Kaari Upson

Kaari Upson (U.S., 1972–2021) Split Eye, 2012–2017

Single-channel video (HD video, color, sound); 33:44 mins. Henry Art Gallery, purchased with funds from The Buddy Taub Foundation, 2020.6

Chandelier Inversion, 2011

Mixed media

Courtesy The Art Trust created under Kaari Upson Trust and Sprüth Magers

Kaari Upson was a Los Angeles-based conceptual artist best-known for The Larry Project, her extended and obsessive investigation into the life of a man she never met, comprised of works in a variety of media and spanned two decades. In this installation, Upson combines film and sculpture, projecting her haunting film, Split Eye, against the backside of Chandelier Inversion. A sense of imminent threat and claustrophobia pervades the enigmatic film that references Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí’s 1929 Surrealist film Un Chien Andalou, as well as modern psychoanalytic theory through its use of twinning and mirror images. The sculpture itself is part of The Larry Project, an inverted reconstruction of a chandelier that hung in Larry’s home that was made according to photographs Upson took in the private, domestic space before it was destroyed in a fire.