Gary Simmons: Hauser & Wirth - by max king cap

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

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.

BY SKOT ARMSTRONG

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.

By Ezrha Jean Black

For an artist who has deliberately cultivated a naïve style, Umar Rashid (who also occasionally calls himself Frohawk Two Feathers) appears to have calculated the exhibition’s title, “Per Capita” with almost labyrinthine deliberation—an amalgam of the coyly matterof-fact, ceremonious and slyly deceptive. Alternate readings might suggest for the head as much as the more commonplace, by the head.

An impressive, blue painted ceremonial arch, titled 8th Wonder: Portal to Los Angeles Past, Present and Future (2021), greeted visitors to the gallery; yet the transfer prints that covered the structure—white cougar and bird-like silhouettes collectively titled, “All Power to the Women” (2017)—seemed slightly disconnected from both the triumphal aspect of the arch and the “Per Capita” drawings hanging at the rear of the gallery. But disconnection and detour seemed to be subsidiary themes of the show. Ostensibly the centerpiece of the show, the eponymous “Per Capita” pieces (2021)—one an acrylic-on-cowhide with rampaging toy-like horses and masked soldiers slashing at each others’ heads; the other, a suite of 12 acrylic-on-paper drawings (of women’s faces—subtitled “Hortense through Candy,” each captioned “PER CAPITA”)—could not by themselves encapsulate either the artist’s stylistic range or the exhibition’s scope which, in addition to serving as a mini-retrospective of the artist’s work (from 2013), amounted to an exorcism of colonialism past and present. Rashid achieves his exorcism not merely through stylistic means (though he is a practiced hand at this, borrowing from Japanese graphic work of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Indian and Persian miniatures, Native American art dating from various periods of US colonial expansion, and Anglo-American folk art from the same period), but by revisiting—and aggressively messing with— the usual historical narratives. One example of this is a 2017 suite of unique zero graphic transfer prints (with ink and acrylic) on birch panels: an 18th-century “Shock Doctrine” scenography of colonial invasion, occupation, suppression and revolt. Women are depicted in full contention with their male counterparts, ready to take on leadership roles. Rashid has continued developing these interventions by historical reinvention, composing (in 2019) what is effectively a graphic mytho-satirical epic of colonialism in 40 panels (including a frontispiece), Views of Colonial Fabric Softener or, The Sidney and St. Marc Expedition to the Pacific, 1795. (e.g., panel 8, “Trappers/Sharpshooters or historical origin of Kool cigarettes”). It was perplexing that this ambitious series was not featured more prominently, but the gallery’s spatial limitations clearly impeded the show’s organization and installation. That said, not all of the work exhibited served Rashid’s overarching themes. Not to dismiss the totemic aspects of Rashid’s mythographic exorcism, but the “Yves Klein” garden totems could have easily been culled from the show. In addition to a surprisingly authentic-looking drum, Rebel (2013), Rashid showed an embroidered and appliquéd cape, Trickster (2019) bearing such insignia as a snake curling around an octagonal spider’s web (with Afro combs taking the place of classical Greek key and scroll-work for the decorative trim). Rashid also plays a trickster here, which is half the point. If colonialism’s legacies are still with us (on a “per capita” basis or otherwise), we continue to re-enact their ceremonies and traumas, even as we lampoon and subvert them.

Umar Rashid, Trappers/sharpshooters or historical origin of Kool cigarettes, 2019. Courtesy Transformative Arts.

By Leanna Robinson

Alexander Harrison’s aptly named exhibition “Midnight Everywhere,” is an exploration of the moods, tones and colors that the night brings. The paintings in the exhibition form a cohesive collection and tell the story of a solitary artist living in an old wooden house in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by apple trees and rolling hills with only the stars and flowers to keep him company. The focal painting, Portrait of an artist in the penumbra of the moon, in hopes for a brighter future (all works 2021), gives insight into who the main character in this story is—a Black cowboy with a toothy grin gazing out the window, painting the midnight sky. In many ways this “artist character” gives the collection a meta quality. Although the paintings were created by Harrison, one could suspend their disbelief and instead infer that the paintings were in fact painted by this mysterious cowboy. The still life paintings of watermelons, apples and flowers are what he would paint after a long day, and show snapshots from his life, giving the impression that this cowboy could have simply looked around his environment and painted what he saw in his surroundings. The consistent color palette is effective: the deep blues and purples give the impression of moonlight spreading over each scene. It’s easy to visualize the quiet, secluded cabin in which all of this introspection and recording took place, and to fill in the blanks of who this artist is (the one in the painting, not Harrison himself). The cohesive story is echoed by repeating themes in the paintings, such as checkerboard cloth, or watermelon seeds from a windowsill in Midnight Picnic, which also make an appearance in The Moon. All of this storytelling elevates the show to a metaphysical level, and changes the context of the figurative paintings that contain subject matter that could be seen as elementary—how many art students paint fruit for their first assignment? This does have its downfall, however, as the pieces are stronger as a collection and some may not hold up as well as solo efforts. This is a show that is greater than the sum of its parts. Harrison’s interest in storytelling goes beyond the paintings’ content, and into his painting techniques as well. Many of the paintings have a trompe-l’œil effect, in which Harrison has painted frames around the composition. This strategy suggests a vantage point from within the painting, further immersing the viewer in the world

By Ezrha Jean Black

For an artist who has deliberately cultivated a naïve style, Umar Rashid (who also occasionally calls himself Frohawk Two Feathers) appears to have calculated the exhibition’s title, “Per Capita” with almost labyrinthine deliberation—an amalgam of the coyly matterof-fact, ceremonious and slyly deceptive. Alternate readings might suggest for the head as much as the more commonplace, by the head.

An impressive, blue painted ceremonial arch, titled 8th Wonder: Portal to Los Angeles Past, Present and Future (2021), greeted visitors to the gallery; yet the transfer prints that covered the structure—white cougar and bird-like silhouettes collectively titled, “All Power to the Women” (2017)—seemed slightly disconnected from both the triumphal aspect of the arch and the “Per Capita” drawings hanging at the rear of the gallery. But disconnection and detour seemed to be subsidiary themes of the show. Ostensibly the centerpiece of the show, the eponymous “Per Capita” pieces (2021)—one an acrylic-on-cowhide with rampaging toy-like horses and masked soldiers slashing at each others’ heads; the other, a suite of 12 acrylic-on-paper drawings (of women’s faces—subtitled “Hortense through Candy,” each captioned “PER CAPITA”)—could not by themselves encapsulate either the artist’s stylistic range or the exhibition’s scope which, in addition to serving as a mini-retrospective of the artist’s work (from 2013), amounted to an exorcism of colonialism past and present. Rashid achieves his exorcism not merely through stylistic means (though he is a practiced hand at this, borrowing from Japanese graphic work of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Indian and Persian miniatures, Native American art dating from various periods of US colonial expansion, and Anglo-American folk art from the same period), but by revisiting—and aggressively messing with— the usual historical narratives. One example of this is a 2017 suite of unique zero graphic transfer prints (with ink and acrylic) on birch panels: an 18th-century “Shock Doctrine” scenography of colonial invasion, occupation, suppression and revolt. Women are depicted in full contention with their male counterparts, ready to take on leadership roles. Rashid has continued developing these interventions by historical reinvention, composing (in 2019) what is effectively a graphic mytho-satirical epic of colonialism in 40 panels (including a frontispiece), Views of Colonial Fabric Softener or, The Sidney and St. Marc Expedition to the Pacific, 1795. (e.g., panel 8, “Trappers/Sharpshooters or historical origin of Kool cigarettes”). It was perplexing that this ambitious series was not featured more prominently, but the gallery’s spatial limitations clearly impeded the show’s organization and installation. That said, not all of the work exhibited served Rashid’s overarching themes. Not to dismiss the totemic aspects of Rashid’s mythographic exorcism, but the “Yves Klein” garden totems could have easily been culled from the show. In addition to a surprisingly authentic-looking drum, Rebel (2013), Rashid showed an embroidered and appliquéd cape, Trickster (2019) bearing such insignia as a snake curling around an octagonal spider’s web (with Afro combs taking the place of classical Greek key and scroll-work for the decorative trim). Rashid also plays a trickster here, which is half the point. If colonialism’s legacies are still with us (on a “per capita” basis or otherwise), we continue to re-enact their ceremonies and traumas, even as we lampoon and subvert them.

Umar Rashid, Trappers/sharpshooters or historical origin of Kool cigarettes, 2019. Courtesy Transformative Arts.

By Leanna Robinson

Alexander Harrison’s aptly named exhibition “Midnight Everywhere,” is an exploration of the moods, tones and colors that the night brings. The paintings in the exhibition form a cohesive collection and tell the story of a solitary artist living in an old wooden house in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by apple trees and rolling hills with only the stars and flowers to keep him company. The focal painting, Portrait of an artist in the penumbra of the moon, in hopes for a brighter future (all works 2021), gives insight into who the main character in this story is—a Black cowboy with a toothy grin gazing out the window, painting the midnight sky. In many ways this “artist character” gives the collection a meta quality. Although the paintings were created by Harrison, one could suspend their disbelief and instead infer that the paintings were in fact painted by this mysterious cowboy. The still life paintings of watermelons, apples and flowers are what he would paint after a long day, and show snapshots from his life, giving the impression that this cowboy could have simply looked around his environment and painted what he saw in his surroundings. The consistent color palette is effective: the deep blues and purples give the impression of moonlight spreading over each scene. It’s easy to visualize the quiet, secluded cabin in which all of this introspection and recording took place, and to fill in the blanks of who this artist is (the one in the painting, not Harrison himself). The cohesive story is echoed by repeating themes in the paintings, such as checkerboard cloth, or watermelon seeds from a windowsill in Midnight Picnic, which also make an appearance in The Moon. All of this storytelling elevates the show to a metaphysical level, and changes the context of the figurative paintings that contain subject matter that could be seen as elementary—how many art students paint fruit for their first assignment? This does have its downfall, however, as the pieces are stronger as a collection and some may not hold up as well as solo efforts. This is a show that is greater than the sum of its parts. Harrison’s interest in storytelling goes beyond the paintings’ content, and into his painting techniques as well. Many of the paintings have a trompe-l’œil effect, in which Harrison has painted frames around the composition. This strategy suggests a vantage point from within the painting, further immersing the viewer in the world

By Ezrha Jean Black

For an artist who has deliberately cultivated a naïve style, Umar Rashid (who also occasionally calls himself Frohawk Two Feathers) appears to have calculated the exhibition’s title, “Per Capita” with almost labyrinthine deliberation—an amalgam of the coyly matterof-fact, ceremonious and slyly deceptive. Alternate readings might suggest for the head as much as the more commonplace, by the head.

An impressive, blue painted ceremonial arch, titled 8th Wonder: Portal to Los Angeles Past, Present and Future (2021), greeted visitors to the gallery; yet the transfer prints that covered the structure—white cougar and bird-like silhouettes collectively titled, “All Power to the Women” (2017)—seemed slightly disconnected from both the triumphal aspect of the arch and the “Per Capita” drawings hanging at the rear of the gallery. But disconnection and detour seemed to be subsidiary themes of the show. Ostensibly the centerpiece of the show, the eponymous “Per Capita” pieces (2021)—one an acrylic-on-cowhide with rampaging toy-like horses and masked soldiers slashing at each others’ heads; the other, a suite of 12 acrylic-on-paper drawings (of women’s faces—subtitled “Hortense through Candy,” each captioned “PER CAPITA”)—could not by themselves encapsulate either the artist’s stylistic range or the exhibition’s scope which, in addition to serving as a mini-retrospective of the artist’s work (from 2013), amounted to an exorcism of colonialism past and present. Rashid achieves his exorcism not merely through stylistic means (though he is a practiced hand at this, borrowing from Japanese graphic work of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Indian and Persian miniatures, Native American art dating from various periods of US colonial expansion, and Anglo-American folk art from the same period), but by revisiting—and aggressively messing with— the usual historical narratives. One example of this is a 2017 suite of unique zero graphic transfer prints (with ink and acrylic) on birch panels: an 18th-century “Shock Doctrine” scenography of colonial invasion, occupation, suppression and revolt. Women are depicted in full contention with their male counterparts, ready to take on leadership roles. Rashid has continued developing these interventions by historical reinvention, composing (in 2019) what is effectively a graphic mytho-satirical epic of colonialism in 40 panels (including a frontispiece), Views of Colonial Fabric Softener or, The Sidney and St. Marc Expedition to the Pacific, 1795. (e.g., panel 8, “Trappers/Sharpshooters or historical origin of Kool cigarettes”). It was perplexing that this ambitious series was not featured more prominently, but the gallery’s spatial limitations clearly impeded the show’s organization and installation. That said, not all of the work exhibited served Rashid’s overarching themes. Not to dismiss the totemic aspects of Rashid’s mythographic exorcism, but the “Yves Klein” garden totems could have easily been culled from the show. In addition to a surprisingly authentic-looking drum, Rebel (2013), Rashid showed an embroidered and appliquéd cape, Trickster (2019) bearing such insignia as a snake curling around an octagonal spider’s web (with Afro combs taking the place of classical Greek key and scroll-work for the decorative trim). Rashid also plays a trickster here, which is half the point. If colonialism’s legacies are still with us (on a “per capita” basis or otherwise), we continue to re-enact their ceremonies and traumas, even as we lampoon and subvert them.

Umar Rashid, Trappers/sharpshooters or historical origin of Kool cigarettes, 2019. Courtesy Transformative Arts.

By Leanna Robinson

Alexander Harrison’s aptly named exhibition “Midnight Everywhere,” is an exploration of the moods, tones and colors that the night brings. The paintings in the exhibition form a cohesive collection and tell the story of a solitary artist living in an old wooden house in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by apple trees and rolling hills with only the stars and flowers to keep him company. The focal painting, Portrait of an artist in the penumbra of the moon, in hopes for a brighter future (all works 2021), gives insight into who the main character in this story is—a Black cowboy with a toothy grin gazing out the window, painting the midnight sky. In many ways this “artist character” gives the collection a meta quality. Although the paintings were created by Harrison, one could suspend their disbelief and instead infer that the paintings were in fact painted by this mysterious cowboy. The still life paintings of watermelons, apples and flowers are what he would paint after a long day, and show snapshots from his life, giving the impression that this cowboy could have simply looked around his environment and painted what he saw in his surroundings. The consistent color palette is effective: the deep blues and purples give the impression of moonlight spreading over each scene. It’s easy to visualize the quiet, secluded cabin in which all of this introspection and recording took place, and to fill in the blanks of who this artist is (the one in the painting, not Harrison himself). The cohesive story is echoed by repeating themes in the paintings, such as checkerboard cloth, or watermelon seeds from a windowsill in Midnight Picnic, which also make an appearance in The Moon. All of this storytelling elevates the show to a metaphysical level, and changes the context of the figurative paintings that contain subject matter that could be seen as elementary—how many art students paint fruit for their first assignment? This does have its downfall, however, as the pieces are stronger as a collection and some may not hold up as well as solo efforts. This is a show that is greater than the sum of its parts. Harrison’s interest in storytelling goes beyond the paintings’ content, and into his painting techniques as well. Many of the paintings have a trompe-l’œil effect, in which Harrison has painted frames around the composition. This strategy suggests a vantage point from within the painting, further immersing the viewer in the world

By Ezrha Jean Black

For an artist who has deliberately cultivated a naïve style, Umar Rashid (who also occasionally calls himself Frohawk Two Feathers) appears to have calculated the exhibition’s title, “Per Capita” with almost labyrinthine deliberation—an amalgam of the coyly matterof-fact, ceremonious and slyly deceptive. Alternate readings might suggest for the head as much as the more commonplace, by the head. An impressive, blue painted ceremonial arch, titled 8th Wonder: Portal to Los Angeles Past, Present and Future (2021), greeted visitors to the gallery; yet the transfer prints that covered the structure—white cougar and bird-like silhouettes collectively titled, “All Power to the Women” (2017)—seemed slightly disconnected from both the triumphal aspect of the arch and the “Per Capita” drawings hanging at the rear of the gallery. But disconnection and detour seemed to be subsidiary themes of the show. Ostensibly the centerpiece of the show, the eponymous “Per Capita” pieces (2021)—one an acrylic-on-cowhide with rampaging toy-like horses and masked soldiers slashing at each others’ heads; the other, a suite of 12 acrylic-on-paper drawings (of women’s faces—subtitled “Hortense through Candy,” each captioned “PER CAPITA”)—could not by themselves encapsulate either the artist’s stylistic range or the exhibition’s scope which, in addition to serving as a mini-retrospective of the artist’s work (from 2013), amounted to an exorcism of colonialism past and present. Rashid achieves his exorcism not merely through stylistic means (though he is a practiced hand at this, borrowing from Japanese graphic work of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Indian and Persian miniatures, Native American art dating from various periods of US colonial expansion, and Anglo-American folk art from the same period), but by revisiting—and aggressively messing with— the usual historical narratives. One example of this is a 2017 suite of unique zero graphic transfer prints (with ink and acrylic) on birch panels: an 18th-century “Shock Doctrine” scenography of colonial invasion, occupation, suppression and revolt. Women are depicted in full contention with their male counterparts, ready to take on leadership roles. Rashid has continued developing these interventions by historical reinvention, composing (in 2019) what is effectively a graphic mytho-satirical epic of colonialism in 40 panels (including a frontispiece), Views of Colonial Fabric Softener or, The Sidney and St. Marc Expedition to the Pacific, 1795. (e.g., panel 8, “Trappers/Sharpshooters or historical origin of Kool cigarettes”). It was perplexing that this ambitious series was not featured more prominently, but the gallery’s spatial limitations clearly impeded the show’s organization and installation. That said, not all of the work exhibited served Rashid’s overarching themes. Not to dismiss the totemic aspects of Rashid’s mythographic exorcism, but the “Yves Klein” garden totems could have easily been culled from the show. In addition to a surprisingly authentic-looking drum, Rebel (2013), Rashid showed an embroidered and appliquéd cape, Trickster (2019) bearing such insignia as a snake curling around an octagonal spider’s web (with Afro combs taking the place of classical Greek key and scroll-work for the decorative trim). Rashid also plays a trickster here, which is half the point. If colonialism’s legacies are still with us (on a “per capita” basis or otherwise), we continue to re-enact their ceremonies and traumas, even as we lampoon and subvert them.

Umar Rashid, Trappers/sharpshooters or historical origin of Kool cigarettes, 2019. Courtesy Transformative Arts.

where,” is an exploration of the moods, tones and colors that the night brings. The paintings in the exhibition form a cohesive collection and tell the story of a solitary artist living in an old wooden house in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by apple trees and rolling hills with only the stars and flowers to keep him company. The focal painting, Portrait of an artist in the penumbra of the moon, in hopes for a brighter future (all works 2021), gives insight into who the main character in this story is—a Black cowboy with a toothy grin gazing out the window, painting the midnight sky. In many ways this “artist character” gives the collection a meta quality. Although the paintings were created by Harrison, one could suspend their disbelief and instead infer that the paintings were in fact painted by this mysterious cowboy. The still life paintings of watermelons, apples and flowers are what he would paint after a long day, and show snapshots from his life, giving the impression that this cowboy could have simply looked around his environment and painted what he saw in his surroundings. The consistent color palette is effective: the deep blues and purples give the impression of moonlight spreading over each scene. It’s easy to visualize the quiet, secluded cabin in which all of this introspection and recording took place, and to fill in the blanks of who this artist is (the one in the painting, not Harrison himself). The cohesive story is echoed by repeating themes in the paintings, such as checkerboard cloth, or watermelon seeds from a windowsill in Midnight Picnic, which also make an appearance in The Moon. All of this storytelling elevates the show to a metaphysical level, and changes the context of the figurative paintings that contain subject matter that could be seen as elementary—how many art students paint fruit for their first assignment? This does have its downfall, however, as the pieces are stronger as a collection and some may not hold up as well as solo efforts. This is a show that is greater than the sum of its parts. Harrison’s interest in storytelling goes beyond the paintings’ content, and into his painting techniques as well. Many of the paintings have a trompe-l’œil effect, in which Harrison has painted frames around the composition. This strategy suggests a vantage point from within the painting, further immersing the viewer in the world he has created. The windows also tell another story, as sweeping landscapes and a sense of stillness are juxtaposed by imagery of one being trapped. In Counting Sheep, a face peers out of a tiny opening, and in Why’d I have to Go n’ Dream so Big? the windowpane suggests a jail cell. This obvious longing that the artist in the paintings has is palpable, and from the solitary Light of Mine in the room of its own, it appears that the fire is still burning.

By Eve Wood

All good art has at its core an essential moment of transmutation, a point at which the object and the idea which informs it fully coalesce. The essence of the object—whether it’s a painting or a bag sculpture—versus the impulse to create it in the first place are the central questions that inform Helen Chung’s artistic process, and her recent solo exhibition at Rio Hondo College attests to these strange and often magical correlations. Working across disciplines is rarely easy, and we as viewers are constantly seeking visual threads that might lead us to some essential meaning. Neither Chung’s paintings nor sculptures correlate directly to her source material—shopping bags from high-end retailers that initially transfer expensive baubles, then are almost immediately downgraded to toting one’s dry-cleaning, then eventually to their sad end as rubbish themselves. The artist has exhumed what were essentially status chits designed to signal consumer spending ability and given these former upmarket signifiers a new life as art objects, as paintings and sculpture elevated to the gallery, a sic transit gloria mundi of market self-indulgence. The artist’s subjects are revived as

By Ezrha Jean Black

For an artist who has deliberately cultivated a naïve style, Umar Rashid (who also occasionally calls himself Frohawk Two Feathers) appears to have calculated the exhibition’s title, “Per Capita” with almost labyrinthine deliberation—an amalgam of the coyly matterof-fact, ceremonious and slyly deceptive. Alternate readings might suggest for the head as much as the more commonplace, by the head.

An impressive, blue painted ceremonial arch, titled 8th Wonder: Portal to Los Angeles Past, Present and Future (2021), greeted visitors to the gallery; yet the transfer prints that covered the structure—white cougar and bird-like silhouettes collectively titled, “All Power to the Women” (2017)—seemed slightly disconnected from both the triumphal aspect of the arch and the “Per Capita” drawings hanging at the rear of the gallery. But disconnection and detour seemed to be subsidiary themes of the show. Ostensibly the centerpiece of the show, the eponymous “Per Capita” pieces (2021)—one an acrylic-on-cowhide with rampaging toy-like horses and masked soldiers slashing at each others’ heads; the other, a suite of 12 acrylic-on-paper drawings (of women’s faces—subtitled “Hortense through Candy,” each captioned “PER CAPITA”)—could not by themselves encapsulate either the artist’s stylistic range or the exhibition’s scope which, in addition to serving as a mini-retrospective of the artist’s work (from 2013), amounted to an exorcism of colonialism past and present. Rashid achieves his exorcism not merely through stylistic means (though he is a practiced hand at this, borrowing from Japanese graphic work of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Indian and Persian miniatures, Native American art dating from various periods of US colonial expansion, and Anglo-American folk art from the same period), but by revisiting—and aggressively messing with— the usual historical narratives. One example of this is a 2017 suite of unique zero graphic transfer prints (with ink and acrylic) on birch panels: an 18th-century “Shock Doctrine” scenography of colonial invasion, occupation, suppression and revolt. Women are depicted in full contention with their male counterparts, ready to take on leadership roles. Rashid has continued developing these interventions by historical reinvention, composing (in 2019) what is effectively a graphic mytho-satirical epic of colonialism in 40 panels (including a frontispiece), Views of Colonial Fabric Softener or, The Sidney and St. Marc Expedition to the Pacific, 1795. (e.g., panel 8, “Trappers/Sharpshooters or historical origin of Kool cigarettes”). It was perplexing that this ambitious series was not featured more prominently, but the gallery’s spatial limitations clearly impeded the show’s organization and installation. That said, not all of the work exhibited served Rashid’s overarching themes. Not to dismiss the totemic aspects of Rashid’s mythographic exorcism, but the “Yves Klein” garden totems could have easily been culled from the show. In addition to a surprisingly authentic-looking drum, Rebel (2013), Rashid showed an embroidered and appliquéd cape, Trickster (2019) bearing such insignia as a snake curling around an octagonal spider’s web (with Afro combs taking the place of classical Greek key and scroll-work for the decorative trim). Rashid also plays a trickster here, which is half the point. If colonialism’s legacies are still with us (on a “per capita” basis or otherwise), we continue to re-enact their ceremonies and traumas, even as we lampoon and subvert them.

Umar Rashid, Trappers/sharpshooters or historical origin of Kool cigarettes, 2019. Courtesy Transformative Arts.

By Leanna Robinson

Alexander Harrison’s aptly named exhibition “Midnight Everywhere,” is an exploration of the moods, tones and colors that the night brings. The paintings in the exhibition form a cohesive collection and tell the story of a solitary artist living in an old wooden house in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by apple trees and rolling hills with only the stars and flowers to keep him company. The focal painting, Portrait of an artist in the penumbra of the moon, in hopes for a brighter future (all works 2021), gives insight into who the main character in this story is—a Black cowboy with a toothy grin gazing out the window, painting the midnight sky. In many ways this “artist character” gives the collection a meta quality. Although the paintings were created by Harrison, one could suspend their disbelief and instead infer that the paintings were in fact painted by this mysterious cowboy. The still life paintings of watermelons, apples and flowers are what he would paint after a long day, and show snapshots from his life, giving the impression that this cowboy could have simply looked around his environment and painted what he saw in his surroundings. The consistent color palette is effective: the deep blues and purples give the impression of moonlight spreading over each scene. It’s easy to visualize the quiet, secluded cabin in which all of this introspection and recording took place, and to fill in the blanks of who this artist is (the one in the painting, not Harrison himself). The cohesive story is echoed by repeating themes in the paintings, such as checkerboard cloth, or watermelon seeds from a windowsill in Midnight Picnic, which also make an appearance in The Moon. All of this storytelling elevates the show to a metaphysical level, and changes the context of the figurative paintings that contain subject matter that could be seen as elementary—how many art students paint fruit for their first assignment? This does have its downfall, however, as the pieces are stronger as a collection and some may not hold up as well as solo efforts. This is a show that is greater than the sum of its parts. Harrison’s interest in storytelling goes beyond the paintings’ content, and into his painting techniques as well. Many of the paintings have a trompe-l’œil effect, in which Harrison has painted frames around the composition. This strategy suggests a vantage point from within the painting, further immersing the viewer in the world

By Ezrha Jean Black

For an artist who has deliberately cultivated a naïve style, Umar Rashid (who also occasionally calls himself Frohawk Two Feathers) appears to have calculated the exhibition’s title, “Per Capita” with almost labyrinthine deliberation—an amalgam of the coyly matterof-fact, ceremonious and slyly deceptive. Alternate readings might suggest for the head as much as the more commonplace, by the head. An impressive, blue painted ceremonial arch, titled 8th Wonder: Portal to Los Angeles Past, Present and Future (2021), greeted visitors to the gallery; yet the transfer prints that covered the structure—white cougar and bird-like silhouettes collectively titled, “All Power to the Women” (2017)—seemed slightly disconnected from both the triumphal aspect of the arch and the “Per Capita” drawings hanging at the rear of the gallery. But disconnection and detour seemed to be subsidiary themes of the show. Ostensibly the centerpiece of the show, the eponymous “Per Capita” pieces (2021)—one an acrylic-on-cowhide with rampaging toy-like horses and masked soldiers slashing at each others’ heads; the other, a suite of 12 acrylic-on-paper drawings (of women’s faces—subtitled “Hortense through Candy,” each captioned “PER CAPITA”)—could not by themselves encapsulate either the artist’s stylistic range or the exhibition’s scope which, in addition to serving as a mini-retrospective of the artist’s work (from 2013), amounted to an exorcism of colonialism past and present. Rashid achieves his exorcism not merely through stylistic means (though he is a practiced hand at this, borrowing from Japanese graphic work of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Indian and Persian miniatures, Native American art dating from various periods of US colonial expansion, and Anglo-American folk art from the same period), but by revisiting—and aggressively messing with— the usual historical narratives. One example of this is a 2017 suite of unique zero graphic transfer prints (with ink and acrylic) on birch panels: an 18th-century “Shock Doctrine” scenography of colonial invasion, occupation, suppression and revolt. Women are depicted in full contention with their male counterparts, ready to take on leadership roles. Rashid has continued developing these interventions by historical reinvention, composing (in 2019) what is effectively a graphic mytho-satirical epic of colonialism in 40 panels (including a frontispiece), Views of Colonial Fabric Softener or, The Sidney and St. Marc Expedition to the Pacific, 1795. (e.g., panel 8, “Trappers/Sharpshooters or historical origin of Kool cigarettes”). It was perplexing that this ambitious series was not featured more prominently, but the gallery’s spatial limitations clearly impeded the show’s organization and installation. That said, not all of the work exhibited served Rashid’s overarching themes. Not to dismiss the totemic aspects of Rashid’s mythographic exorcism, but the “Yves Klein” garden totems could have easily been culled from the show. In addition to a surprisingly authentic-looking drum, Rebel (2013), Rashid showed an embroidered and appliquéd cape, Trickster (2019) bearing such insignia as a snake curling around an octagonal spider’s web (with Afro combs taking the place of classical Greek key and scroll-work for the decorative trim). Rashid also plays a trickster here, which is half the point. If colonialism’s legacies are still with us (on a “per capita” basis or otherwise), we continue to re-enact their ceremonies and traumas, even as we lampoon and subvert them.

Umar Rashid, Trappers/sharpshooters or historical origin of Kool cigarettes, 2019. Courtesy Transformative Arts.

where,” is an exploration of the moods, tones and colors that the night brings. The paintings in the exhibition form a cohesive collection and tell the story of a solitary artist living in an old wooden house in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by apple trees and rolling hills with only the stars and flowers to keep him company. The focal painting, Portrait of an artist in the penumbra of the moon, in hopes for a brighter future (all works 2021), gives insight into who the main character in this story is—a Black cowboy with a toothy grin gazing out the window, painting the midnight sky. In many ways this “artist character” gives the collection a meta quality. Although the paintings were created by Harrison, one could suspend their disbelief and instead infer that the paintings were in fact painted by this mysterious cowboy. The still life paintings of watermelons, apples and flowers are what he would paint after a long day, and show snapshots from his life, giving the impression that this cowboy could have simply looked around his environment and painted what he saw in his surroundings. The consistent color palette is effective: the deep blues and purples give the impression of moonlight spreading over each scene. It’s easy to visualize the quiet, secluded cabin in which all of this introspection and recording took place, and to fill in the blanks of who this artist is (the one in the painting, not Harrison himself). The cohesive story is echoed by repeating themes in the paintings, such as checkerboard cloth, or watermelon seeds from a windowsill in Midnight Picnic, which also make an appearance in The Moon. All of this storytelling elevates the show to a metaphysical level, and changes the context of the figurative paintings that contain subject matter that could be seen as elementary—how many art students paint fruit for their first assignment? This does have its downfall, however, as the pieces are stronger as a collection and some may not hold up as well as solo efforts. This is a show that is greater than the sum of its parts. Harrison’s interest in storytelling goes beyond the paintings’ content, and into his painting techniques as well. Many of the paintings have a trompe-l’œil effect, in which Harrison has painted frames around the composition. This strategy suggests a vantage point from within the painting, further immersing the viewer in the world he has created. The windows also tell another story, as sweeping landscapes and a sense of stillness are juxtaposed by imagery of one being trapped. In Counting Sheep, a face peers out of a tiny opening, and in Why’d I have to Go n’ Dream so Big? the windowpane suggests a jail cell. This obvious longing that the artist in the paintings has is palpable, and from the solitary Light of Mine in the room of its own, it appears that the fire is still burning.

By Eve Wood

All good art has at its core an essential moment of transmutation, a point at which the object and the idea which informs it fully coalesce. The essence of the object—whether it’s a painting or a bag sculpture—versus the impulse to create it in the first place are the central questions that inform Helen Chung’s artistic process, and her recent solo exhibition at Rio Hondo College attests to these strange and often magical correlations. Working across disciplines is rarely easy, and we as viewers are constantly seeking visual threads that might lead us to some essential meaning. Neither Chung’s paintings nor sculptures correlate directly to her source material—shopping bags from high-end retailers that initially transfer expensive baubles, then are almost immediately downgraded to toting one’s dry-cleaning, then eventually to their sad end as rubbish themselves. The artist has exhumed what were essentially status chits designed to signal consumer spending ability and given these former upmarket signifiers a new life as art objects, as paintings and sculpture elevated to the gallery, a sic transit gloria mundi of market self-indulgence. The artist’s subjects are revived as

BY SETH HAWKINS

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.

CURATED BY LAURA LONDON

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

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