snake in the driveway and coyotes trailing the family on a walk through the neighborhood—these delightful works bring wild creatures into a mid-century modern home simi- Holly Elander, Mantis, 2021, courtesy KP Projects, photo by @birdmanphotos. lar to the house where Elander grew up. The palette is primarily quieter than in any previous series by the artist, although the vivid yellows of pitcher, background and insect in Mantis (2020) belie that. In other works, the background dissolves, leaving us free-floating in personal space. Regardless of palette and background, the visits by natural creatures from owls to wild cats to the coyotes prowling around a living room piano in Composition (2020) are alluring and magical, filled with immediacy, seemingly floating the viewer into the imaginary home. Whimsical and warm, Elander offers a profound and poignant look at man sharing his space with nature. Her message is as simple as the acrylic works are carefully and delicately wrought. We all share the same planet, and all must be welcome.
Miranda Garno Nesler earned her PhD from Vanderbilt University and serves as the director of Women’s Literature & History for Whitmore Rare Books in Pasadena. ARTILLERY: How did you get started in dealing with rare books? GARNO NESLER: Books have always been there for me. Even as a child. I remember going to a vintage bookshop and desperately wanting this copy of Tennyson. It was really because I loved the binding and someone had written notes all throughout it and another person had responded to those notes. Many people say that they love books for the stories that they tell and that also is true for me but my own attraction is tied up in the physicality of books really. The bindings, signatures, inscriptions, notes in the margins, book plates that let you know who owned the book, a loose leaf folded and left inside it: All of these are the signs left by individuals. What is your specific interest in the world of rare books? I am and always will be a specialist in women’s material. My job is to look for print and manuscript material that is written by, for or about women and other marginalized communities. My task is to preserve rare material that otherwise might not survive. Increasingly as I participate in the rare book world, I have come to include more material of POC and the LGBT+ communities because women are often [included] and when they participate, these communities interlock. So my job is about how to find that which speaks to the important histories of these people and then as much as possible get it into the hands of institutions and libraries who can take my research forward, advancing the work of making these things known through exhibitions, continued research and education.
Miranda Garno Nesler INTERVIEWED BY JOHN DAVID O’BRIEN
R E C O N N O I T E R
What is your most satisfying long-term accomplishment in this type of work? It’s a little bit hard to explain but the greatest joy and it’s accomplished over time is actually being able to delve into this field as a dealer and see multiple versions of the same books. I get to physically handle them and compare them. So from a personal point of view that is extremely satisfying and then I can work with the broader community to have these materials saved so they can be accessed and conserved and used. How do you think locating and distributing these books will contribute to making the world a more just and significant place? The world at large generally views the rare book world as a small set of collectors. That is certainly part of the business, but I work primarily with institutions and libraries. Together we are finding collecting and putting these materials in a safe place where they can be used to recount the histories and the stories of others. I think that that is essential to give the world the tools and the voices to make it a more just and significant place.
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