Artillery July-August 2022

Summer

JULY/AUG 2022

Reading

SIMON BIRCH WILLIAM TURNER GALLERY 2525 Michigan Avenue E-1, Santa Monica, CA 90404 www.williamturnergallery.com 310.453.0909

August 6 - September 17, 2022

LAWRENCE GIPE

Top Image: Simon Birch, Shutdown Danger Pink, 2019, oil on canvas, 78.7" x 78.7"

Bottom Image: Larry Gipe, Russian Drone Painting No.6 (Ferris Wheel at Pripyat, 2016), 2021-2022, oil on canvas, 72” x 96”

VIELMETTER LOS ANGELES

Plants Now! July 16 - August 26, 2021 Greenhouse

1700 S Santa Fe Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90021 +1 213 623 3280 vielmetter.com

341 S AVENUE 17 LOS ANGELES 90031

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DANIELA SOBERMAN MEESON PAE ANN WEBER CYBELE ROWE ALICIA PILLER

BEAUTIFUL NOT PRETTY

GRAND-OPENING 5PM - 10PM FRIDAY, JULY 15

OPEN THROUGH AUGUST 19, 2022

Marty Schnapf: Phosphors

July 23 - August 27, 2022

Marty Schnapf, Double Rescue, 2022, Oil on canvas, 72 x 60 inches (Photo by ofstudio)

"LUXURY" A GROUP EXHIBITION

ADJACENT

OPENING

JULY 9

6-9PM

EXHIBITION WILL BE ON VIEW UNTIL AUG 20

MASHGALLERY.COM 812 N LA CIENEGA BLVD WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA 90069

MUSEUM OF LATIN AMERICAN ART

Laura Aguilar (US, 1959 - 2018) Center #99, 2000-2001 Gelatin Silver print Signed and dated by the artist Provenance: Laura Aguilar Trust of 2016 Edition 1/10 MOLAA Collection

Mar 2022 - Aug 2022

Also at MOLAA: Fernando Botero, Oct 2022 - Mar 2023

Narsiso Martínez, Aug 2022 - Jan 2023

Pablo Rasgado, May 2022 - Jan 2023

Virgen de Guadalupe, Oct 2022 - Mar 2023

molaa.org 628 Alamitos Avenue, Long Beach, California 90802

Mary Beierle, View from Bay of Disenchantment 1, Ceramics, glaze, minerals, wood, 2014.

Table of Contents VOLUME 16, ISSUE 6, JULY-AUGUST 2022

28

Summer Reading F E AT U R E S Publication: In the Age of Negation - by john tottenham Tim Youd: Ways of Reading - by tulsa kinney

B O O K

22 32

R E V I E W S

Amir Zaki: Building + Becoming - by christopher michno Portrait of the Artist - by annabel keenan Brave New World: A Graphic Novel - by glenn harcourt Portrait of a Thief - by anne wallentine Poetic Practical: Works of Chris Burden - by catherine yang Serenade: A Balanchine Story - by barbara morris

F E AT U R E D

R E V I E W

Gary Simmons: Hauser & Wirth - by max king cap

C O N T I N U E D

28 30 38 40 42 44

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»

ON THE COVER: Tim Youd, Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, 2017, typewriter ink on paper (one part of a diptych) 17 x 25 in., courtesy Cristin Tierney; see page 32.

ABOVE: Amir Zaki, Concrete Vessel 71, 2019 (detail); courtesy of the artist.

RIGHT: Graphic page detail from Brave New World: A Graphic Novel, adapted and illustrated by Fred Fordham.

NEXT PAGE, Top: Gary Simmons, courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth, photo: Tito Molina/HRDWRKER. Bottom: Takashi Murakami, DOB in the Strange Forest (Blue DOB), 1999, The Broad Art Foundation, ©1999 Takashi Murakami / Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd.

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Table of Contents continued

From the Editor Dear Reader,

46 C O LU M N S ART BRIEF: No Regulations - by stephen j. goldberg, esq DECODER: Back at the Museums - by zak smith SIGHTS UNSCENE: Frieze LA - by lara jo regan BUNKER VISION: Feel-Good Pandemic - by skot armstrong THE DIGITAL: Beeple and Madonna - by seth hawkins

20 24 26 50 58

D E PA R T M E N T S SHOPTALK: LA Art News by scarlet cheng CODE ORANGE: Maureen Bond curated by laura london POEMS by evan evans; john tottenham COMICS: William Blake by butcher & wood

18 60 61 63

R E V I E W S 59th International Venice Biennale Takashi Murakami @ The Broad Roy Dowell @ The Landing Jovencio de la Paz @ Chris Sharp Gallery Known & Understood @ Benton Museum of Art Amelia Carley @ Otra Vox Alison O’Daniel @ Commonwealth & Council Ei Arakawa @ Overduin & Co.

52 54 54 55 55 56 56 57

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My late husband was a historical biographer with four published books; three of them were written during our marriage. It was an eye-opener to live with someone who writes for a living. For one thing, it seemed like he did a lot of nothing. He would oftentimes just sit on our deck and read all day, and he spent hours on end in libraries. While I toiled away, chained to my computer, chasing writers, responding to endless emails, there was my husband, just sitting in our black leather chair—reading! “What are you doing today?” I would ask, and he would always remind me: “I’m working, honey….”

Taking time out of one’s day to read does feel like a luxury.

Our Protestant work ethic frowns on such an activity. But what about someone like LA artist Tim Youd? He reads books, then rereads them while retyping them for his art? I think I’d have a fit if I was his wife!

One of Youd’s “finished novels” appears on the cover of our Summer Reading issue. In April, I flew out to Nebraska to visit Tim and watch him perform in Red Cloud, retyping The Song of the Lark, by Willa Cather. Having close contact with him, the Willa Cather Center staff—and most of all, The Prairie—made the experience of reading Cather incomparable. If I had access to the location and surroundings of every novel I read, my reading pleasure would be that much more meaningful. Tim’s performances, which took me to the various spots of Cather’s upbringing, elicited a deeper comprehension of the author and her story. Youd impresses upon his audience what it might feel like to spend one’s entire day with a book. He starts every morning fresh for a new day of reading. The only time I feel like I can do that is when I’m on vacation.

I invite you to read (when you have the time) about Youd’s 100 pilgrimages to authors’ haunts as he retypes their novels and how he came to start this unique and formidable project. Please take a gander at other worthy items in this issue.

Writer/artist John Tottenham treats us to his tribulations in the publishing industry. There are some big laughs to be had in his essay, which will continue as a featured online series, keeping us abreast of his efforts to get his novel into print.

The books we are reviewing also make for richly rewarding summer reading: Brave New World: The Graphic Novel, reviewed by Glenn Harcourt, reminds us how prescient Aldous Huxley was and demands a must-re-read (with pictures this time around). Another good read about the late great LA guru conceptual artist Chris Burden is out now: Poetic Practical. All of Burden’s unrealized projects are in this book, attesting to how he was always ahead of his time.

So, this summer, take a book on your plane flight; bring along a copy for your camping trip; lug a novel to lounge by the pool. Whatever it takes, read a book. No matter what time of day.

June 19– September 11, 2022

Los Angeles Free Admission hammer.ucla.edu UNKNOWN MAKER, JAPAN, MOON-SHAPED RABBIT, 18TH CENTURY. IVORY WITH STAINING, SUMI. 1 7∕8 × 1 5∕8 × 1 IN. (4.8 × 4.1 × 2.5 CM). LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART, RAYMOND AND FRANCES BUSHELL COLLECTION.

F E AT U R E D

C O N T R I B U TO R S John Tottenham’s prose has been described as “magnanimous misanthropy,” “magical cynicism,” and “an acquired taste that’s for everybody.” His oratorial stylings include elements of poetry, stand-up and amplified self-deprecation.

Christopher Michno has written about contemporary art for Artillery, KCET’s Artbound, and LALA magazine.

S TA F F

Tulsa Kinney Editor/Publisher EDITORIAL Bill Smith - creative director Max King Cap - senior editor John Tottenham - copy editor/poetry editor John Seeley - copy editor/proof Dave Shulman - graphic design Frances Cocksedge - editorial assistant Olivia Fishman - editorial intern

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Ezrha Jean Black, Laura London, Tucker Neel, John David O’Brien

COLUMNISTS Skot Armstrong, Anthony Ausgang, Scarlet Cheng, Stephen J. Goldberg, Lauren Guilford, Seth Hawkins, Lara Jo Regan, Zak Smith

CONTRIBUTORS

Annabel Keenan is a New Yorkbased writer specializing in contemporary art, sustainability, and market reporting. Her work has been published in The Art Newspaper, Hyperallergic, Brooklyn Rail, and Cultured Magazine. She received an MA from the Bard Graduate Center.

Max King Cap is a former firefighter whose work has been seen in galleries and museums in the US and Europe and awarded by Creative Capital and Artadia. He has an MFA from the University of Chicago and a doctorate from the University of Southern California.

Emily Babette, Lane Barden, Ezrha Jean Black, Natasha Boyd, Betty Ann Brown, Susan Butcher & Carol Wood, Kate Caruso, Bianca Collins, Shana Nys Dambrot, Genie Davis, David DiMichele, Alexia Lewis, Richard Allen May III, Christopher Michno, Yxta Maya Murray, Barbara Morris, John David O’Brien, Carrie Paterson, Leanna Robinson, Julie Schulte, Eli Ståhl, Allison Strauss, Cole Sweetwood, Colin Westerbeck, Eve Wood, Jody Zellen NEW YORK: Arthur Bravo, Annabel Keenan, Sarah Sargent, Catherine Yang

ADMINISTRATION Anna Bagirov - sales Mitch Handsone - new media director Emma Christ - associate communications editor Rocie Carrillo - production intern

ADVERTISING Anna Bagirov - print sales Mitch Handsone - web sales Artillery, PO Box 26234, LA, CA 90026 213.250.7081, editor@artillerymag.com advertising: 408.531.5643, anna@artillerymag.com; editorial:

ARTILLERYMAG.COM Anne Wallentine is a writer, editor, and art historian based in Los Angeles. She gained her master’s from the Courtauld Institute of Art. Socials if they’re useful: @awallintime

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17

S H O P TA L K Right: Frank Romero, The Arrest of the Paleteros, 1996 Below: Interior of The Cheech; both images courtesy of the Riverside Art Museum

The Cheech Is Here While many museums are opening exhibitions long delayed by COVID, one is unveiling a completely renovated building with a new focus. That would be the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture, or The Cheech, in Riverside. Part of the Riverside Art Museum, it opened June 18 in a renovated Modernist building, formerly a public library, at a cost of $13 million.

The two inaugural shows are wonderful introductions to Chicano art. “Cheech Collects” (through June 18, 2023) is a selection of 120 works from Marin’s collection, both from his gift of 500 works to the museum and the approximately 200 he retained. As a third-generation Mexican American, this art spoke to him. Four decades ago, when he first began collecting, the field was new and considered offbeat. “Other museums, they didn’t know what it was,” Marin said during the preview. “You can’t love or hate Chicano art till you see it. We need more people to see it.” He also believes that Chicano artists will be encouraged seeing these works in a museum. The sentiment was echoed by Sandy Rodriguez, one of the artists in the show. “To be able to come to a museum and see generations of Chicano art,” she said, “is absolutely stunning.”

The sections are arranged thematically, such as portraits and abstraction, but I found the flow was seamless. One of the most striking portraits is that of Marin himself, in a medium-sized painting by Eloy Torrez, titled It’s a Brown World After All. Casually dressed in a polo shirt with a jaunty paper crown atop his head, Marin appears against a background of a turbulent bay, with seagulls floating in the air. Another favorite is Frank Romero’s The Arrest of the Paleteros, a large narrative painted

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in a Magic Realist style, this one rooted in the reality of LA Police arresting vendors for selling ice pops. In the background are palm trees and Echo Park, looking a bit as if on fire. Other artists include Patssi Valdez, Carlos Almaraz, Judithe Hernández and Gilbert “Magú” Luján.

Don’t miss the other exhibition, on the second floor, the riotous “Collidoscope,” a retrospective of the brothers Einar and Jamex de la Torre, who often use art glass and readymade objects in their sculpture and assemblages. A centerpiece of the show is the epic installation Colonial Atmosphere, with a giant Olmec head as a lunar lander, interweaving themes of pre-colonial Mexican art with contemporary pop culture. More recently the artists have been creating giant lenticulars, playing off Catholic altars and iconography.

At the end of the preview presentation, Riverside Mayor Patricia Lock Dawson presented Marin with the key to the city— he seemed genuinely pleased to get it.

BY

S CA R L E T

C H E N G

More Cultural Treaures We often forget what a wealth of art and culture the museums, libraries and universities of the greater Los Angeles area hold.

Several more excellent exhibitions opened recently—three of them drawing from the institution’s own collection.

At The Huntington, “100 Great British Drawings” (through Sept. 5) just opened. Intended to celebrate the museum’s 100th anniversary in 2020, it’s now two years late, and you know why.

Curated by Melinda McCurdy, this is a kind of top hits of British drawing and watercolor from The Huntington’s own collection, which totals 12,000 works and is considered the best collection in this field outside Britain. Honestly, who knew? The show focuses on work from the 17th through the mid-20th centuries, and it’s a knockout. Don’t miss the very creepy William Blake illustration for Milton’s Paradise Lost, showing the battle between Satan and his son Death with a sad Sin (as a female figure, natch) in between them.

In Midtown LACMA is actively programming the Broad Art Museum and the Resnick Pavilion, as the older sections lie in rubble. I had a glimpse of the ruins one afternoon when the gates were open, and it was sad. In the Resnick are two fascinating and also rather complementary shows, “Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800” (through Oct. 30) and “The Portable Universe: Thought and Splendor of Indigenous Colombia” (through Oct. 2). The first comprises some 90 objects from LACMA’s growing collection of Spanish American art, including paintings, textiles, and objects and furnishings.

Highlights include a chalice in intricate silver metalwork, incorporating bird feathers in small decorative inserts around the base.

I was charmed by one painting by Miguel Cabrera showing a Spanish father and mixed-raced mother, embracing an albino child (their child), in a genre known as “casta” painting. While these paintings seem to exoticize life in the “New World,” they were also very sympathetic to interracial families.

“The Portable Universe” is a deep dive into the ancient arts of Colombia—400 objects including sculptures, carvings and metalwork, many of them loans from the Museo del Oro in Bogota. Sounds and music float through the air here, and no dates are on the individual labels, giving us the sense of timelessness.

At first, I found this a bit irritating—not right for a museum—but finally I stopped being so analytical and just enjoyed looking at object after object.

Other shows worth taking in are in Westwood and up Ventura way. At the Hammer Museum “Drawing Down the Moon” (till Sept. 11) draws from its own collection and from other LA institutions. Curated by Allegra Pesenti, the show is a witty look at how artists have viewed our nearest celestial neighbor, the Moon. Meanwhile, one of my favorite artists Lynn Hanson, has a show through July 10 at the Santa Paula Art Museum­—a small gem of a museum in a charming town. “Fieldnotes” reflects three decades of her drawings and watercolors—the small ones made as she took her daily walks along the Pacific Coast. I especially love her charcoal drawings of birds, snakes and octopi on antique maps, floating over the land as if they’re reclaiming some of what’s been taken from them.

Drawing Down the Moon: Unknown maker, Japan, Moon-Shaped Rabbit, 18th century. Ivory with staining, sumi. 1 7/8 × 1 5/8 × 1 in. (4.8 × 4.2 × 2.5 cm). Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Raymond and Frances Bushell Collection Drawing Down the Moon: Alison Saar, Eclipse, 2017. Etching, aquatint.

Sheet: 18 × 18 in. (45.7 × 45.7 cm). UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, Hammer Museum. Purchased with funds provided by the Marcia Weisman Endowment Fund © 2017 Alison Saar 100 Great British Drawings: William Blake (1757–1827), Hecate or The Night of Enitharmon’s Joy, 1795. Planographic color print with pen and ink and watercolor on wove paper, 16 3/8 x 22 in. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.

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Regulation Ends at Art Auctions

BY STEPHEN J. GOLDBERG, ESQ.

A R T

B R I E F

Andy Warhol, Shot Sage Blue Marilyn, 1964, silkscreen and acrylic on linen, 40 x 40 inches; photo courtesy Christie’s Images, Ltd.

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The record prices set at the Spring auctions in New York, such as the sale of Warhol’s 1964 silkscreen, Shot Sage Blue Marilyn, that sold for $195 million, diverted attention from the shocking announcement for the city to deregulate its multi-billion dollar auction business—finalized just a week before the hammers fell at the widely watched showrooms of Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips.

COVID has decimated businesses around the city, with many neighborhoods suffering 30% storefront vacancies. In an effort to mitigate the business slowdown, the city council acted to cut red tape and fees on dozens of business categories, including outdoor cafes, amusement arcades and laundries.

The city’s omnibus package of cuts on regulations, fees and fines runs over 100 pages. Buried in the ordinance is the repeal of all secondary art regulations on auctions, including licensing, chandelier biding (use of fictitious bids), providing estimates below the reserve price, and disclosing whether the house has a financial interest in the item being offered. These rules were enacted 30 years ago to deal with abuses by auctioneers. While most of the sweeping new deregulation was intended for relief of struggling small businesses, the city disregarded the fact that the city’s three major international auction houses and the many mid-size auctioneers are far from small businesses.

The major houses expressed surprise at the repeal of auction rules. Christie’s and Phillips were quick to say they would continue to voluntarily comply with the regulations (Sotheby’s said it was studying the matter). Some New York art lawyers were quoted in the media as opposing the abolition of regulations on the basis that it might undermine buyer trust and confidence in the auction process. I agree. The city was careless in lumping auction houses into the broad small business relief act. New York officials pushed back, claiming that existing consumer protection laws such as the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) would provide enough protection for buyers.

California has few regulations of auctioneers. There is no licensing requirement, other than the posting of a $20,000 bond. The good news is that California has stronger consumer protection laws than most states. The bad news is that when it comes to auctions in California the major houses are absent, except for some Beverly Hills showrooms displaying art masterpieces to be sold in New York, London or Hong Kong—but not here. That’s surprising, considering California has more billionaires than New York. Art auctioneers in Los Angeles consist of Bonham’s and two smaller outfits—Los Angeles Modern Auctions and Santa Monica Auctions. With the influx of at least seven major New York galleries, including super-gallerist David Zwirner to the booming La Brea/Highland gallery district and the success of art fairs such as the annual Frieze LA and Felix, maybe some of the big New York houses will give LA a try.

This is clearly the year the art business dodged a couple of bullets. As a recent Art Brief column reported, a US Senate subcommittee held hearings on whether art transactions needed stiffer regulations. The subcommittee did a case study of Russian oligarchs finding that they laundered money through purchases of art via shell companies. The lawmakers considered making sales of art more transparent by strengthening disclosure requirements. The subcommittee undertook this study after Congress toughened disclosures on antiquities dealers where looting and smuggling were rampant.

The subcommittee had been expected to issue similar reporting requirements for art dealers. However, art dealers can breathe easier as the committee ended its inquiry by rejecting any additional regulations. The most opaque asset class in the world remains untouched for now.

There were new developments in another story this magazine has been tracking. In May, a federal court granted summary judgment to Ace Gallery bankruptcy trustee Sam Leslie, ordering Ace’s former owner Douglas Chrismas to pay more than $14 million to the Ace bankruptcy estate. The bankruptcy dates back to 2013 when Chrismas filed to stave off a lawsuit for millions owed in back rent—justice treads with leaden feet, indeed. The funds were found to be sales profits that were diverted to two companies Chrismas personally controlled prior to Leslie taking over Ace and ousting Chrismas in 2016. Leslie also discovered that Chrismas had moved about 60 Ace-owned works into his private storage locker before he was pushed out. Last July, Chrismas was indicted for allegedly embezzling $260,000 from the Ace bankruptcy estate.

He faces a maximum of 15 years in prison if convicted on all charges.

Luna Anaïs Gallery presents

SUNDAYS IN LAKE LA Daniela García Hamilton

Sep 4-Oct 23, 2022 Artist Talk: October 2 Credit: The Look out, 162nd St East. Ballpoint pen and Acrylic on paper. 22x30 in. 2022

www.lunanais.com @lunaanaisgallery 323-474-9319

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PU B L I CAT I O N

I N

T H E

AG E

O F

N E G AT I O N

Humility and Humiliation

BY JOHN TOTTENHAM

Perhaps you remember me…

No, that wasn’t right. It was senseless to open a letter of entreaty by suggesting that I was forgettable, especially when I knew only too well that the party in question would remember me.

Hello Charlie, it’s your old friend here…

No, that was too presumptuous: only his friends addressed him by that diminutive. I had met Charles a few times at social gatherings; our brief exchanges had been awkward, and I always got the impression that he was itching to get away from me so that he could talk to somebody more successful.

Hello Charles...

I didn’t like the sound of that either. There was something both wheedling and slightly invasive about that “Hello.” It bespoke an over-awareness of the rejection I was inevitably courting by penning this missive of reintroduction. But maybe I was reading too much into it, and he probably wouldn’t be reading anything into it.

Hello…

But I never opened a communication with “Hello” or “Hi.” Anachronistic as it was—a throwback to epistolary days—I usually opened my emails with “Dear.”

Dear Charles…

Charles Wersing certainly wasn’t dear to me; in fact, I regarded him as the enemy. He was a “gatekeeper” of the literary establishment, and he stood firmly in the way of the likes of me.

But let it ride for the moment, I needed to get this thing started.

I hope that you haven’t been temporarily blinded by the delight of seeing my name in your mailbox…

No, that wouldn’t do at all: a facetious allusion to any awkwardness that might exist between us wasn’t going to do me any

Enough of the disingenuous groveling, for fuck’s sake; he should feel honored to receive a solicitation from me. Get straight to the point…

I’ll get straight to the point. I finally acknowledged that I had no grasp of plot, character or dialogue, and decided to write a novel, and that’s mostly what I’ve been working on for the last four years. While writing the novel one of my greatest concerns was that once it was finished I wouldn’t do anything about getting it published, and much as I feared, that is turning out to be the case. If I put one percent of the amount of time and care into putting it out there as I put into the work itself, then I might get somewhere. But I find it hard to do even that much.

That wasn’t getting straight to the point, and I was laying on the self-deprecation too thickly. I could hear Charles sighing with impatience as he waded through this irrelevant preamble.

He didn’t need to know about all that; he’d heard it all before.

It would probably be fairly easy to get it published by a local small press but the nature of the work dictates that it requires the validation of a reputable imprint, or at least a good independent press. If you read it, you’d see what I meant—but don’t worry, I’m not going to subject you to that.

He didn’t need to hear about that either, and the suggestion that it was within my power to subject him to anything had to be removed.

I’m not even going to attempt to subject you to that…

But it was true that the nature of the work demanded that it should be published by a reputable press. If it was published by a small press, it would look petty; if it was published by a major press, it would look less petty. And that “fairly easy” made me uneasy: Perhaps it wouldn’t be “fairly easy” to get it published by

I’ll get straight to the point. I finally acknowledged that I had no grasp of plot, character or dialogue, and decided to write a novel, and that’s mostly what I’ve been working on for the last four years. favors. Despite the fact that he’d never shown any interest in me or my work, and had walked away from me at parties, Charles Wersing had always snubbed me suavely. He was a man of polished manners, who used his politeness as a weapon, as might be expected of a highly successful New York literary agent; and we did have a mutual friend whom Charles respected enough that a courteous reply, at least, would be guaranteed, even if it was a courteous rejection. So tone it down a bit, be friendly…

Since we haven’t corresponded in five years, the time has come to bug you again…

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a small press; perhaps I was deceiving myself about that.

Since my hopes haven’t yet been crushed, I thought why not start at the top—which is why I’m writing to you—and work my way down.

This arbiter of taste had already had so much smoke blown up his ass that a fire alarm went off every time he broke wind. The flattery sounded weak and insincere, and it was.

I realize that you must be exhausted from the polite pesterings of needy scribblers and that the sight of a fresh solicitation in your mailbox might induce at the very least a sinking feeling.

Illustration by Adam Roth

I know you get pestered a lot owing to your benevolent nature and I don’t want to add to your burden…

What’s this crap about his benevolent nature? From what I’ve witnessed, there’s nothing remotely benevolent about him. He’s one of the top literary agents in New York, which virtually guarantees that he’s not a nice guy. He’s not in the business out of a devotion to fine literature. If he, or one of his assistants, senses sales potential in a book, he’ll get behind it. And I do want to add to his burden, although I almost certainly won’t be granted that opportunity: my book lacks the sort of mainstream appeal he’s looking for. Maybe I was going into this with the wrong attitude, but this wasn’t my first go-round with upscale literary agents—and they were all upscale, it came with the territory. I knew the nature of the beast: I knew their habits and their habitats; I knew what they wanted, and I knew that I didn’t have what they wanted, but I did want to be published by a reputable press owing to the work in question, in which I’d revealed (and exaggerated) too much of my lower nature. There was no point agonizing over crafting a letter that was destined for rejection, just dash something off…

I’ll probably end up settling for less but at present—having not yet been completely demoralized by rejection, and having put very little effort into the quest—I’m still harboring the perhaps unrealistic hopes of being published by a maj…

Why should I settle for “less” and why should my hopes be “unrealistic?” I’ve seen what’s out there. My work doesn’t compare unfavorably with any of it. Why place myself in a subordinate position?

To be honest, in my humble opinion the book could become a contemporary classic if it receives the right kind of handling and exposure…

Now I was laying the self-confidence on too heavily, and overdoing the inadequacy/grandiosity contrast. Of course, I’m going to be confident about my own work, but that confidence isn’t likely to rub off on a veteran literary agent who’s heard it all before. And why say “to be honest?” That made it sound as if I hadn’t been honest up until that point.

I don’t want to take up too much of your time, that increasingly precious substance…

Oh, fuck this. As if his time was so precious. He was probably

out on the town, being wined and dined by one of his successful clients. Did Pen Shawn have to abase himself like this in order to get his execrable novel published? The same doors that were thrown wide open to an actor with literary pretensions are firmly closed to somebody who has spent a lifetime honing his craft and finally has a work of definite quality to offer.

Charles had recently secured a publishing deal for Pen Shawn with a major house, a feat that would have been impossible were it not for the author’s renown in another field of the arts—as Shawn’s first novel, from the little I had been able to read of it, was unreadable, and would never be considered salable were it not for the name attached to it: that of a famous actor who desperately wanted to be taken seriously as a writer.

Since Charles had arranged to get Shawn’s novel published, it was reasonable to assume that he had read it. But perhaps that formality had been dispensed with in this special case and he had automatically given it the green light owing to the author’s impeccable thespian credentials. This scenario seemed highly plausible.

What was the point of spending hours on end crafting a letter that, if responded to at all, would be groaned over for a few seconds before a practiced perfunctory reply was whipped off, accompanied by a profound wish to never be heard from again?

I knew the answer to that question: There was no point.

I had spent four years working on something with no promise of remuneration or manifestation, which in itself would strike most people as an act of madness. If it was a hobby that I had been engaged in, like gardening, the reward would lie in the personal pleasure that one derived from the task, but I liked to think it was more than that.

Just get it over with; he probably won’t even read it all the way through…

I understand that my novel may not be the sort of thing you normally handle, and if this is so I was wondering if you might know of any agents or publishers that might be receptive to the first novel by a blossoming middle-aged talent.

Throw in some fluff about how delightful it would be to see him again, insert the synopsis, and that would do nicely…

To be continued: Part 2 of this ongoing account will appear on the Artillery website. Artillerymag.com.

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BY ZAK SMITH

D E C O D E R

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Illustration by Zak Smith

Pictures of Sailing Ships or the People that Owned them

Months back, when the pandemic was still running strong, I wrote about how much I wanted to go to a museum—even a mediocre one. Well, now I can and I did and I remembered that most things are bad. We can do whatever we want again, including wonder why we choose to do it.

Though sometimes art is good, it usually isn’t. This has been true throughout history but, also throughout history, the edge has traditionally been taken off this state of affairs by art exhibitions having some kind of social purpose. “It may just be another bull running from a guy shooting arrows,” the paleolithic critics used to say between sips of stale yak milk “but at least it gives us all an opportunity to get out to the cave.”

For a long time this social purpose was frankly religious or statist—there was a statue of a great man or an archangel. Even if it sucked, it was still George Washington and you were supposed to know what he looked like and that he could be impressive—and on a horse. Eventually a further purpose developed—social and commercial business was increasingly going down in larger and larger rooms and art was needed to decorate them. Parlors, salons and chambers of all kinds were expected to have pictures of sailing ships, dogs or the people who owned them—paintings filled the walls, statues gathered in the corners, and these announced that the spaces they occupied were both safe and spoken for. In this way, art was a force for civilization in the most crass and middle-class terms: it announced these spaces were attempting to be civil. You didn’t have to look at the art, just being around it was enough to establish your status as a non-ruffian.

While modernity brought with it forces that would bring these assumptions into doubt, the forces themselves settled, often unconsciously, on a new answer to the question of the purpose of exhibiting art. The self-consciously bohemian classes realized that they couldn’t talk about revolution at work, that they shouldn’t talk at all during Godard movies, that they couldn’t hear each other at Pink Floyd concerts, and that when they were home watching TV there was no one listening, so they needed to find entertainments that were neither loud, nor immersive, nor convenient. Art shows filled the bill. For approximately 100 years they became an extension of cafe society, a place to broadly advance the project of being well-educated with a funny haircut while hating (or at least hating-on) capitalism, and the art increasingly reflected that stance in form and content.

Often the art was much more fun to talk about than look at, but the people who liked it were okay with that. Insofar as art sat like a mute centerpiece at the table of the chattering classes’ social and intellectual ambitions, it was doing a job they needed done.

Nowadays, however, when you can not only talk to all your friends and thousands of strangers about defunding the police, organizing your mutual aid society and planning your performance/rave/happening while watching TV but you can see every piece in every art show in full color without leaving your couch, it seems like the social role of shows is due for another revision.

One of the many questions NFTs raise is, really, what counts as “looking” at a piece of art and how much do you really have to do it to receive what it has to give?

When I’m out at a show I am definitely looking at the thing and I am—if the people around me are ones I trust very much with absolutely no social connection to the artists—going to tell them what I think about it but …we could be doing that at my place. About not just what we saw that day but about anything ever made. “Do you know Chavelet? Well let me google him.” I am not saying there’s no reason to go to a show—I am simply saying there are fewer and fewer unique ones.

Maybe art shows won’t have a social role anymore—maybe they should cultivate an anti-social role. Maybe we need art to lean into its ability to disconnect us from what everyone else wants us to care about: No longer the twice-life-size marble Virgin at the far end of the block-long museum queue, but unknown shrines off unmarked dirt roads, dedicated to gods unknown.

august 13 through october 23, 2022

Steph Sydney

Karchi Perlmann

HABITAT: WHERE LIVING THINGS LIVE

CODE

Exhibiting photographers, Steph Sydney and Karchi Perlmann, utilize the lens as a form of communication to depict experiences within an environment. While Sydney’s images reveal a relationship between man-made objects and their environment, Perlmann explores an image through code deconstruction and alteration. Both artists examine the physical or virtual disruption of a subject.

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Two Guys in Guest Lounge at Frieze Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, 2022

FREDERICK WIGHT: TIME AND PLACE JUNE 25 — AUGUST 6, 2022

SOLITARY SAGUARO, 1984, OIL ON CANVAS, 48 X 54 INCHES; 121.9 X 137.2 CENTIMETERS

LOUIS STERN FINE ARTS 9002 MELROSE AVENUE / WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA 90069 / 310 276 0147 / LOUISSTERNFINEARTS.COM

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A MEASURED COOLNESS Building + Becoming by Amir Zaki REVIEWED BY CHRISTOPHER MICHNO

The works of Amir Zaki subtly subverts analog photography’s long-held truth claims. His photography, surveyed in the newly published artist book Building + Becoming, addresses the artist’s digital manipulation and, setting aside the medium’s presumed objectivity and fidelity to representation, invites the question, “to what end”?

Illuminated by two texts, “Stealing Light,” a conversation with Corrina Peipon, and “Addition by Subtraction,” an essay by Jennifer Ashton and Walter Benn Michaels, Building + Becoming explores Zaki’s formation as an artist, touches briefly on biographical notes and artistic lineage and examines his process while engaging in critical dialog. Ashton and Michaels also analyze the technological and post-production practices integral to Zaki’s images. At the core of their inquiry is the apparent contradiction in his claim of the Modernist tradition, via Edward Weston, and his use of a Gigapan device, which enables him to take a series of adjacent photos and stitch them together with software, resulting in works that defy the singular perspective associated with Modernist photography.

Computational imaging—to paraphrase a definition given by researcher and computational photography pioneer Marc Levoy, the use of computational methods to produce photographs that could not have been taken by a traditional camera—presents an alternate framework for considering Zaki’s technology-assisted creation of large-scale, information-saturated photographs.

The monograph is full of meticulously printed photographs that are just as beguiling and seductive as I know them to be in person, though on a reduced scale. One of the notions I have harbored—a notion the artist sidestepped when I interviewed him in 2019 about his “Empty Vessel” series (photos of California skateparks and broken ceramic vessels)—is that his work offers images of iconic California settings, which are complicated by the subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, alterations introduced through post-production editing.

In his conversation with Peipon, Zaki rejects what he calls the cynicism, hollowness and political and moralistic overtones of postmodernism. Though this description lacks definition, there is a point there about work that delivers straightforward political punchlines rather than examining the complexities and apparent contradictions of something, or engaging in open-ended inquiry. But inherent in any conversation on whether politics should influence art, or vice versa, is the question of what art can do, or what one wants their work to do.

In responding to Zaki’s work, I find myself oscillating between the sensuousness of his photographs and my own desire for art to be revolutionary—that is, for art to engage in conversations that challenge and alter individuals, society and politics, for art to be at the core of vigorous debate. I see in Zaki’s work—in

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Building + Becoming

By Amir Zaki 272 pages X Artists’ Books and DoppelHouse Press several of his series—a measured coolness, which combined with his explicit editing, complicates the images beyond mere manifestations of desire, as Zaki claims for them in conversation with Peipon. Think of the imposing bellies of houses (Untitled (OH_19X), 2004) perched on hillsides without support columns in his “Spring Through Winter” series, or the crumbling or close to it beachside cliffs with what appear to be private beach-access staircases (Coastline Cliffside 16, 2012, or Coastline Cliffside 22, 2012) in “Time Moves Still.” These photographs produce a kind of estrangement from the familiar and propose a darker, grittier reality that lies beyond the idyllic vision. Even while evoking Weston’s neoclassicism (“Time Moves Still,” “Formal Matter” and other series), Zaki’s photographs form a kind of speculative work. Further, they suggest a deconstruction of the attainability of success, as a state that is either just out of reach or threatening to come crashing down. As theorist and critic Fredric Jameson notes in Archaeologies of the Future, speculative vernacular creates space for a nuanced critique of social conventions, structures and politics.

Ashton and Michaels discuss Zaki’s use of technology at length.

Other artists creating photographic works with technology and information systems have done so more directly to activate critique or commentary. For example, Jenny O’Dell’s “Satellite Collections” and “Satellite Landscapes” shift the point of view to planetary systems. Doug Rickard’s “A New American Picture” series, taken from Google Street View, relies on the ubiquity of Google to comment on racial inequity and privacy issues.

Arguably, all three, diverse as they are, find common lineage in Bernd and Hilla Becher’s work and in photography’s use as a conceptual strategy, as seen in Ed Ruscha’s Some Los Angeles Apartments and other series. That extends to the New Topographics artists, whom Zaki counts in his lineage (specifically the Bechers, Joe Deal and Lewis Baltz), and who also moved photography beyond the singular image and mythologizing of Weston’s neoclassicism, into the realm of documentary, taxonomies and social critique. But the contemporary moment is full of images and objects that occupy both sensuous and revolutionary spaces, simultaneously.

“Amir Zaki: On Being There” at Diane Rosenstein Gallery in Los Angeles runs through July 16, 2022.

Visit artillerymag.com to see Christopher Michno’s interview

Untitled (OH_19X), 2004

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HEARTFELT MOMENTS

Portrait of an Artist by Hugo Huerta Marin REVIEWED BY ANNABEL KEENAN

What exactly is a portrait? In art, “portrait” is generally understood to mean a visual likeness or representation. One could argue that a photographic portrait captures this visual likeness more closely than would a painting or drawing. It is also possible to create a literary portrait. Embracing this multiplicity of the word, author and photographer Hugo Huerta Marin presents Portrait of an Artist, a gripping book of candid Polaroids and captivating interviews with 25 creative women, including visual arts titans like Tracey Emin and Kiki Smith, and legendary actresses like Cate Blanchett and Uma Thurman.

Created over a seven-year period beginning with Marina Abromavi , whose studio Huerta Marin joined in 2014 as art director, Portrait of an Artist captures heartfelt moments of self-reflection, as well as deeper, thought-provoking conversations on political and social issues. With fascinating anecdotes and insightful commentary, the interviews make the book difficult to put down.

Reading the artists’ words and seeing their stories evolve is a joy.

A highlight of the book is the interview with Carrie Mae Weems, which includes her personal account of making her most famous body of work, The Kitchen Table (1990). In this black-and-white photographic series, Weems acts as her own subject, donning different outfits as people cycle through the images, all taken from the end of a long, wooden table in the artist’s kitchen. A single light hangs overhead, illuminating the sitters below as they engage in moments of intimacy, sadness, frustration and introspection.

Weems tells Huerta Marin how the photographs were created at a time when she was teaching college students. Frequent conversations about the male gaze in art made her question how young women were thinking about themselves. At the same time, Weems noted how Black bodies and Black women specifically were absent from art theory in general. “I thought about the ways the gaze could be focused, could be challenged, could be re-contextualized to bring in Black bodies…it was a wonderful endeavor. It was as though all the lightbulbs were turned on and I had a sense of clarity,” she said (p.108).

In some shining moments of the book, Huerta Marin gives a snapshot of various periods of the art, film, fashion and music Above, top to bottom: Yoko Ono, New York, 2016; Agnès Varda, Paris, 2018.

Oppposite page: Carrie Mae Weems, Brooklyn, 2018.

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industries in general. The late Agnès Varda describes writing and directing her first film, La Pointe Courte (1955), at the age of 25 and how excited the locals were to be featured in the film without pay, “It was possible to do that back in the fifties,” Varda said (p.405). Yoko Ono reminisces about her iconic “loft concerts” of the 1960s in which she invited artists and musicians to freely express themselves in her New York City apartment that she rented for $50.50 a month. Diane Von Fürstenberg describes sexual freedom, her friendship with Andy Warhol and the party-filled art hub of New York in the 1970s. Tracey Emin remembers life in London in the 1990s, as a member of the Young British Artists, staying out until 5 am and getting up at 10 am the next day: “I can’t believe we got any work done” (p.157).

From a technical standpoint, the book gives valuable insight into the art of conducting an interview. Huerta Marin asks specific queries tailored to the sitter’s practice, as well as a handful of similar questions for several of the artists. Questions such as “What are your thoughts on the rise of the artist as celebrity?” and “What are your thoughts on the big international art fairs?” reveal the broad extent to which the artists’ opinions vary. Responding to the latter, Weems calls the market surrounding fairs obscene, while Shirin Neshat expresses the value of such a stage

Portrait of an Artist

By Hugo Huerta Marin 424 pages Prestel for an artist’s career. Emin echoes both sentiments, describing her experience representing Great Britain in the Venice Biennale as “amazing on the one hand, but somehow soul-destroying on the other” (p.162).

Some of the most beautiful parts of the book come from questions that are wholly unrelated to art. Huerta Marin often asks, “Do you have any recurring dreams?” While many answers reveal high levels of stress and anxiety, Yoko Ono’s answer is as poetic as expected: “That this world will become a peaceful place” (p.148). Such moments are poignant reminders of the artists’ humanity.

Portrait of an Artist is intimate, personal and inspiring. The sitters’ comfort is clear and comes through in their heartfelt honesty. Huerta Marin skillfully manages to make deep connections with each of the 25 trailblazing women, pushing the boundaries of what it means to create a portrait.

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Ways of Reading

On the Road with Tim Youd’s 100 Novels Project

BY TULSA KINNEY

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When I first encountered Tim Youd, he was sitting at a metal table outside an art gallery in Chinatown, tap-tap-tapping away on a portable typewriter, just minding his own business. Most of the crowd didn’t pay him much mind either.

Earlier that summer, Youd found himself on the flatbed of a pickup truck parked in front of LA’s Terminal Annex Post Office retyping Charles Bukowski’s Post Office on an Underwood typewriter. That was in July of 2013 and proved to be a precursor to the LA performance artist’s ongoing “100 Novels Project” series, in which Youd visits the settings of one hundred novels and retypes them in their entirety on the same model typewriter that was used for the original composition. The Bukowski performance would become number 7, marking the beginning of these literary pilgrimages that would take Youd all over the world.

Now, almost a decade later, I’m in Red Cloud, Nebraska, to watch Youd (pronounced you’d) perform a retyping of Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark. Speaking of larks: Could Youd have ever imagined his project taking him this far, literarily and geographically?

“I think that’s the great good fortune that I have happened upon,” Youd tells me over an espresso at the one coffee shop in Red Cloud, a small prairie town of around 1000 souls. We’re marveling at his journey thus far. Just name any well-known American author—been there, retyped that: Kurt Vonnegut, Upton Sinclair, Jack Kerouac, William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Tom Wolfe.

Cather’s The Song of the Lark is number 72—only 28 more to go. What can 10 years of intense drive and dedication possibly mean at this point, other than perhaps I’m talking to a well-read

madman. “This thing has become way more expansively meaningful to me than I could have ever imagined in the first couple of retypings,” Youd exclaims, pondering the meaning of it all. “It’s become my whole life. It’s become everything.”

Willa Cather & Red Cloud I took it upon myself to read some Willa Cather before I went to see Youd perform, starting with O Pioneers!, then moving on to The Song of the Lark. I was quickly hooked, and going to Cather’s Nebraska hometown made the read that much more meaningful. Red Cloud was Youd’s second stop of “The Prairie Trilogy,” aptly named for his literary pilgrimage to three Nebraska cities: Lincoln, Red Cloud and Omaha, inspired by Cather’s own Plains Trilogy: O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, My Antonia, all books highlighting the presence of the Great Plains, a landscape that had an undeniable influence on Cather throughout her formative years and young adult life.

The National Willa Cather Center in Red Cloud (co-sponsors of The Prairie Trilogy project) hosted my stay in the tastefully restored historic building. When I arrived late in the evening, Candace Moeller, director of the Cristin Tierney gallery in New York (who represents Youd and are co-sponsors of the project), was at the center, waiting for me along with Youd. Mueller bought two bottles of wine and whipped up a pasta and salad. Youd had finished a day of typing. I’d just come from LA. It was a perfect way to end the evening with so much mirth at the kitchen table.

Previous spread: Youd typing in the Cather Prairie, photo by Tracy Tucker. Above: Elizabeth Bishop’s The Complete Poems, 1927–1979, 2018, courtesy Cristin Tierney.

Opposite page: Typewriter Youd used for Cather novels: Oliver No. 3 with “wings” from 1898.

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Our conversation always circled back to reading and literature, which is almost unavoidable if Youd is in the room. We all turned in before midnight; tomorrow would be a busy day.

The next morning, I set out to visit the Willa Cather house, where Youd would be typing. It was sunny but brisk as I walked down the main street. Shuttered businesses mixed in with open shops: one bank, the post office, pharmacy, food market, bar— and a Subway (!)—all lining a red-brick road, probably the same bricks that Cather rode down in a horse and buggy.

As I approached Cather’s childhood home, I could hear a distant tap-tap-tap, bing! Tap-tap-tap, bing! Birds were singing joyously—could they be larks? I sat down on the soft green grass in the front yard and watched Youd typing on the porch; the typewriter was ancient, an Oliver No. 3 with “wings” from 1898. Youd, 55, was dressed casually in a long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans. He has an impressive head of thick white hair, accented by his Clark Kent black-rimmed glasses. Youd was deeply absorbed.

If he heard me coming, he didn’t show it. It was quiet, even with the tapping and chirping. The rhythm of the typing was hypnotic as I took in the surroundings and thought about Willa Cather and one of her main semi-autobiographical characters, Thea, who saw things differently but didn’t yet realize that she was an artist.

Later that day, I had the opportunity to enter the Cather house, which was included in a “town tour” the Cather center offers.

Walking through each room felt like I was reading one of her novels in 3D. I climbed the narrow wooden steps to the attic, where Cather’s bedroom sprang to life: the tattered, faded, rose-patterned wallpaper, the floor-to-ceiling window, the bed where she brought hot bricks to place under the covers for warmth. Cather’s vivid description of her attic bedroom was eerie in its precision. My whole trip to Nebraska was beginning to seem surreal.

No Fear or Loathing

“I’m ambitious by nature,” he says matter-of-factly. “I like something big to tackle. And that felt pretty big!” Youd also liked the whole literary pilgrimage aspect of it all: “It’s whimsical. Almost a pop-culture thing that we do. We make journeys. We go to Graceland. We make pilgrimages. That’s the kind of people we are.” Who could argue? Besides, he notes, “It’s catchy. One hundred novels. I’m not just a guy going around the world typing novels. I’m typing 100 novels! People love numbers.”

The Country Tour The next day I was scheduled to go on the “country tour,” where Youd would be typing. It was another stunning day on the Great Plains as my tour guide drove us over the bumpy dirt roads in her SUV. We visited several tiny cemeteries and Willa Cather’s farmhouse—or rather what was left of it: a bit of foundation and a water pump. The countryside was lush with wildflowers, purple prairie clover, bunchgrasses, mulberry bushes and tall scraggly cottonwood trees, all described so tenderly in Cather’s novels.

I was seeing the author’s words come to life and beginning to understand the gravity of Youd’s pilgrimages.

We arrived at our last stop, the Pavelka Farmstead, a historic house which was being renovated to host visiting scholars and interns. Youd was set up outside in front, typing intently. We interrupted him to see how it was going. He was nearing the end of the book—only 20 or so pages to go. The paper he was typing on was tattered and saturated with black ink, thin tears revealing the page underneath. Youd was excited to show us the diptych and pulled the two pages out of the typewriter. (It should be noted the novels are retyped over and over onto a top page, with a second page underneath. The top sheet naturally gets saturated with ink, often tearing through to the page underneath. They are displayed side-by-side as a diptych after each novel is finished.)

One day back in 2012, Youd was sitting in his studio when he came up with the idea of retyping novels as an art project. He had just closed the book he was reading and started squeezing and pushing on it—he wanted to crush the book so he could “get all the words onto one page,” he tells me, pressing his hands together. The book became an object with a formal quality. There’s “a black rectangle inside of a white rectangle,” Youd says, referring to the text within the encompassing margin being the white rectangle. “I wanted the texture of the words, the weight of the words.” It had to be a typewriter because the book is typeset, he reasons. “It’s a font, and I want to echo that.”

Alone in his studio, he proceeded to retype Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, on an IBM Selectric—the same model Hunter S. Thompson used. Youd recalls feeling “happy, relatively speaking.” He was excited, thinking, “Wow, this is kind of a successful experiment, I want to do another.” So, he typed a few more novels in his studio, and it became clear to him then that the project should take the form of a literary pilgrimage. “It should be a public thing, where I go to a significant place in the author’s life or the setting of the book I’m retyping,” he recalls.

Mat Gleason of Coagula Curatorial gallery in Chinatown—where I first saw Youd typing—was showing Youd’s visual work and was a big proponent of this new project. He took Youd to art fairs in Miami and New York, and that’s when Youd’s career really took off, outside of LA. It was his retyping of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer in Brooklyn that caught the attention of Cristin Tierney gallery.

Youd liked how things were going, but he knew that the pilgrimages would have to end at some point. That’s when he was struck with the idea of a list. “Everyone has a list of something.

I’m gonna type 100 best novels,” he remembers enthusiastically.

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On The Prairie

Youd working on his “Tree of Life” painting series, photo by Charles White.

A Better Reader When I asked Youd to describe his “reading” process, he readily answered my question: “Anything I’m typing, I’ve read before.

So, there’s not going to be many surprises in the plots.” With his close reading of each word and sentence, “it’s a significantly heightened experience of reading versus when I read it the first time.” He’s also reading during the daytime, when he is most alert and receptive (not lying down!). “I’m devoting my whole day, the best I can give it.” This made me feel envious, and even a little guilty, as I usually reserve my reading for the end of the day, when I can barely finish a chapter before I start dozing off.

Is Youd’s project about optimizing his own personal reading experience? Isn’t that self-serving, selfish and self-indulgent (adjectives often associated with artists)? Does he have naysayers, people that are skeptical, or even jealous of him, like me? Youd admits that his art might not appeal to everyone. “People have come up to me and told me what I’m doing is stupid.” Once at a performance in a museum a woman was circling him. “I could hear her breathing and sighing,” Youd recalls, with a wry smile.

“She was pissed off. She just hated what I was doing.” She left with a comment in the guest book: “The 100 Novels Project is singular in its uselessness.”

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It was my last day in Red Cloud, and Youd would be finishing retyping The Song of the Lark on the actual prairie. This time I followed my tour guide on “The Prairie Tour,” a five-mile drive outside the town. When we turned off the main highway it was as if we entered a Prairie Land movie in vivid Technicolor. (Were the homemade Swedish pastries I had that morning laced with LSD?) The prairie lay before us with tall wheat-yellow grass pressed against a blue sky dappled with white fluffy clouds. It was a majestic sight to behold. My guide informed us that these prairie lands are part of the Cather Foundation preservation program, of which they own over 600 acres. The goal is to return the land to its 19th-century conditions—before agriculture and foreign plant species despoiled the countryside. A noble deed that Willa Cather would highly approve of.

Youd had been in Red Cloud for 18 days and retyped 430 pages of The Song of the Lark (her longest novel). He made several attempts to set up in the prairie land, but until now inclement weather conditions had stymied his plan. Today the weather was ideal, with a light warm breeze—a perfect day to conclude the project. Youd was already there when we arrived, with his table, book and typewriter set up in the tall grasses—and only 15 pages left to type. We didn’t linger to watch Youd perform.

It seemed he should be alone for the occasion; he didn’t object to our leaving either.

After Youd finished his retyping of the novel, we ended our Red Cloud days at the local bar and grill, as I’d heard they make a great burger. I asked Youd if he was sad about ending his 72nd novel and leaving Red Cloud. “There is a melancholy aspect to literature in general,” he replied. “It’s about the passing of time.

Time passes, and when enough time passes, [whether it be] the end of life, the end of a chapter of one’s life, or a relationship, there’s always a sense of sadness in the story.”

Youd didn’t have that much time to indulge the blues though. The next day he would be packing up and moving onto Omaha and retype Cather’s My Antonia at the Joslyn Art Museum (co-sponsors of the project), bringing The Prairie Trilogy to a closing. “I have a jumble of emotions on completing a novel.

Especially completing a project in a location that is as close to perfect as it really can get,” he said, referring to the generous hospitality the Cather center provided. “To be out here, to be in the historic buildings, on the prairie that Cather knew as a child that she captures for us so vividly.”

Being on the prairie clinched it for me too. It really made Willa Cather’s stories come full circle. Was this the lesson I could take back with me? Art is supposed to open one’s eyes to new ways of seeing. Did Youd’s performances do the same for new ways of reading?

“I didn’t necessarily know, when I typed that first [novel], how it dawned on me that what I was trying to be was a good reader,” Youd muses. “Because that’s what the project is. It’s about trying to become a better reader each time you sit down, and measurably be in a different spot as a creative thinker, as a critical reader.”

Sadly, many people don’t read books at all anymore. What often passes for reading these days is the content on social media. It’s been reported that younger folks spend around nine hours a day in front of a screen. Imagine what a difference it would make to that person’s life if they devoted even a few of those hours to reading a book.

I know Tim Youd can imagine the difference; he’s made it his life’s work to do so. Let’s all take a lesson from Youd, and prioritize reading a book—in the middle of the day!

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DYSTOPIA REDUX

Brave New World: A Graphic Novel

by Fred Fordham REVIEWED BY GLENN HARCOURT

Oh wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! Oh brave new world that has such people in’t!

—William Shakespeare, The Tempest Almost a century after its initial publication in 1932, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World has been solidified as a classic of dystopian science fiction (often bookended with its inverted mirror image, George Orwell’s 1984). In addition, it has now been wonderfully adapted and reframed as a graphic novel by Fred Fordham.

Among the most striking aspects of Huxley’s book are the author’s prescient, relentlessly chilling treatments of genetic engineering and psychological conditioning, and his brilliant evocation of a society built on the twin poles of “stability” and “promiscuity.” Both Fordham’s script (to a great extent a carefully edited version of the original text) and his restrained yet forceful visual style work to communicate these complexities. His judicious use of an extremely tight visual focus, a relentless intercutting between various narrative arcs of the unfolding plot, and the use of tonal overlays to force particular emotional responses in the viewer, also drive the complicated story.

Meanwhile, uninhibited indulgence in sex and SOMA mask the cultural losses that are the inevitable price of a stable existence. Love, family, religion, science, literature, risk and independent thought: all these are now gone, replaced by relentless consumption and pointless recreation: electro-magnetic golf and centrifugal bumble-puppy, extravagantly indulgent sensuality at plot-free feelie theatricals, and the empty spasmodic release of a drug-induced Orgy-Porgy or the faux spirituality of the weekly Community Sing.

Yet a few individuals among those blessed with the genetics and conditioning of the highest castes are able to intuit something of the machinery behind the façade. Hence the inevitable tragedies that unravel the lives of the alienated alpha, Bernard Marx, and the wide-eyed beta, Lenina Crowne.

Likewise Bernard’s brilliant friend the erstwhile poet Helmholtz Watson; the twice-outcast John Savage and his scarred and forgotten mother; the socially-committed Hatcheries Director and the self-denying World Controller.

No longer infinitely fungible cells within the social order, they have become the necessary sacrifices demanded by the system for its own perpetuation.

When the novel first appeared in 1932, Huxley’s utopia-gone-awry seemed to many left-wing reviewers to be archly elitist and inadequately anti-fascist, since it posited the inevitable triumph of mindless consumer capitalism, with class struggle replaced by a rigid neo-medieval caste system.

Today, however, the situation is quite different. Globalized post-industrial capital seems poised to deliver exactly the kind of consumption that Huxley predicted. Meanwhile, endless iterations of self-realization therapy and the arrival of “micro-aggression” and psychedelic “micro-dosing” suggest that life devoid of every emotional hassle is indeed a real possibility.

In short, Brave New World remains troublesome today, perhaps even more pressing in its messaging and complex in its resonance than it was 90 years ago. It’s also a heck of a fun summer read. Very highly recommended.

Brave New World: A Graphic Novel Adapted and Illustrated

by Fred Fordham 234 pages Harper Collins Original text ©1932, 1946 by Aldous Huxley

Opposite page: Graphics inside Brave New World.

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Portrait of a Thief

by Grace D. Li 369 pages Tiny Reparations Books

CRIMINAL CULTURE Portrait of a Thief

by Grace D. Li

REVIEWED BY ANNE WALLENTINE

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The thorny issues of restitution and museums’ complicity in retaining looted artwork do not tend to make for light summer reading.

But a breezy new novel turns these issues into the basis of a highstakes heist. Grace D. Li’s, Portrait of a Thief, manages to be both portrait and landscape—a portrait of college students on the cusp of adulthood set in the landscape of contemporary museums.

First, you’ll have to accept the wild premise that a billionaire is offering a group of college students $50 million to steal (or return) five bronze sculptures, looted from the Old Summer Palace in Beijing, from museums around Europe and the US. Despite their inexperience, they fill the requisite heist tropes: a hacker, a driver, an art historian/leader, a con person and a thief. All are also enrolled at elite US universities; “international art thieves with midterms next week,” as one character says. After a few Zoom calls and international flights, they’re on their way.

More than a little suspension of disbelief is demanded for the timelines and technicalities, such as why would one use Zoom or Google Docs to plan a top-secret theft. But more interesting than the mechanics are the book’s challenges to the museums’ perceived objectivity and the ongoing legacy of colonial perspectives that shape our ideas of history, including what objects get displayed, where and how. While the concepts occasionally get oversimplified through demands of the plot, having a novel raise those questions and perspectives is no bad thing. This timely novel arrives at a point of sea change, as institutions are starting to shift their own points of view: Earlier this year, the Smithsonian announced its decision to repatriate the looted Benin bronzes in its collection, and the UK agreed to talks about the long-contested Parthenon marbles in the British Museum.

The novel’s chief strength is its sensitivity in dealing with the Chinese-American experience—especially when the past few years have seen a horrific rise in hate crimes targeting Asian-Americans in the US. Li deftly integrates the characters’ experiences with the books’ action, weaving in the varied feelings of in-betweeness and longings for belonging and achievement that motivate the characters.

The portraits feel true-to-life, but the setting seems more like a romantic, light-suffused landscape. The sinuous descriptions often dwell on visual themes without driving progress—fall, for example, is described in Los Angeles, New York, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Texas. Though this meandering slows the reader, it also underscores the characters’ youthful idealism, especially as it relates to their college experiences. (Interestingly, while thoroughly challenging museums, the book doesn’t do much to interrogate the problems of elite universities beyond the pressure to attend them.) Though uneven in some of its execution, the story’s visual qualities lend themselves to adaptation: A Netflix production is already in the works, and will no doubt carry the book’s caper across cities and campuses into a glossy production.

Towards the end of the book, one character considers whether taking a job at a leading museum could allow them to (slowly, eventually) effect institutional change. Portrait of a Thief seems to answer this question both on the page and the shelf with the argument that change is more swiftly achieved by external pressure —books and voices like these advocating for anti-colonial perspectives to counteract centuries of control.

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B O O K

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BURDEN OF DREAMS

Poetic Practical: The Unrealized Work of Chris Burden REVIEWED BY CATHERINE YANG

Full page: Sex Tower, 1986, architectural model of 125-foot-high Sex Tower, ©2022 Chris Burden/Licensed by the Chris Burden Estate and Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, courtesy Douglas Parker and Gagosian.

Inset, left: Model for the installation Xanadu as proposed to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2008, ©2022 Chris Burden/Licensed by the Chris Burden Estate and Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, courtesy Joel Searles and Gagosian.

Inset, right: Drawing for The Ever Burning American Flag, 2009, ©2022 Chris Burden/ Licensed by the Chris Burden Estate and Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, courtesy the Chris Burden Estate and Gagosian.

It’s impossible to think of the Los Angeles art scene without considering Chris Burden, an incisive social commentator who approached artmaking with both childlike wonder and fearless abandon. His now-legendary performance-art pieces from the early 1970s and subsequent 40-year practice in sculpture, installation, video and mixed-media projects have become canonized as some of the most daring, and outright phantastic, innovations in the history of art.

A lavish new book from Gagosian—Poetic Practical: The Unrealized Work of Chris Burden—celebrates Burden’s breadth as it’s never been seen before, with detailed examinations of 67 unrealized projects that existed in various stages of development at the time of his death in 2015. The extensively researched and illustrated book incorporates archival materials from the notebooks Burden painstakingly kept, as well as newly commissioned photographs of the artist’s studio, property and ongoing projects.

Because Poetic Practical is based on unfinished gestures and ideas rather than actualized objects, its contributors had to resort to a speculative, forensic approach in its assembly. Some of these unrealized works began as mere stand-alone sketches; others included detailed plans that Burden routinely revisited; and others are evolutions of realized projects that Burden considered not to have reached their final forms.

The book makes it abundantly clear that Burden’s ideas never stopped flowing and that the scope of his vision never stopped growing. One of the most memorable propositions from the book is the drawing for The Ever Burning American Flag, an idea Burden had in 2009 for “a super patriotic flag,” forever ablaze but never consumed, that would hang from every embassy in the world and be marched into battle—a piercingly tongue-in-cheek symbol of American indestructibility and the urge for dominance.

An underlying theme in Burden’s work was examining the systems of power that allows society to function, particularly ones that test the limits of art institutions in how far they will bend to an artist’s will, and what they will sacrifice in the name of art. In what Poetic Practical describes as Burden’s “incomplete magnum opus,” the artist proposed to different institutions several iterations of “Xanadu,” a dreamlike model city built to scale and inhabited by Burden’s monumental urban sculptures. The book bears witness to the fact that Burden was always earnest in his investigations, no matter how improbable his ideas, and took his role as an artist as someone uniquely qualified to speak truth to power very seriously.

The true magic of the book lies in the fact that Burden’s realized and unrealized works alike were all rooted in interrogating the potentiality of outlandish concepts. There’s something undeniably beautiful about the untouchable purity of vision embodied by these unrealized projects—they are unadulterated by physical, financial or practical limitations, free to be envisaged at their fullest potential. In this way, a book like Poetic Practical, dedicated to the presumed boundaries of impossibility and based in abstract pipedreams, is a truly unparalleled feat—and the most uniquely fitting tribute to Burden’s legacy. The book is a stunning achievement that opens the door for contemporary artists to engage with Burden’s unrealized ideas, and extends rather than upends his status as the art world’s bad-boy daredevil.

Poetic Practical: The Unrealized Work of Chris Burden Contributors: Donatien Grau, Yayoi Shionoiri, Sydney Stutterheim, Andie Trainer 284 pages Gagosian

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Serenade: A Balanchine Story

By Toni Bentley 320 Pages Pantheon

BALLERINA LOOKS BACK IN STYLE Serenade by Toni Bentley REVIEWED BY BARBARA MORRIS

B O O K

R E V I E W

Feet parallel, right arm raised, palm up, we begin, Paul Kolnik.

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As a thin, athletic girl with a springy jump and “not-so-great feet,” Toni Bentley was 11 when she entered the School of American Ballet; she was invited into the New York City Ballet company by George Balanchine at 17, and she performed with them for 10 years, until a hip injury cut her career short. With her prolonged devotion to Balanchine as the backdrop, it is their shared passion for the art form that drives the plot of her new book, Serenade.

Balanchine arrived in America at the behest of eventual NYCB co-founder Lincoln Kirstein, then a visionary and well-connected young Harvard grad. Once arrived, the prolific Balanchine quickly set to work, and the challenging Serenade was the first full-length ballet he composed in his new homeland.

The initial performance, in bathing suits and thrown-together costumes, was held in the rain on a makeshift stage in 1934 at a benefactor’s party. Forty years later, author Bentley would first dance the role of one of the four “Russian Girls.” She would go on to perform Serenade 50 times.

Woven throughout the biographical, autobiographical and historical material is a re-creation of the 32-minute, 49-second ballet broken down minute by minute, step by step, from before the curtain rises. We are taken backstage, vicariously rubbing our pointe shoes in rosin and taking places on the stage with Bentley, in a position most uncharacteristic for ballet dancers, parallel. A ballet dancer’s turnout, Bentley postulates, elongates the line, and simultaneously emphasizes and symbolizes the physical and emotional openness—a wrenching apart of body and soul—necessary to adapt to life as a dancer. When—at three minutes, 49 seconds—the entire corps de ballet dramatically pivots from parallel to first, feet at 180º, it evokes a dramatic response: the essence of classical ballet distilled to its most basic premise.

A key element in Serenade is the way in which the emphasis shifts from the traditional model of corps de ballet as mere backdrop against which soloists perform, to one in which each dancer may at any moment strike out into movement which is integral to the structure of the whole. Balanchine’s choreography here clearly displays a revolutionary new spirit of democracy.

If Balanchine’s personal life and human imperfections are a bit glossed over, we may learn more than we ever dreamt of, or perhaps wanted to know, about composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and choreographer Marius Petipa, whose emotional struggles and personal demons are outlined in vivid detail. Bentley’s focus, however, is on Balanchine’s genius, his impact on her own life, and the legacy of the phenomenal ballets that he left behind—Serenade, she asserts, is the finest of them all. Like most of his works, it is both plotless and dense, with suggested narrative and emotional content. He wished to share a story of a man and a woman… or two women, or perhaps three women. Women were his muse and his inspiration, as well as the medium through which he expressed himself. While treading gently on the imprint of Balanchine the man, Bentley makes a striking case for the enduring and profound impact of his brilliant choreography.

ENTERTAINMENT & THE ARTS ATTORNEY

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BRING THE PAIN

Gary Simmons at Hauser & Wirth

BY MAX KING CAP

The progress of his career has been a methodical march; carefully scripted, stubbornly stage-managed, and precisely choreographed—each subsequent exhibition enhancing the shudder of an already disconcerting thrum. The result of such a steady and painstaking pace has delivered an exhibition catalog worthy of MacArthur, yet his current exhibition is no laurel-chasing spectacle, it is a personally brazen and bitter step forward.

Not satisfied to merely convey pathos, or defy hoary convention by shouting Macbeth! backstage, the artist is concerned with far more pressing matters. Gary Simmons is here to bring the pain.

Comedic, vulgar and unsettling, these apparent cartoons appear buoyant and frivolous. One might associate his imagery with graffiti (one would be wrong) or the vacuous fluff committed by Banksy (another misapprehension despite its uncanny fluence). Yet despite their varied black and white backgrounds, with wittily minimal accents of color—these characters force-feed the viewer mouthfuls of chalk dust. The fresh canvases on the wall are large (all 2020–21), the wall paintings larger yet, but the characters spit a comical bile, an intentionally acidic hocker in the eye of the beholder. These are ghost paintings, with characters that continue to haunt.

They are dead and yet they live: in our bitter racist politics, our unequally funded schools, our trigger-happy policing, and freelance “white replacement” spree killers. Lynch Frog, features a character haplessly hanging, a peril no doubt brought on by his own darned foolishness. 88 Fingers Fats is so eager to entertain that he spirals himself into tar and turpentine.

The paintings have the patina of the ancient but maintain an ever-potent bile, pantomimes that so tickle the funny bone of the secret cracker that the Warner Brothers’ Censored Eleven have risen from the grave and are once again enjoying distribution. These cartoons—a vile hoot for the unreconstructed—feature Coal Black and the Sebben Dwarves, where the mean old queen is nothing but impossible bosom, saucer eyes and face enveloping lips; Jungle Jitters, with a plump googly-eyed native whose nose ring is so expansive it does double duty as a jump rope; The Isle of Pingo Pongo, bone-coifed natives with lower jaws so extensive they serve as dinner plates; finishing with Goldilocks and the Jivin’ Bears, where a black wolf in grandma drag is chased up the chandelier by a telegram porter who pulls a gat and speaks in the voice of Jack Benny’s Rochester.

Compared to the more egregiously bigoted imagery contained within, the titles and show descriptions seem downright elegant.

In a long career that has paced steadily toward a potent display of Black visibility through a rendering of its absence, Simmons has employed minimal tools to create elemental imagery. His 2010 exhibition titled “Black Marquee” featured sparse text on blank walls at Anthony Meier gallery in New York, a haunting contrast to the space’s renaissance revival interior. Rooms and corridors were emptied, leaving only the white arches and columns contrasting the near matte black walls. Streaked upwards and downwards the nominal white lettering described Blaxploitation films, creating an elegant accompaniment of X-ray reversal to Marcel Broothaers’ La Salle Blanche (1975).

Star Chaser, another of the sweeping paintings, is a tapestry of black— of eager hope tempered by bitter disappointment. His vast rendering

Joy Ride, 2021, oil and cold wax on canvas, 120 x 108 in.; ©Gary Simmons, courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth, photo by Jeff McLane.

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of night is full of stars but all of them seem to be dying, not shooting. It is a stargazing portrait of embittered aspiration, the Pecola Breedlove knotted fitfully inside us, imbibing exterior resentment, and believing it porridge. It echoes in sentiment the artist’s Balcony Seating Only (2017), his polished floor reflections at Regen Projects, where segregated cinema reveals its aspirational dead end by the stairway to the Colored section, a steep and unsteady climb leading nowhere. Jittery lovers enact a romantic ritual in the 44-foot chalkboard fit of erasure, Lindy Hop. He presents a posy; her bowed hair reacts. They don’t yet know that this will be their high point, that ever after will reek of torment. Their youth is a buoyant ignorance and hard lessons are on the horizon. As in his Fade to Black (2017) at the California African American Museum, hopeful fantasy is again tempered by heartbreak in the race films Souls of Sin and Murder on Lenox Avenue. Cinema, a variety to which the Simmons imagery belongs, is a global language, and his figures are richly illustrated and quiveringly alive in the grandest of the rooms in the Hauser & Wirth depot; Lindy Hop, Star Chaser, and 88 Fingers Fats dominate the show as if in an arena. They silently overwhelm.

The circuitous walk-through ends at the gallery’s garage door exit; it is more than suggestively the end of the road. In this final work, a subtler and damnably haunting installation, fairly spits its defiant title, You Can Paint Over Me But I’ll Still Be Here, which could address both itself as well as the hung canvases and wall paintings previously viewed, of no longer living yet never dying stereotypes. In this purposely less elegant expanse, the artist has suggested a school lunchroom. Its dining tables, however,

are not laid flat and ready for mealtime, they are folded and foodless, closed for business; no lunches are to be served here.

Not only are they barren, they are festooned with crows, reminiscent of the Bodega Bay playground in The Birds. Fragments of graffiti can be seen but most of those pleas of remembrance have been erased or painted over. Those who once sat there are willfully forgotten. Those kids. The troublemakers. The ones that receive far greater punishment than the white kids for the same schoolhouse infractions. And the girls get it worse than the boys.

As The New York Times has pointed out, “recent discipline data from the education department found that Black girls are over five times more likely than white girls to be suspended at least once from school, seven times more likely to receive multiple out-of-school suspensions than white girls and three times more likely to receive referrals to law enforcement.” And they are sent home, expelled, lost, forgotten, carelessly abandoned as carrion for the crows to feed upon.

This is the America that Simmons portrays. Well-meaning white folks will tut-tut and say how sad it all is, and perhaps make a donation to something or other that is vaguely related to a cause the name of which they cannot remember. And that is why this exhibition is so vigilantly defiant. Those antique references the artist has made are living yet. “No, White folks,” it says, “you don’t get a pass for that.” Because Black folks are not prepared to wallow, to drown in your partitioned mire of inescapable Blackness.

And no. You cannot have your statues back.

Installation view, “Gary Simmons: Remembering Tomorrow,” Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles, 2022, ©Hauser & Wirth, photo by Jeff McLane.

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ED D T R E IV D 5 1 N TRUCTIO S E ORNTEDDIVD E ERTED DESTR UCTION 15 D IVER THE DEMOLITION EDITION CURATED BY LIZ GORDON

Ben Novak Anna Stump

Sonja Schenk Joseph Salerno Howard Lowenthal

FREE ASSEMBLAGE WORKSHOPS SATURDAY 7/9 & 8/20

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The Feel-Good Pandemic

BY SKOT ARMSTRONG

B U N K E R

Publicity still for What’s So Bad About Feeling Good (1968)

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V I S I O N

The first conspiracy theory I got swept up in had to do with a movie that a few of us caught on television in eighth grade. After the summer of 1968, it felt like big changes were afoot. The movie that captured our imaginations was the story of a pandemic that caused people to feel euphoric. The net effect of people feeling good 24/7 was that Capitalism collapsed.

As fellow classmates expressed their curiosity about this simple explanation for changing the world, the movie seemed to vanish. With the grave seriousness that eighth graders bring to such missions, we collectively decided that the movie was being suppressed. As the years rolled on, I always checked for the title whenever I found anybody selling gray market VHS or DVD titles. It proved to be elusive, even there. Recently somebody at the studio that owns it decided that it was perfect viewing during our current pandemic. What’s So Bad About Feeling Good (1968) is now available on Blu-ray.

The first surprise is to realize that this movie is by a mainstream director. His work included Miracle on 34th Street, The Marx Brothers’ A Day at the Races, and Airport. He had enough clout to get New York Mayor John Lindsay to allow filming in City Hall, and various parts of New York that would require a king’s ransom to shoot in today.

The film is a time capsule of the city in 1967. It opens with pans around various neighborhoods with a soundtrack of surly city dwellers shouting angry remarks at each other.

It lands in a beatnik loft where people dressed in burlap sacks and hobo costumes wail about the futility of it all. When a toucan visits the loft, their tune changes and they are all suddenly happy. Soon they realize that this happiness is contagious and they set out to share it.

Not everybody is pleased with this state of affairs.

Sales of tobacco, tranquilizers and alcohol plummet, and advertising stops scaring people into buying things. When the mayor still doesn’t see the downside, he is reminded that happy people don’t vote. With his own livelihood under threat, he calls in the Feds. Dom DeLuise arrives doing a luridly fey version of J. Edgar Hoover. The beatniks go undercover, distributing infected masks, and doing anything else they can think of to spread the infection. Once the government finds an antidote, the liquor and tobacco lobbies fund its distribution via exhaust smoke from heavy machinery.

By the end of the movie the city is back to its angry self, with a difference. A huge portion of the population was actually immune to the disease, and just got caught up in the tidal wave of niceness. The movie ends with the alpha-beatnik couple breaking the toucan out of the facility where it had been placed for future experiments.

Given our recent pandemic’s impact on capitalism, it’s interesting to see that infectious happiness is still considered just as dangerous, if not more so.

Polonsky

Fiorito August 3 - 27 Reception: August 6, 5-9 PM

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R E P O R T

F R O M

I TA LY

Simone Leigh, Brick House, at Milk of Dreams exhibition, Arsenale, Venice, Italy. Photo by Patricia Watts.

59th International Venice Biennale Milk of Dreams

By Patricia Lea Watts Figuratively speaking, this year’s Venice Biennale is a “Brick House;” a metaphor for what creative women are capable of achieving when given the opportunity.

Cecilia Alemani, the first Italian female curator since the inaugural Biennale in 1895, has included a majority of works by women and gender-nonconforming artists. Gratzie! “Milk of Dreams,” a provocation borrowed from the book by surrealist painter Leonora Carrington, symbolizes the role imagination can play in addressing humanity’s fate. The first Black woman to represent the US Pavilion, Simone Leigh, from Chicago, wins the top Biennale prize for her

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imposing bronze sculpture, Brick House. A female head sits atop a wide-skirted Mousgoum dwelling design; at 16-feet-high, the powerhouse archetype speaks to the Strong Black Woman schema.

Colonial oppression and its impacts on Blacks and Indigenous peoples has a violent cultural and ecological legacy. In response, the Nordic Pavilion became The Sámi Pavilion, featuring work

by Indigenous artists. Standing across from the closed Russia Pavilion in the Giardini, with Italian Polizia standing guard, Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara hung sculptures of pendulous preserved reindeer calves inside dried tundra plants, and dried inflated stomachs suspended by sinew; an extreme aesthetic for the art world, perhaps, though the Sápmi region covers the far northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Adjacent is a multi-panel mural by Anders Sunna that narrates his family’s

R E V I E W S

Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol at the Chile Pavilion, Arsenale, Venice, Italy. Photo by Patricia Watts

Jonathas de Andrade, With the heart coming out of the mouth, at the Brazil Pavilion, Giardini, Venice, Italy. Photo by Patricia Watts

decades-long struggle to maintain their status as forest reindeer herders. Choreographed performances at the opening in April, titled Matriarchy, by theatre director and Sámi land guardian Paulina Feodorff, involved a promenade of silent characters miming the need for listening to non-humans. Seated on tree stumps, visitors wearing headphones watched a two-channel video and listened to Sámi Elders speak of having their lands taken away, similar to the Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island. The Sámi’s way of life, centered on their relationship with reindeer, is severely threatened because of colonial extractivism and climate change.

This melancholic nature-based installation seeks to illustrate an eco-consciousness, to communicate Sámi traditional knowledge.

To enter the Chile Pavilion at the Arsenale can take a while; the immersive multimedia installation Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol, can allow only a few people every 15 minutes. Envisioned by curator Camila Marambio as a collaborative project including artists, scientists and traditional knowledge, the title translates as “heart of the peatlands” in the language of the Indigenous Selk’nam people of Toerra del Fuego. Pavilion attendants share fragrance samples of peat moss (Sphagnum) with visitors, while waiting in line. A Selk’nam guide, completely silent, leads visitors up a ramp, over an experimental growing field, and into a circular multimedia platform. The room darkens and vivid projections appear as participants drop deep, virtually, down into a bog. Not exactly VR, though the sound effects create a sensation of falling inside the earth.

The guide then returns the group back down the ramp where we learn how growing peat in labs can avoid the destruction of natu-

United States Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale, featuring Simone Leigh’s Satellite. Photo by Patricia Watts.

ral peatlands used for fuel and growing food. In response to the climate crisis, the installation presents an intriguing path forward.

Peatlands are a highly efficient carbon sink and extremely vulnerable; conservation is imperative. An immersive installation with a provocative proposition, though no artist is officially named—the focus is exclusively on Peat.

Additional pavilions not to be missed in the Giardini include Brazil, where Alagoan artist Jonathas de Andrade has you enter his sensorial installation through a large sculptural ear, à la science fair.

Titled With the Heart Coming Out of the Mouth, the human body is experienced in parts as emotionally charged terrain. At the Poland Pavilion, Re-enchanting the World by Roma artist Malgorzata Mirga-Tas, a luscious 360-degree floor-to-ceiling textile mural or “picture place,” captures the rich culture of itinerate life. A collateral exhibition, Ocean! What if no change is your desperate mission? by South African artist Dineo Seshee Bopape, includes a three-channel video and sound installation of moving water taken in the Solomon Islands, a mediation with clapping sounds presented at the dramatic Iglesia di San Lorenzo. One outlier, not officially included in the Biennale, is Planet B: Climate Change & the New Sublime at Palazzo Bollani, an exhibition in three acts developed by French curatorial cooperative, Radicants, including Nicolas Bourriaud. They propose that our relationship with Earth is transforming through the horrors of extreme climate events, and that the artist’s gaze, the sublime, has been altered. Fortunately, there appears to be an eco-consciousness and some simple solutions to engage with at the 59th edition of the Venice Biennale.

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R E V I E W S

Takashi Murakami The Broad

By Meher McArthur Japanese artist Takashi Murakami is known globally for his colorful, smiling flowers, anime-inspired paintings and sculptures, and collaborations in fashion and music. His new exhibition, Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow, presents an intimate but powerful display of 18 of the artist’s sculptures and paintings. Featuring imagery born of traditional Buddhist and Daoist philosophy and his own imagination, the exhibition displays the artist’s perceptive ability to tap into the suffering of humanity, explore it in vibrant colors and intricate detail, and offer a glimmer of hope.

people who Murakami had previously seen as reasonable and kind seemed to change and become aggressively anti-science, and this frightened him. “I sensed that in times of emergency everything about people could change, and I wanted to give form to this feeling.” By giving form to feelings and fears in his intricately detailed and often deeply spiritual art, Murakami reminds us that art can help both makers and viewers begin the healing process.

Roy Dowell The Landing

By Jody Zellen

Roy Dowell’s acrylic paintings are abstractions filled with interlocking and overlapping shapes of differing opacities. Though created from the depths of his imagination, Dowell’s many works reference textile designs, floral patterns, Tantric diagrams and mandalas, cosmological maps, illuminated manuscripts, as well as early 20th-century abstractions by painters such as Hilma af Klint and

Takashi Murakami, DOB in the Strange Forest (Blue DOB), 1999. The Broad Art Foundation. © 1999 Takashi Murakami / Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd.

Alongside several works from the Broad Collection, including the 1999 sculpture DOB in the Strange Forest (Blue DOB), the exhibition also features loans, new work and Augmented Reality (AR) elements that emphasize a more spiritual and healing aspect of Murakami’s creativity. The Broad’s 82-feet-wide painting In the Land of the Dead, Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow (2014)—created in response to the Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown in 2011—contains not only devastating tidal waves and piles of skulls, but also Daoist Immortals and mythological creatures, traditional East Asian symbols of hope and healing. On the opposite wall, the 32-feet-wide painting 100 Arhats (2013), on loan from the Maurice and Paul Marciano Art Foundation, depicts Buddhist arhats (disciples who have achieved nirvana). Depictions of these holy men have long illustrated the saving powers of the Buddha’s teachings, particularly following major disasters. Shortly after the 2011 disaster, Murakami began painting arhats, depicting them as grotesque, often comical figures and arranging them almost like pillars, supporting a spiritual ceiling. In both monumental yet intensely detailed works, Murakami mines Japan’s cultural and spiritual heritage to find solace at a time of great pain.

He also summons some of Japan’s myriad native gods, or kami (Shinto deities), in the AR element of the exhibition. Visitors may use their Instagram accounts and QR codes on the gallery floor to view kami in the gallery via their phone screens and share pictures of them on social media. Although all spiritual help is surely welcome these days, by trying to access these AR kami, visitors may feel they have interrupted their intimate experience with Murakami’s paintings to play Pokémon Go! However, one work that does augment reality in a refreshing, reassuring way is the artist’s brand-new painting Unfamiliar People (2022). Here, four large figures stand against a pink ground, their faces grotesquely distorted. Apparently, during the pandemic, many

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Roy Dowell, untitled #1179, 2022. Courtesy of Evan Bedford

Sonia Delaunay. Identified only by number (in an untitled exhibition), these untitled paintings invite viewers to free associate and extrapolate, to make sense of the shapes and patterns. The chief peculiarity of Dowell’s paintings is that the compositions, while based on geometric patterns, are willfully asymmetrical, creating a sense of unbalance through misaligned layers with unexpected elements, cloaking and intersecting with those below.

The artist’s rejection of titles demands that the viewer excavate the meaning, if any, from the artist’s imagery, and that in deciphering these works there can be no wrong answers. His untitled #1166(2020) is, like most of his works, formally similar yet stylistically divergent from the others; a semi-transparent circle floats towards a darkly opaque ground, while thin black lines feather out from its center, suggesting rotation. Below are bright red horizontal and vertical bands layered with delicate designs reminiscent of Spirograph

R E V I E W S drawings, a combination hinting at planetary movements through the night sky.

Continuing the celestial references is untitled #1179 (2022), a painting featuring circular white saw-blade shapes with black dotted centers. Varicolored concentric rings hover above a red and green patterned background. They appear set in motion, these saw-blades, spinning on their axes, as if ready for takeoff toward an unknown destination, far from the abstracted landscape below.

The artist allows the viewer the pleasure of free association—no arrangement of shapes is so concrete as to be entirely decipherable.

Maybe the off-white “X” that spans from the top to the bottom of untitled #1159 (2021) is a harlequin figure, abstracted and headless, whose arms and legs are peppered with large black dots. Behind this striking and dominant form is a lush combination of painted shapes, triangles and rectangles of differing transparencies that contrast with areas of stippled dots reminiscent of the harlequin’s diamond-patterned costume. Personification is not the norm in Dowell’s work, and in most of his paintings he explores the dynamics of shape and what a combination of shapes can come to signify, be it a planet, a target, a medallion or a bouquet of fictitious flowers.

The deeper and longer one investigates Dowell’s paintings, the more layers are revealed. Each work is a complex amalgam of organic and geometric shapes that manage to coexist in kaleidoscopic disharmony. The pieces have their own strange and private logic: they are both loose and tight, precise and unsettled, a bit off balance but skewed with symmetry. Across the 22 works, Dowell’s idiosyncratic patterns and methods of mark-making become a language that communicates the nuances and joys of abstraction.

Jovencio de la Paz Chris Sharp Gallery

By Ezhra Jean Black

tropes of 20th and 21st century art. The artist uses the Jacquard loom like a “prepared” color organ, as if Jacquard and computerized elements are already a standard loom’s “preparation.” De la Paz has complicated composition and construction with digital editing and specialized software elements, applied both remotely and manually.

The warped grid hangings (executed in part with software co-designed with engineer Michael Mack and based upon Barracelli’s “Bio Numeric Organism” software) at first suggested weavings inspired by Uzbek or Tajik traditions, showing an electrifying vibrancy. Warped Grid (1.0) (all works 2022 unless otherwise indicated), with its protuberant gold-yellow thread in staggered ranks against the white warp of the weave, seemed to glow from the rear wall of the gallery, as if absorbing then throwing the available light back into the room.

But Warped Grid (1.1) with its pale pink, slate gray and lozenged surface against alternating bars of pink and dove gray, drew me from its outward effervescence into the depths of its chambers like hollowed jewels—its jacquard-woven feints, wefts of pink and slate threads moving into whorls and caverns deflected from its loose, eccentric butterfly waffling. Yet if Warped Grid (1.0)‘lit’ the gallery,The Light of Kabir, in its morphing tessellation and richly variegated textures in indigo, red-orange, and slate gray, seemed the most fully realized expression of the “complex space of potential” the artist intends as a reflection of their non-binary identity.

The “light” here is in the weaving—red-orange horizontals, woven white lozenges and raised indigo blues create a textural dissonance yet are harmonized into the torquing, spiraling movement of the weaving.

The “warp” is literally in the weft in 10 Failed Circles (2021).

Circles round an “empty” center in primary and gray, like the Albers Homage to the Square, but here De la Paz has used them as a foundation for his more complex and ambiguous spatial and chromatic constructions.

The skewed execution of the “bent” pyramids (inspired by Pharaoh Sneferu’s Bent Pyramid of Dahshur) magnifies their success.

Bent Pyramid (1.1) renders them as ghostly sailboats (with creamy whites as “sails”) dissolving into the lower register depths as if prismatic reflections. An Ocean for Eloise (2021), evokes something of both the Bauhaus and De Stijl, becoming a Feininger-esque iceberg nestling triangular configurations of checkerboard squares in slate, indigo, and pale blue—an appropriately elegiac poem for the failing grid we’ve made of the planet.

Known & Understood

Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College

By Richard Allen May III

In Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations (2012) bell hooks states, “The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is—it’s to imagine what is possible.” Such words were actualized in “Known &

Jovencio de la Paz, Warped Grid (1.0), 2022. Courtesy of the artist and Chris Sharp Gallery.

The work of Jovencio de la Paz exists between the ideal and abstract and what the press release referred to as the “fallibility of physical space.”I don’t think of “physical space” as a “fallible” domain, nor are digitally constructed spaces necessarily ideal. Yet being surrounded by the weavings in this show was to be palpably aware of that sense of suspension between the abstract or constructed ideal and the perceptual and physical fallibilities of their intersection, as well as by some of the textural, serial and aleatory

Kiki Smith, Hello Hello (2000). Pomona College Collection: Gift from the Arango-Berry Family.

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R E V I E W S Understood: Selections from the Permanent Collection” on display at the new Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College. For example, Kiki Smith’s Hello, Hello (2000) suggests themes of harmony and companionship between humankind and animals. By using ink on Nepal paper, the artist meticulously renders with sensitive line a woman reaching out and touching a wolf. Printed separately and then joined together in collage-style demonstrates a conscious decision of contrasting textures. Both canine and woman make peaceful eye contact with one another in proximity. The human feminine greets the unflinching lupine with its welcoming expression.

It is a fitting title because a “hello” sends a confirming message of acceptance, validation and recognition rather than a disconfirming pronouncement of judgment and marginalization. Smith’s work speaks to a society that is consumed by cancel-culture tendencies that are rooted in ignorance and breed misunderstanding.

Similarly showcasing drawing skill is the woodcut by Hans (The Elder), Burgkmair, Natives with Camel and Elephant (1508). Printmaking demands proficiency in interpreting what is seen; this work however reveals the perspective about a people. Partially clothed figures holding spears and standing near or sitting on a camel and elephant reveals that an outsider’s lens is limited by aesthetic vocabulary rooted in exoticism and othering.

There is also Patrick Nagatani’s From Ryoichi Excavations: Video Site Documentation: BMW Burial Site near Crow Agency, Montana USA (1985). In a series of chromogenic contact prints on paper, the artist crafts a narrative of Ryoichi, a Japanese archeologist and team who search for over 16 years—with only unreliable maps as a guide—for various cars buried at historic sites. Manipulating the power of storytelling through photography these works suggest what communication theorist Marshall McLuhan once said, “The medium is the message”; the photographic documentation makes this creative hoax appear as truth.

Finally, W.W.J.D. (2017) by Genevieve Gaignard, abbreviated for What Would Jesus Do, this assemblage of found objects with Black and white representations of Jesus Christ on vintage wallpaper speaks to the intersection of culture, politics and religion. Carefully placed as if floating on clouds, the white representation of the Christ wearing a pinned red button that says Single looks upward to the Black representation of the same Redeemer wearing a button that says Very Black. On top of the work is a white angelic child-like figurine. At the very center, almost compositionally connecting both Jesus images, is the small, segregation signifying artifact regarding who gets to drink at the water fountain.

This work is painfully apt considering recent revelations that for over 20 years, the Southern Baptist Convention has suppressed information regarding sexual misconduct within its clergy. Its report reveals not only sexual abuse but that leaders rejected reform and dissuaded victims from coming forward. W.W.J.D. indeed.

Amelia Carley Otra Vox

By Donasia Tillery There are few forces in the world as powerful as memory. Reconjuring the fleeting scents of former lovers and the chattering sounds of childhood, memory evinces that life is composed of so much more than the here and now; it summons impressions that both soothe the spirit and pierce the heart. Today, as the stark consequences of faulty collective memory abound, it is worth considering the value of remembering the truth, and—perhaps more pressingly to ask—what sustains the investment in remembering a lie?

In her latest series “Thinking About Forgetting,” Amelia Carley breathes new life into these universal questions, granting them space to expand, contract, and reveal. Inspired by the artist’s upbringing in Colorado’s desert, the exhibition presents a cacophony of eerily bright forms that feel profoundly chimeric in nature.

Through these bizarrely constructed worlds, Carley highlights how

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Amelia Carley, Crisp Erasure (Glass Bottle Beach), 2021. Courtesy Otra Vox Gallery

her seemingly pure experiences with nature are inseparable from systems of violent extraction.

The artist begins her process by gathering debris from the shores of Brooklyn’s Glass Bottle Beach, a location now notorious for its densely packed wreckage. From the collected waste of eroded sea glass, she constructs crystalline models that are then rendered in otherworldly chroma on canvas. The result is a montage of glaringly artificial environments that illustrate Earth’s increasingly transient landscapes and explore fraught relations to the natural world. Within the artificial terrain of Carley’s imagination, mounds of waste glisten with beguiling charm. In Between Deep Cuts (Glass Bottle Beach) (2021) electric hues delight the senses. Layered oil paints stand in for layers of capricious realities, and contemporaneous splashes of day and night blur the lines between realism and reverie. The enormous gem in Lost Layers (Glass Bottle Beach) (2022) sits regally up front with a mountain of waste as its background. Caught Between (Glass Bottle Beach) (2022) stands out as an emblem of the installation’s ethos, its otherworldly compositions of light and shadow sparking both intrigue and discomfort. And just below the surface of this arresting aesthetic, a sobering dissonance can be felt whispering: how does one reconcile beauty so fundamentally intertwined with tragedy?

Within the context of late capitalism (and the manifold crises it has produced) “Thinking About Forgetting” is a timely reminder to interrogate our affective attachments to fabricated realities. It invites viewers to truly reconsider how their childhoods felt and tasted, the genuine histories of the nations to which they pledge allegiance, the toxic consumption fueling the planet’s demise, and the tragic fact that everyone already knew. Though generous with its lessons, “Thinking About Forgetting” is impactful precisely because it refuses didactic self-righteousness, and instead offers a subtler provocation—to question the authenticity of treasured illusions.

Alison O’Daniel

Commonwealth & Council

By Shana Nys Dambrot

Working in a continuous exegesis of an overarching project, pursuing branching pathways to their conclusions then returning to the center and setting off again, Alison O’Daniel transforms elusive

R E V I E W S ideas and ambiguous experiences into concrete objects—still and moving images, time-and sound-based installations, and discursive narratives of extreme specificity. In recent years, that hub has been her feature film The Tuba Thieves—an interpretive documentary using conceptual and somatic strategies to tell the story of a bizarre string of music room robberies at a public school.

At the core of O’Daniel’s practice is her deeply considered status as a Deaf/Hard of Hearing person and the unique perspective on the world which that affords. Her expansive work touches on musicality, politics, civil engineering, physics, anatomy, science, language and landscape. In The Ownership of Onomatopoeia, the vector she revisits is a scene in which the character Awet recalls being so shaken by the explosion of a sonic boom that he badly cut his hand on a saw blade. But the show moves beyond its nested premises into a macro view of how social, economic and environmental structures coalesce to exclude Deaf experience. Along the way, the scene’s imagery and dialog generate materially and optically charged mixed-media sculptures for wall, floor and mobile, a mural-scale photomontage, audio interventions, and text-based sculptures culled from its dialog.

The entrance is activated by the fire-engine red Neighbor Relations (powder-coated steel & aluminum, 2022)—a giant suspended wind chime whose charms are stylizations of Awet’s hand. Nearby is an oversized rug made of wool, nylon and, crucially, sound-swallowing carpet, Awet’s (Non) dominant Hand (2022). The hand motif repeats along with a red-and-white pattern based on the injury-inflicting saws—a rust-patinated collection of which hang from the ceiling in “Threat to Language.” The photos show hundreds of sonic booms—something we think of as a sound yet has a visible manifestation.

Energy converters in the walls vibrate and hum, directly invoking the noises roaring off the LAX flight paths—over neighborhoods with no power to resist or ameliorate the low rumble, which can be felt as vibrations as well as heard as disruptions. Around the edges of the room, about a dozen white caption sculptures whose industrial font cut-out words comprise the Sound Segregations—Birds and Alison O’Daniel, Neighborhood Relations, 2022.

Courtesy Commonwealth & Council.

Construction (powder-coated steel, 2022) say things like “We open the windows because we don’t have air conditioning /The planes come every two minutes, so we wait to talk /Santa Ana winds cover us in soot and sound.” In its approximation of a domestic environment, the elements reference engaging, amped-up versions of ordinary decor, but O’Daniel turns it all inside out to not only communicate the nuances of events, but to generate a direct experience for the viewer—and break some sound barriers of her own.

Ei Arakawa

Overduin & Co.

By Emily Babette

The initial apprehension upon entry to Ei Arakawa’s exhibition took a few moments to subside. It was swiftly alleviated upon realizing that it is not an exhibition in the typical sense but more of a journey through a cardboard-constructed maze: a metaphorical

commentary surrounding the parallels, juxtapositions and complexities of child-rearing and art-making.

Stenciled lettering on each side of the walls of the tall cardboard labyrinth revealed declarations in green, red, purple and black. The initial statement boldly declared “ARTISTS SHOULD NOT HAVE A CHILD.” This set the inaugural theme of the exhibition, juxtaposed with baby mobiles hanging from beams across the top of the maze.

Statements that follow include “I’M NOT GOING TO REMEMBER HOW TO PAINT AGAIN,” “ARTIST-PARENTS AS INSECURE VOCALOIDS” and “MUSEUM, BE FLEXIBLE! ARTIST-PARENT.COM.” Passage through the maze is accompanied by strange electronic music from multiple sources that effortlessly carries through the cardboard partitions. Ambient sounds were interjected with genderless “vocaloid” voices singing strange phrases. Helpful gallerists supply press releases and lyric sheets as the viewer continues through the maze. This serves as an a-ha! moment, revealing that the statements on the wall were the satirical and humorous (though pertinent) words which were also sung by the synthesized voices.

The lyrics, written by Arakawa, suggest the struggle between simultaneously carrying out roles of both artist and parent; the music score was composed by Arakawa and Celia Hollander.

The hallways of the maze opened into three separate rooms (perhaps wombs) that offered chairs for contemplation and listening.

Both in the hallways of the maze and in the lounging rooms were

Ei Arakawa, Installation view. Courtesy Overduin & Co.

replicas of famous paintings by American artists, both living and dead, reproduced by thousands of LED lights. The images included works by Mary Cassatt, Nicole Eisenmann, Alice Neel, Laura Owens and Trevor Shimizu. The connecting factor between all the LED paintings were that they were famous scenes of childhood and/or parenthood from art history; the title of the show comes from Laura Owens painting “Don’t Give Up” and was placed in the largest room of the maze.

Included in this large room was a quartet of carriages occupied by alternating toy babies—one white, one brown, one white, one brown. As if the words were not enough, the installation of these plastic babies overtly—yet humorously—proclaimed the exhibition a paean to parenthood. Surrounding these carriages were the statements “WE ARE NON-BIRTH DADS WE ARE QUEER MUMS” indicating Arakawa’s own “psychic preparation for planned queer parenthood” (from the artist statement). Most artists of child-rearing age couldn’t help but deeply connect with the absurd truth, humor and insecurity embedded in each aspect of this exhibit. As the art historical references suggest, one strategy for being a parent and artist is to make work about children. But for Arakawa, “I’M NOT THAT IMPRESSIONIST.”

Material Girl in a Meta World

BY SETH HAWKINS

T H E

D I G I TA L

Top to bottom: Mother of Technology and Mother of Nature, 2022; stills from NFT video artwork, 2022; courtesy of the artists.

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When we think about groundbreakers or early adopters, we think of the first, the biggest, the people that jump up and exemplify a movement. Some will stand the test of time, others will bring shock value in being the protagonists. Whether it be Bowie, Hendrix, Basquiat, Warhol—the list of these trailblazers is long. But wherein lies the common thread? Talent and timing inherently play a role but, I might scream—FORTUNE FAVORS THE BOLD. For those of us who exist only in the tangible art world—the human that made us stand the hell up and pay attention to NFTs was the unassuming Beeple. Combine this subversive digital artist with the historical boundary-pushing Madonna, Queen of Pop. We may be left with a collection of NFTs that have the potential to be some of the most controversial feathers in either of their caps.

For this three-part collaborative NFT video series titled “Mother of Creation,” Madonna uses her classic recipe of sexually explicit imagery combined with controversial content—only at an older age with some digital manipulation. This time the “Material Girl” jumps into the Immaterial World of meta space, fully exposing her digital self. This is no unassuming wardrobe malfunction— rather the full monty in meta.

Madonna’s three avatars that make up the “Mother of Creation” series are created by manipulating a 3D body scan of her in all her sexagenarian glory. This technology can now recreate hyper detail within the context of meta space, with the closeups leaving nothing to the imagination.

Each of Madonna’s avatars vary slightly, but the traumatic birthing message remains clear. In the first, “Mother of Nature,” a giant tree takes root and grows and blooms out of a closeup 3D model of her “vagina,” slowly panning away to show the avatar lying in a sterile white room being overseen by a creepy robotic arm. In “Mother of Evolution,” a more plastique/Barbie doll version of Madonna lies on the hood of a truck—straight out of Mad Max. As the post-apocalyptic scene rages in the background, monarch butterflies flutter out of her crotch.

In the final and darkest of the three videos, a silver-haired avatar—one which best represents the aging pop star’s most current state—has a multitude of blood-soaked robotic centipedes crawling from the exposed area between her legs. This last chapter of the NFT trilogy may very well be the most accurate foreshadowing of the dark AI future awaiting us.

With all the proceeds from the NFTs series going to benefit charity—this is not a money-making endeavor for either Madonna or Beeple but seems to be a great way to show the world what a 60-something digitally enhanced vagina looks like. And all for a good cause.

presents

CODEORANGE Image: Cecilia Arana The Future Is Hers 2018, California, 35mm Film

A Curatorial Photography Project

By Laura London

June 11 - July 9, 2022 ROBERT BERMAN GALLERY • Bergamot Station Arts Center 2525 Michigan Ave. A-5 • Santa Monica, CA 90404 www.robertbermangallery.com

Artlounge Collective

Now placing artists in our gallery store and across a network of display spaces.

Artlounge.co 323-272-4684 liveuniquely@artlounge.co

Artlounge Collective 145 North La Brea Ave. #F Los Angeles, CA 90036

CODEORANGE CURATED BY LAURA LONDON

THE WINNER: Maureen Bond, Local Calls, 4/24/2022, Van Nuys, CA, digital photograph.

View finalists on our website, along with info on how to submit your photo for next issue’s contest: www.artillerymag.com/code-orange.

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P O E M S

shift work twin heads pillow moments away only seats left in the front the forgiving distortion the forgetting of plot so grateful that the light should bow to take the shape of your mouth a movie where she’s so tired from watching him sleep all day —EVAN EVANS

Enduring Romance There was a time when you were charmed by my lunging, and when I found your ignorance more endearing. But that was long ago, when love was new and our every precious moment felt like sunlight glittering upon the edge of a gently breaking wave. Now closeness means chaos, and every dreaded moment brings me closer to my grave.

Where does all this clumsy thrusting end?

Half-mad, greedily sucking on the desecrated manhood of the absentee father; desire meets boredom halfway in a stalemate of discontent, a deep and selfish love that can only thrive in a moist environment.

—JOHN TOTTENHAM

Showing July 6 - July 30 Artist’s Reception July 9, 2022

Photo by LA Open 2021 artist participant Taz Essa @tazcatphoto

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taggallery.net/madeintheusa TAG Gallery 5458 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90036 323.297.3061 • taggallery.net • @taggallery

July 19 through October 9 | Getty Center Museum

Kamoinge Members (detail), 1973, printed 2019, Anthony Barboza.

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Eric and Jeanette Lipman Fund, 2019.249. © Anthony Barboza. Text and design © 2022 J. Paul Getty Trust

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