16 September 2017– 41 Franklin Street [email protected] 1 Stamford, CT 06901 www.franklinstreetworks.org 2 7 January 2018 “I hear it everywhere I go” is sponsored, in part, by Aquarion Water Company, the City of Stamford Community Arts Partnership Program, Connecticut Office of the Arts, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
16 September 2017– 7 January 2018
Exhibiting Artists: Alex Bag, Michael Blake, Nayland Blake, Jen DeNike, Jonah Freeman & Justin Lowe, Rashid Johnson, Adam McEwen, Rodney McMillian, Tameka Norris, Cheryl Pope, Mikel Rouse, Melissa Vandenberg
3 Curated by Terri C Smith Introduction
Terri C Smith, Creative Director, Franklin Street Works
i h e a r i t e v e r y w h e r e i g o
Running errands for the installation of “I hear it everywhere I go” in early September, I found myself in the small lobby of a locally owned glass company in Fairfield, Connecticut. The receptionist was on the phone when I arrived, methodically drawing key pieces of information out of the customer. When she hung up and began helping me, a man walked in to pick up his order. They seemed to know each other pretty well. He asked her how she was doing and, honestly, I don’t remember what she said. When she asked him the same question, he said, “Livin’ the dream” with humor and good-natured sarcasm in his voice. She replied, “Yeah, we’re all living the dream,” adding another generous helping of sarcasm, and then followed up with “or we’re all pretending to.” I i was struck by how this quick exchange articulated with poetic efficiency the disconnect between the promise metal objects (blockade barriers, baskets, walkers), and of the American Dream and its lived reality. I grabbed American flags. In “Towards a Metalanguage of Evil: my plexi and, heading to the door, thought, “Well, here is Notes, Bibliography, Filmography” (1992-93), Noland the theme of ‘I hear it everywhere I go’ happening in real wrote, “Minorities are kept busy by ‘impossible projects.’ time,” noting, “and I am hearing it everywhere I go.” So committed and tricked into trying to ‘slay the mythical dragon,’ they are effectively out of competition with the 2 2Cady Noland, “Towards a Metalanguage genuine players in the game.” In the 1989 essay that o r i g i n s t o r y of Evil 1992-93,” WITNESS TO HER ART: preceded those notes, “Towards a Metalanguage of Evil,” Art and Writings by Adrian Piper, Mona she characterized this “competition” as a “meta-game,” Artist Cady Noland’s (b. United States, 1956) writing, Hatoum, Cady Noland, Jenny Holzer, Kara asserting, “There is a meta-game available for use in sculpture, and interviews inspired this exhibition and Walker, Daniela Rossell and Eau de Cologne, the United States. The rules of the game, or even that became the lens through which I made my curatorial ed. Rhea Anastas with Michael Brenson there is a game at all, are hidden to some. The uninitiated decisions. Noland’s observations around the ways (Annandale-on-Hudson, New York Center are called naive or provincial, liars or suckers. To those dissatisfaction plays out in the margins of American for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, unabused by an awareness of back door maneuvering, a culture are intriguing to me, and I find her writing 2006), 144. whole of deceit remains opaque. Those in the dark are and thinking on the subject to be effective tools in still ripe for exploitation.”3 thinking about how certain artists address difference ³Cady Noland, “Towards a Metalanguage and common ground simultaneously. In the early of Evil,” Balcon no. 4 (1989), WITNESS TO In addition to observing how the powerful prey on “those 1990s, Noland pointedly and insightfully discussed HER ART: Art and Writings by Adrian Piper, in the dark,” Noland argues that the powerless in America dissatisfaction and the socially acceptable forms Mona Hatoum, Cady Noland, Jenny Holzer, sometimes express dissatisfaction by building up and of violence through which it is expressed. In a 1990 Kara Walker, Daniela Rossell and Eau de tearing down celebrities. Thus, people in the margins interview, she stated: Cologne, ed. Rhea Anastas with Michael of invisibility and the margins of hypervisibility tend to Brenson (Annandale-on-Hudson, New York receive the brunt of our culture’s dissatisfaction: “When In the United States at present we don’t have a Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, I was making the Celebrity Trash piece I was reading ‘language of dissention.’ You might say people visit 2006), 127. The Globe and The Star and saw what is done is that you their frustrations on other individuals and that acts consume all of these celebrities each week, then you as a type of ‘safety valve’ to ‘have steam let off.’ turn them into trash. This trashing helps to dampen People may complain about ‘all of the violence there people’s anger over their situation or their own place in 4 is today’; but if there weren’t these more individual 4Cady Noland interviewed by Michèle the hierarchy of importance.” Thoughts about celebrity forms of venting there would more likely be rioters Cone, “Michèle Cone Cady Noland 1990,” and our relationship to it also weave their way throughout or committees expressing dissatisfaction in a more WITNESS TO HER ART: Art and Writings by “I hear it everywhere I go,” with works that touch on pop 1 ¹Cady Noland interviewed by Michèle Cone, collective way. Adrian Piper, Mona Hatoum, Cady Noland, culture, spectacle, and glamorized death. “Michèle Cone Cady Noland 1990,” WITNESS Jenny Holzer, Kara Walker, Daniela Rossell TO HER ART: Art and Writings by Adrian In that same interview, Noland lists some ways people and Eau de Cologne, ed. Rhea Anastas with Piper, Mona Hatoum, Cady Noland, Jenny let off steam, citing sporting events, daytime TV talk Michael Brenson (Annandale-on-Hudson, m i s s i n g p e r s o n Holzer, Kara Walker, Daniela Rossell and shows, the trashing of celebrities, the waste of the New York Center for Curatorial Studies, Eau de Cologne, ed. Rhea Anastas with resources of others, and the treatment of people as Bard College, 2006), 157. One thing that does not make its way into this exhibition Michael Brenson (Annandale-on-Hudson, objects for personal gain. This safety valve phenomenon is the work of Cady Noland. Noland, who stopped New York Center for Curatorial Studies, informs “I hear it everywhere I go,” showing up in producing new works in the 1990s, has a documented Bard College, 2006), 155. performed narratives, the use of post-consumer record of insisting disclaimers be included in exhibitions products, a talk-show-themed opera, and allusions where she is not intimately involved, especially regarding to varsity sports and boxing. decisions of the works’ contextualization and physical placement. However, her writings, use of materials, In her sculpture, Noland also often addresses the and influence on art in the 1990s were conceptual marginalization of minority and economically depressed touchstones in choosing the exhibiting artists. That populations through the use of mass-produced materials said, I do not see their work as necessarily being directly ii such as chain link fencing, Budweiser cans, rubber tires, iii influenced by Noland’s. Rather, the exhibited works, dating from 1995 to 2016, expand on and add to Noland’s observations about American life through strategies such as allegory, collaborative storytelling, and performed expressions around issues of class and race, raising new questions and bringing fresh observations to the themes Noland so richly explored during her career.
Good times are comin’ Keep on playin’ I hear it everywhere I go. we gonna shake this shit up Good times are comin’ Keep on tellin’ us we makin’ it up I hear it everywhere I go. The American Dream Good times are comin’ May you never wake up but they sure comin’ slow. Chance the Rapper, Neil Young, “Vampire Blues” (1974) “First-World Problems/Here It Comes” (2017)
Terri C Smith
“I hear it everywhere I go” is a group exhibition that includes sculptures, texts, installations, and videos ranging from 1995 to the present. This show aims, in part, to explore dissatisfaction around the pursuit of the American Dream and how it is expressed. The curatorial premise was inspired by artist Cady Noland’s (b. 1956) writings on and statements about American life, including the American tendency to vent violent impulses through socially acceptable release valves such as figuratively “trashing” celebrities on the one iv 1 hand and conning or preying on populations outside of dominant power structures—often in the name of iterations of things chained together, of things enclosed 1 4 1For more on Cady Noland’s theories, entrepreneurship—on the other. 4Nayland Blake, “HOW CAN YOU BE in boxes behind glass, of toys and other homely objects,” see this catalog’s intro. EXPECTED TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY?,” which are “conceived of in relation to the kind of objects 5 The artists here exponentially expand on and add to Behavior, curator Maura Reilly (New York: we handle every day.” This impulse of chaining together the show’s themes through a variety of strategies, Location One, 2009), 8. and interest in homely objects informs “Untitled, 2007.” including performed fictions that resituate celebrity The wall sculpture was made by picking a bottle a day and commodity culture; collaborative text pieces 5 Ibid. off the street as Blake walked his dog and then stringing that give institutionally marginalized voices visibility; the bottles together in real time. In the context of this appropriation of pop culture to explore the isolation exhibition, the use of post-consumer objects in “Untitled” of fame; the mining of distinctly American signifiers resonates with Cady Noland’s interest in the “blank like varsity sports and daytime TV talk shows; and identity” of materials and is reminiscent of her baskets of juxtapositions of post-consumer objects and mass- objects, which include Budweiser cans, trashed bicycle produced materials that read on multiple levels and helmets, and discarded cardboard boxes. Here, Blake often indicate how people’s race, class, gender and positions post-consumer materials in a new economy sexuality can position them in a simultaneous state of where they will be bought and sold in the art market—an hypervisibility and invisibility in American culture. approach fellow exhibiting artist Rodney McMillian also takes in his works, which are made of items such as Critic Peter Schjeldahl once called Noland “the dark weathered furniture, used sheets, and worn carpets. 2 ²Peter Schjeldahl, “Venice Anyone?,” poet of the National Unconscious,” and that description in Mirabella (September 1990), 3. was the guiding touchstone for this show’s curatorial With “Ibedji (Quick),” Blake brings together collected decisions as well as its physical installation. Many of the items that, among other things, reflect personal works in “I hear it everywhere I go” also resonate with identities and social hierarchies. Racism in America is Noland’s interest in “the differences and similarities symbolized by diminutive KKK hoods (one in black and between blank identity and iconography [of objects one in white)—the garb of a white supremacist hate 3 3Cady Noland interviewed by Michèle and materials] as well as anonymity and fame.” The group that would see Blake as an abomination for his Cone, “Michèle Cone Cady Noland 1990,” exhibiting artists’ explorations of these overlapping and mixed-race heritage. The vitrine also holds pins that WITNESS TO HER ART: Art and Writings by divergent aspects of materials and social status, among say “Master,” “Boss,” and “Trash,” alluding to the artist’s Adrian Piper, Mona Hatoum, Cady Noland, other things, infuse the exhibition with an allegorical interest in the fixed levels of dominance associated with Jenny Holzer, Kara Walker, Daniela Rossell tone. “I hear it everywhere I go” aspires, emotes, both slavery and sexual bondage. Themes around slavery and Eau de Cologne, ed. Rhea Anastas with dreams, mourns, carps, and converses about identities, and S&M are frequently considered in Blake’s work, Michael Brenson (Annandale-on-Hudson, highlighting ways expectations can be colored by which curator Maura Reilly characterizes as his interest New York Center for Curatorial Studies, unconscious efforts to acquire the perceived successes in “the fear of public humiliation, shaming, or the marking Bard College, 2006), 157. of the American Dream. The timeline of Noland’s career of one’s body with a symbol of one’s identity, be it racial 6 (the late 1980s to late 1990s) and the accompanying 6Maura Reilly, Behavior, (New York: or sexual.” Holding together seemingly disparate objects trajectory of “identity politics” in contemporary art Location One, 2009), 34. via the museum display trope of the vitrine, “Ibedji required this be an intergenerational show that includes (Quick)” employs African Ibedji twin totems in the form works from the 1990s to today made by artists with of rabbits as its central image. The word “Ibedji” in the diverse histories, perspectives, and backgrounds. title references West African Yoruba Ibedji figures that operate as stand-ins for lost twins if one or both die. The A contemporary of Cady Noland, exhibiting artist Nayland word “Quick” refers to Nestlé’s “Nesquik” syrup, whose Blake began his career in the mid 1980s, and his work mascot was a rabbit and whose rabbit-shaped bottles often explores themes of personal identity in the context serve as the twins in Blake’s sculpture (one chocolate of race and sexuality. Blake’s parents are African and and one strawberry, likely a nod to the artist’s racial American Indian on one side and Irish and English on identity). Since 1991, the rabbit has continued to be a the other. His identity of being a mixed-race gay man is recurring figure in Blake’s work. The artist gathers rabbit explored primarily through sculpture and performance. symbolism from popular culture, including children’s 2 According to Blake, his works “contain many different 3 books, movies, and literature. As a child, Blake was drawn to the character of Br’er Rabbit in the book books that frequently include signifiers from varsity Uncle Remus, which his mother read to him. In it, sports such as cheers and banners. the rabbit, who is illustrated as white and described by the narrator as being black, is the story’s hero. In Cheryl Pope has four collaborative works in “I hear it addition to race, queerness plays into the rabbit everywhere I go,” including a sculpture, video, banner, symbolism for the artist. The movie Harvey—where and book. The sculpture, in the form of an industrial a man, played by Jimmy Stewart, has a 6’3” invisible mat, features a statement from an incarcerated youth in rabbit friend—is interpreted by Blake as representing Washington, DC, who responded to the artist’s prompt 7 7Reilly, 16. “barely sublimated homosexuality.” The use of twins “When I get out” with the phrase “WHEN I GET OUT I and collected items such as corks, jewelry, and cigars WANT TO BEAT SOMEONE UP.” The youth’s statement is in “Ibedji (Quick)” is a conscious attempt by Blake “to writ large on a mat, which, at six by eight feet, is sized combine African diasporic approach to the object with to match the average dimensions of a jail cell. This scale Western conceptual art practices,” overlaying European viscerally impacts the viewer, who can now imagine and African methods in a sculpture that possesses being confined in such a small space and is a powerful simultaneous narratives. Blake expanded on his statement regarding unachieved dreams and the cycles interest in multiple accounts around identity in a 2012 of violence in American life. The font of the mat’s text is interview: “I’m not interested in people functioning as Times, which is often associated with commemorative representations. I’m not interested in them re-presenting, monuments and buildings, infusing the sculpture with a I’m interested in them being present however they are. sense of heroic achievement. Mounted on the exterior of I think that when we embody all of the different sorts of Franklin Street Works, a reproduced varsity banner from possibilities of how we can be in the world, that’s when Pope’s collaboration with students at Kenyon College we give each other courage to come out and be however reads “SOMETIMES I THINK I HAVE TWO HEARTS.” Its 8 8Nayland Blake Interview “[Uncut] @ we are.” ambivalence foreshadows much of the work in this YBCA,” on the occasion of the exhibition exhibition, setting the tone before visitors enter the FREE!LOVE!TOOL!BOX! (Yerba Buena Center This embrace of what Blake describes as “all the galleries. Pope’s interest in boxing is foregrounded in for the Arts, 2013), https://www.youtube. possibilities of how we can be” is front and center in her video Speculum/Specularum, where she spars with com/watch?v=Senn6d9wDOw the work of Chicago-based artist Cheryl Pope, who actor and writer Reginald Eldridge. As they box, Pope collaborates with youth and young adults, encouraging utters, “Thank you,” and Eldridge replies, “Sorry,” both them to share the specifics of their lives in relationship speaking calmly and without much intonation. Pope, who to their communities. Pope focuses on what she has won boxing tournaments and teaches boxing to youth 9 9Cheryl Pope, “About,” artist website, describes as “the act and politics of listening,” which and adults, sees the ring as a metaphorical space for https://www.cherylpope.net/about includes encouraging her collaborators to share exchanging ideas and understanding boundaries. Pope personal perspectives that communicate the complex also used the boxing ring as a stage for readings in the intersections of lived circumstances. In this way, Pope performance “JUST YELL: POETRY AS SELF DEFENSE.” In hopes to galvanize young people to go beyond what this exhibition, Pope’s book Just Yell presents a different she describes as “these annoying check boxes iteration of the “Just Yell” project, a limited-edition 10 10Cheryl Pope, interview with the author, they have us all filling out for identities.” Instead her hardcover resting on a bronze prayer-book holder. The 7 September 2017, audio recording of practice inquires and responds to identity as it relates book’s primary focus is on athletic cheers of different Skype conversation, Franklin Street Works, to broader social systems, “taking into account race, styles (spelling yells, split yells, divided and split yells, 11 Stamford, CT. gender, class, history, power and place.” Using media action yells, and individual yells) created by youth in such as sculpture, performances, and books, Pope Chicago. These cheers are contextualized through 11Pope, “About,” artist website, https:// works closely with others to shift cultural power to elements such as images of gunmen and victims laid www.cherylpope.net/about young performers and writers, many of whom may out like yearbook photos and through posed photos of feel silenced or ignored due to institutional or political students at their schools holding up poster-board signs marginalization. Pope, who teaches design and fashion with words like “Dream” and “Family.” The allusions to at The Art Institute of Chicago, then brings form to boxing and varsity sports in Pope’s work resonate with 4 these expressions through performance, sculpture and 5 Cady Noland’s observations about how sporting events sometimes serve as a safety valve for violent impulses that is hangin’ up the God-damn nation and dissatisfaction, yet, while Pope’s collaborative Looks like we always end up in a rut (everybody now!) projects present frank and personal perspectives that Tryin’ to make it real—compared to what? C’mon baby! vent frustrations and anger, they diverge from Noland’s philosophies via forms and processes that include aspir- On another shelf are two copies of The System of Dante’s ational perspectives and urgent messages of change. Hell (1965), a novel by African-American writer LeRoi Jones (who changed his name to Amiri Baraka after the In his studio practice, Rashid Johnson also explores the assassination of Malcolm X). The story follows a young relationship between individual identities and shared black man’s struggles with segregation and racism, cultural experience. Through his use of autobiographical presenting his experiences through the lens of Dante’s objects, he, like Nayland Blake, subverts expectations Inferno. The title of Johnson’s work, “In Circles,” is likely a of “re-presenting.” According to curator Julie Rodrigues reference to the circles of hell in the Inferno, which is part Widholm, by including elements like books from his one of Dante Alighieri’s 14th-century epic poem Divine mother’s library of black thinkers and the vinyl records Comedy. The books and the vinyl LP are post-consumer he listens to in his studio, Johnson asserts “his right items that were originally meant to be handled. In placing to be considered an individual rather than a generic or them on shelves, Johnson, like Blake with “Ibedji (Quick),” 12 12Julie Rodrigues Widholm, “The Moment ethnic cultural type.” Johnson, who is African-American, uses a museum display strategy to strip the objects of of Creation” in Message to Our Folks also incorporates West African black soap (traditionally their functionality and transform them into conceptual (Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art from Ghana) and shea butter in his art for its connections elements only to be viewed. With “In Circles,” Johnson Chicago, 2012), 28. to the flourishing of Afrocentricism that his parents and combines the culturally loaded iconography of personal- many people in African-American communities embraced turned-precious objects with the blank identity of oak in the 1970s. Widholm attributes these elements to a flooring (treated with gold paint) to convey his lived generational shift of artists growing up in the 1960s and influences alongside culturally shared experiences of 70s who make work “rooted partly in autobiography” black life in America. The work also addresses the co- but who are also “highly aware of broader connotations existence of a previous generation’s pride in their African and meaning of their chosen artistic materials and who heritage and their disenfranchisement from the American invite viewers to bring their own subjective readings to Dream due to bigotry and systemic exclusion. 13 13Ibid. the work.” Adding to allegorical material approaches in “I hear On view in this exhibition, Johnson’s “In Circles” is part it everywhere I go,” Michael Blake, Rodney McMillian, of a group of wall works that were made in 2015, which and Melissa Vandenberg make works using mass- included shelves, oak flooring, vinyl records, books, produced or post-consumer items. Their approach shea butter, and black soap. The objects on the shelves also alludes to the absent body, implying levels of of “In Circles” include the live soul jazz album “Swiss access to and exclusion from the economic and social Movements” by Les McCann and Eddie Harris. The album freedoms associated with the American Dream. is the first of the soul jazz genre to be a crossover hit, Michael Blake, who is the youngest exhibiting artist here, showing up on Billboard’s R&B and LP charts. The album uses mass-produced materials such as exercise mats, starts with the song “Compared to What?” It is written by athletic cups, and packing foam to indicate the gendered, African-American expat Gene McDaniel, and begins with quasi-private spaces of gyms and bathrooms. Blake lyrics that observe the disconnect between the life of a stated in a 2016 interview, “Using restrooms, readymades black artist and the white capitalist mainstream ideas and gym equipment, as well as foam, latex, and other of consumerism and exploitation that steer American 14Michael Blake interviewed by Winter hardware, I hope to construct sculptures that parody society: Mendelson, “In the Studio with Sculptor and challenge commercial constructions of the human Michael Blake,” Posture (New York: body,” adding, “The sculptures are bodily and act as I love to lie and lie to love Posture), http://posturemag.com/online/in- friends, becoming tangible trackers formed in my process 14 A-Hangin’ on, we push and shove the-studio-with-sculptor-michael-blake/ of exploring my identity.” 6 Possession is the motivation 7 In “Untitled (Ring #2),” black mat material that Vandenberg’s sculpture, “Braided Rapunzel,” with its references workout rooms is site-specifically tailored braids made from stripe sections of discarded or donated to the gallery’s architecture and functionality. The ring, American flags, refers to the German fairytale character placed in the corner, is constructed of foam, with the of Rapunzel, whose beauty prompted her stepmother to elastic from a cut-up tube sock binding it together. The trap the young woman in a stairless tower as a means circle is ambiguous enough that it could be read as a of protection. In Vandenberg’s sculpture, the long piece of exercise equipment or as a large-scale soft golden locks used by Rapunzel’s stepmother/captor to sculpture version of a cock ring. This ambiguity beckons climb the tower and visit are replaced with fabric that viewers to simultaneously imagine the public use of symbolizes American nationalism. The downturned a gym and the private sexual proclivities of its users antique mannequin head tips gently atop a silver stand and reflects Michael Blake’s exploration of taboo and as though she is peering from her tower, waiting for visits desire. In his earliest sculpture on view, “Jocked,” Blake from her captor by day and from the prince who wants appropriates an athletic cup, adding latex tubing. The to free her by night. Positioning a woman between her tubing’s flaccid, draping qualities stand in contrast to the family and a man parallels early American history when rigid cup, which is designed to protect a phallus during a woman’s choices were largely limited to staying with sporting events, symbolically draining the equipment her birth family or being transferred to a man who would of its machismo. Transporting the viewer from the gym care for her. With “Braided Rapunzel,” the ingénue’s to the public bathroom, Blake’s “Untitled (3 Partitions)” head is literally weighed down by flags, which can be combines foam and the security hardware used in read as a metaphor for the burdens placed on women constructing bathroom stalls to make a humorous and in the U.S. as they are continuously forced to advocate conceptually compelling wall work. Blake notes that for basic rights such as the vote, reproductive freedom, he “changed the partition material from metal to foam maternity leave, and equal pay. Vandenberg’s “Clouds to flip the institutional object into something that is of Vertical Development” is an EXIT sign whose face flexible and easily penetrable.” Even in the abstract, is covered with clouds cut from a landscape photo. the partitions, which indicate a private activity, provide In “I hear it everywhere I go,” the work is placed below little concealment since the “stalls” have no fronts. This emergency lights, where the real exit signs are placed failure of institutional structures to prevent vulnerability throughout the galleries, lending it a meta vibe that in the shared gendered space of the public restroom exists between art and function. In the context of this resonates with current discussions around gender as a exhibition, the work speaks to, among other things, fabricated social construct and the restroom as ground escapism, including coping mechanisms that assist zero for political debates about the rights of trans people people in ignoring or delaying feelings of dissatisfaction in America. through entertainment or the symbolism of the expansive nature of the heavens, including the Christian belief in an Ideas of vulnerability, gender, and humor also inform afterlife free of suffering. Melissa Vandenberg’s sculptures “Braided Rapunzel” (2016) and “Clouds of Vertical Development” (2012). Post-consumer objects and incorporation of the absent Vandenberg, a Kentucky-based artist and educator, body to explore race and political representation in explores ideas of national identity and homeland from a relationship to the American Dream are central to the feminist perspective, often repurposing antique objects work of LA-based artist Rodney McMillian. In an interview, and fabrics to make allegorical sculptures informed by McMillian elaborated on how the term post-consumer gender and place. Similar to those of Nayland Blake, intersects with his practice, specifically his sheet Vandenberg’s materials are often ones “we handle every paintings: day,” including historically or politically infused fabrics such as Civil War-era quilts, army duffle bags, and [Post-consumer] suggests a long economic American flags. Certain forms recur in her work, including process that starts with material grown in a field or serpents, life preservers, and tombstones, invoking synthesized. That material is woven into a fabric, then 8 themes of temptation, power, rising waters, and death. 9 a designer designs the object. From there it’s actually manufactured into a sheet. Then it’s shipped to a store with the top half covered by a white sheet. The figure and then it’s sold, then the person who purchased is in total darkness except for a single light source it lives with it, and discards it. At that point if finds that resembles car headlights or a garage work lamp. its way into another economic system—that being a The person under the sheet has been identified as the secondhand store—then another system: the museum, artist in reviews, but McMillian prefers to keep the 19 the art world. I use “post-consumer” because I want to 19Email conversation between the artist performer’s identity anonymous. The body in the video implicate the entire economic landscape, the system, and author, September 29, 2017. is virtually invisible and the ability to communicate 15 15Rodney McMillian interviewed by in which we exist. is almost completely obscured. Beneath the sheet, William S. Smith, “Post-Consumer Report: the figure seems to bob, weave, and punch, with the A Conversation with Rodney McMillian, Art In “Untitled” (2009), a stained Ikea chair is impaled by a exception of short breaks of stillness and gentle in America (New York: Brant Publications cardboard tube covered in black latex paint. Conceivably swaying. These dynamics intonate a gestural spectrum 2016), http://www.artinamericamagazine. a riff on artist Robert Gober’s 1997 sculpture where that resides between the urgency of battle and the com/news-features/interviews/post- the Virgin Mary is impaled with storm drain pipe, the rhythms a slow dance. With no visible facial expression consumer-report-a-conversation-with- chair’s original function is thoroughly disrupted, and and the performer’s black clothes blending into the rodney-mcmillian/ the juxtaposition begs a backstory. Perhaps a person darkness, only the motion of the sheet and occasional had some sort of violent fit? Maybe it’s a surreal heavy breathing signal a state of mind or intent. What collision caused by an earthquake or tornado? Or have we do know is that this video can be contextualized we stumbled upon an abandoned sci-fi movie prop? within McMillian’s position as a black artist exploring In actuality, of course, it is a reworking of discarded African-American disenfranchisement. Beyond that, this furniture by the artist, who, fittingly, is influenced by work is largely dependent on what the viewer brings sci-fi. This combining of furniture with other objects to it, ambiguous actions that are open to multiple is a significant aspect of McMillian’s oeuvre and it interpretations that might include, but are not limited functions, in part, as a critique of the false promises of to, a powerful modern dance about physical or emotional the American Dream for African-Americans. McMillian isolation; an allegory for the struggle to survive systemic elaborates, “I don’t know how one can look at the police violence against black men; or the use of a prop history of our nation and not see the horror, because to make the unseen visible, which one could interpret there’s been so much bloodshed, disenfranchisement, as a metaphor for the simultaneous hypervisibility and exploitation and oppression that has been persistently invisibility that often go hand-in-hand with being black 16 16Ibid. institutionalized through policy.” The sculpture was in America. recently part of a comprehensive show of McMillian’s work at the Studio Museum of Harlem. Titled “Views Investigating a music concert ripe with elements of Main Street,” the exhibition focused on the artist’s of spectacle and fame, McMillian takes a different practice of examining the theme of home as “part approach to the absent body in an audience (excerpts of a larger examination of race, class, gender and from Michael Jackson’s 30th Anniversary Special 2001) 17 17Exhibition Press Release for socioeconomic policy.” According to McMillian, one of (2003). Here the imagery is not performed or directed by “Rodney McMillian: Views of Main Street” the aims of that show was to “bring out the complexities the artist, but, instead, is appropriated from a Michael at Studio Museum of Harlem (2016), of the conversations that happen on different Main Jackson television special that combined footage from https://www.artsy.net/show/the-studio- Streets, with their disparities of race, class and two Michael Jackson concerts at Madison Square Garden museum-in-harlem-rodney-mcmillian- economics,” adding, “Perhaps more important, I hope in 2001. The special aired eight years before Jackson’s views-of-main-street to question what ‘Main Street’ means. When I’ve heard death, two years before his greatest hits album went that expression, I have never believed it referred to triple platinum, and one year before he was accused (and me or other African Americans, regardless of our subsequently acquitted) of child sexual abuse. McMillian 18 18Ibid. economic station.” edits the special so that it only includes footage of the audience, creating a collage of sound that resembles a The absent body is also central in McMillian’s videos on vinyl record or CD that abruptly skips through parts of a view here. In the single-channel video “Untitled (sheet song or from one song to another. Here, the absent body 10 performance)” (2005), a body stands wearing all black 11 is Michael Jackson himself. The focus is, consequently, shifted to the audience and fans who, enraptured, For McEwen, whose overall practice often touches on are crying, clapping, and singing along. McMillian’s mortality, the obituaries also include elements of fear video exiles the superstar from the spectacle, and risk: “All of the obituaries are about how do you highlighting the phenomenon of spectacle itself. In make decisions that take risks as you have a decreasing an audience, McMillian’s video, which is dated 2003, amount of time in which to actually get it together to have 23 straddles the moment when Michael Jackson’s broader 23Adam McEwen in an interview with Heidi the nerve to do it.” The artist’s fidelity to the format public image shifted from his accomplishments and Zuckerman, (New York: Petzel Gallery, May of The New York Times obituaries further serves to turn influence as the “King of Pop” to gossip column 5, 2017), https://vimeo.com/216858368 the viewers’ world upside down, exploiting newspaper headlines about his isolated, idiosyncratic lifestyle, devices such as the reverse pyramid structure, which financial woes, and legal troubles. Despite his record places the most important information at the top, label disputes and financial difficulties, Jackson was followed by explanatory details. McEwen also repeats still beloved by many and was the best-selling music the deceased’s name, lending the LP readings a sense of artist at the time of his death in 2009. In “I hear it poetic repetition, as with the first two lines of the Richard everywhere I go,” this video, along with Adam McEwen’s Prince obituary, “Richard Prince artist whose plundered obituaries, speak most directly to Cady Noland’s mythology turned the tragicomic landscape of America observations about how, as Americans, you “consume into high art. Richard Prince, who has died age 57, was all of these celebrities each week, then you turn them the most influential artist of his generation and a restless 20 20Cady Noland interviewed by Michèle into trash.” connoisseur of the underbelly of the American Dream.” Cone, “Michèle Cone Cady Noland 1990,” WITNESS TO HER ART: Art and Writings by Directly referencing the format of New York Times The inclusion of the Richard Prince and Bret Easton Adrian Piper, Mona Hatoum, Cady Noland, obituaries, Adam McEwen writes about living stars Ellis obituaries is especially fitting in an exhibition that Jenny Holzer, Kara Walker, Daniela Rossell and icons as though they have passed away. The artist addresses underbelly aspects of the American Dream. and Eau de Cologne, ed. Rhea Anastas with began the series when he was writing obituaries as This theme is particularly prescient when contemplating Michael Brenson (Annandale-on-Hudson, his day job at a London newspaper. On view in “I hear the work of Bret Easton Ellis, whose book American New York Center for Curatorial Studies, it everywhere I go” is a large-scale, C-print obituary Psycho (1991) is narrated from the point of view of a Bard College, 2006), 157. for Bret Easton Ellis and white vinyl LPs (with a digital serial killer and Manhattan businessman—a plot which file for listening) that play obituaries read by McEwen aligns with Cady Noland’s 1989 observations about the about Richard Prince and The Melvins. Although famous parallels between the psychopath and the entrepreneur: characters are the subjects of these works, McEwen “According to Ethel Spector Person, the psychopath asserts that he is not interested in celebrity: “I’m not shares the societally sanctioned characteristics of the really interested in celebrities so much—the works entrepreneurial male. Their maneuvers are differentiated 21 21Adam McEwen in an interview with are more homages.” That said, celebrity is key to how 24Cady Noland, “Towards a Metalanguage mostly by decibel, the acts of the psychopath being 24 Christopher Bollen, “Adam McEwen” these obituaries function. McEwen harnesses a broad of Evil” (1989), WITNESS TO HER ART: <
The dialogues, commercials, and skits in “Untitled, Fall Woman One: Right, I got that. ‘95” add layers of commentary informed by feminist and Marxist critique to investigate the false promises of the Woman Two: Maybe we could sing them both at the American Dream as they intersect with college education, same time. the art market, and beyond. With Bag’s characters (all played by the artist or puppet stand ins), life is not Woman One: But scream them. It should be really loud unfolding as expected. This attention to the disconnect and obnoxious. between expectation and reality pervades the semester videos. This focus is also pointedly addressed in the Woman Two: Right. phone sex commercial and the conversation between women punk rockers. In the commercial, a woman Woman One: Bitchy and obnoxious and fast. It’s got to wearing lingerie lures the television viewer with her be really fast. femme fatale persona and by repeating the phrase “call me” with sexy, breathy intonations. Her behavior toward The eight semester videos in “Untitled, Fall 95” focus the callers, however, includes insulting them to the point on the student’s experience, including her financial of suggesting suicide, belying her ingénue trappings struggles, the ups and downs of making art under a and exposing the American pastime of men using sexual microscope, and personal dynamics with professors. In entertainment as a salve for personal and professional semester six, she comments on the process of the artist disappointments: crit with Valley Girl aplomb:
Call me. Are you stressed out, baby? Call me. Are you It’s like, I know you should be able to defend your work. tired of your stupid job? Call me. Are you tired of being Like, you should be able to talk about it and stuff, overworked, underpaid, underappreciated, devalued, but it’s, like, not before everyone else tells you what humiliated day after day after day after day? Call they think of it, you know? It’s, like, I shouldn’t have me. Quit your job. No? Why don’t you kill yourself and to stand next, and like, to my thing, and, like, explain, 16 blame it on the corporation? Ah, yeah. Are you tired of 17 like, why I made it and what it means exactly. I mean that’s just fucked. It’s, like, you know, am I supposed each semester, and incorporates stopgap words and to stand next to it in some stupid museum for the rest phrases such as “like,” “feel me,” “you know what I of my life, and be, like, “Hi, would ah uh would you mean,” and “really,” lending her videos the same sense like me to explain this to you first? Let me tell you a of off-the-cuff commentary. Because Norris is someone little bit about myself. I’m an only child. My parents who entered visual arts through music, her inclusion really fucked me up and so did high school. Any of background sound is a logical addition to her videos. questions? Common ah, ah grill me. Ask me anything. She also mentions her abilities to rap in semester one, Psychoanalyze me. I’m all yours.” foregrounds hip hop in semester two, and effuses about her record deal in semester four. In semester two, she The semester six video is especially pertinent to “I hear plays “It’s bigger than hip hop” by Dead Prez, asserts “I’m it everywhere I go” because fellow exhibiting artist just tryin’ to do me,” and draws parallels between art and Tameka Norris’s “My Third Semester, Yale School of hip hop: Art” (2010-2012) uses the same script. The DIY, lo-fi, and performance-driven nature of Norris’s “My Semester” What’s an institution? You know prison, jail. series is a testament to Bag’s influence on a generation Institutions, Ivy league education you know. Institution, of younger artists. Like Bag, she films the videos while nonetheless. You know hospital, you know me? I’m she is enrolled in art school. Norris, however, is creole- saying, you know, feel me? You know what I’m saying? I black and Alex Bag is white. Norris is also responding to got my studio it’s like, it’s a cell you know what I mean? graduate school rather than undergrad, and it is almost You know what I’m saying? It’s got little windows and 20 years after Bag’s semester videos. The scripts are the shit. You know what I’m sayin’? I’m just sayin. Real hip same, but the women, time period, and schools are not, hop you’re ready to die. You know what I’m saying? It’s shifting the original meaning into new territories. like art.
While Norris reads Bags’ “semester six” script verbatim, This clip from semester two is indicative of Norris’s her other semesters and her graduation video are original, exploration of the “internal drives and external 35 with their narratives being a mix of predetermined talking 35Artist’s biography, shared with the author influences” around identity, which are played out in points and improvisation. Norris, who also goes by Meka by Tameka Norris, September, 2017 all four of her semester videos through variations of the Jean and mynameisnotshorty, uses painting, video, same character. photography, music, performance, and installation to “explore the internal drives and external influences that Elements of music, identity, institutional critique, and 32 32Artist’s biography, shared with the author shape identity.” Music informs her practice and she broadcast television found in the videos of Bag and/or by Tameka Norris, September, 2017. recorded an EP titled, Meka Jean: Ivy League Ratchet in Norris combine to form the complex ecosystem of Mikel 2016. One of Norris’s ongoing projects, “The Meka Jean Rouse’s 1996 multi-media opera, “Dennis Cleveland.” Project,” focuses on “discovering and owning one’s image, Here, the platform of a daytime TV show becomes the intellectual property, authorship, appropriation and one’s stage for inquiry into interpersonal boundaries, cultural 33 33Tameka Norris, Description of relationship to art history” and includes personifying consumption, and monetary successes, ultimately “The Meka Jean Project,” http://www. different “types” from a “rap video dancer” to “a self- offering the “promise of salvation through popular 36 mekajean.com/2014--now-the-meka-jean- empowered artist” to “a woman of color nakedly grieving 36Description of “Dennis Cleveland” on the culture.” This opera is one of a trilogy that also includes 34 project.html and striving.” This project and the “My Semester” series artist’s website, http://mikelrouse.com/ “Failing Kansas,” which was inspired by Truman Capote’s reflect Norris’s positioning as an artist in an age of works/dennis-cleveland/ book “In Cold Blood,” and “The End of Cinematics,” 34Ibid. self-branding; broader conversations around performed which explores the qualities of corporate entertainment. identities; continued critique about white, male, Western The character of talk show host Dennis Cleveland, biases in the art canon; and markets selling culture back played by Rouse, is the connective tissue between the to the people who invented it with breakneck speed. audience’s stories and the show’s on-stage guests who form the opera’s chorus. As the intermediator, In her semester videos, Norris, like Bag, uses a white Cleveland breaks down the fourth wall between 18 wall for a backdrop, significantly changes her look 19 audience and performers. This blurring of the two is heightened by the talk show tactic of brightly lighting This conversation ties into the episode’s theme, the stage and the studio audience. One review of “Dennis which Cleveland describes as “Memory Day,” and Cleveland” elaborates on the opera’s media savvy from the start introduces television as a collectively approach: “Of all new music composers, only Rouse is at shared electronic brain that weaves its way through home enough in the world of mass media to have had the Cleveland’s commentary and audience accounts of chutzpah to engineer the first operatic talk show, with past events. Within the first 15 minutes, the opera singers in the audience, choreographed cameramen, and transmits Marshall McLuhan’s phrase “The medium 37 37Time Out New York review quoted on the an audience watching itself on video.” is the message” loud and clear, encouraging viewers artist’s website, http://mikelrouse.com/ to be equally attentive to the delivery system (of a works/dennis-cleveland/ Rouse, who has been hailed in The New York Times confessional television talk show) and its content as “a composer many believe to be the best of his (in the form of sung and spoken narratives) as the 38 38Artist’s biography, shared with the author generation,” combines colloquially poetic lyrics with opera unfolds. by Mikel Rouse, September, 2017 a myriad of musical influences to reflect multifarious aspects of American life and their connection to media, Celebrity is addressed throughout the opera as well. celebrity, and money. Early in the opera, Cleveland In a particularly energized instance, a man in the talks with a middle-aged woman in a conversation audience with long curly hair (intimating an aging that situates television as a way to relieve loneliness, hippie) sings, “This time the finger that I put into the dissatisfaction, and contemplation of our own mortality: pie / ‘Sgonna be the last reminder of the simple corporate lie.” During this scene, the chorus is Cleveland: Why are you here today? There has to be “Celebrity all the time. Beautiful murders.” In the context somewhere else? of “I hear it everywhere I go,” this chorus evokes Cady Noland’s writing around heroic deaths: “In real heroics, Woman: I keep to myself for the most part, but I guess a personal glamour death is one which highlights risk- I’m here for the stories. Because there’s nowhere else taking or maniacal energy and fearlessness on the to go. It feels that way anyway. part of the hero... Death by choice, whether by a bona fide suicide or by accident-on-purpose, is the death of 39 Cleveland: And where would you go? 39Cady Noland, “Towards a Metalanguage choice, being an honorific death.” Other lyrics in “Dennis of Evil,” Balcon no. 4 (1989), WITNESS TO Cleveland” imply that celebrity is in service to hype and Woman: I have no idea. HER ART: Art and Writings by Adrian Piper, not the other way around: “This time the mystery, the Mona Hatoum, Cady Noland, Jenny Holzer, questioning this life will surrender to addiction; the Cleveland: Do you think much about death? Kara Walker, Daniela Rossell and Eau de celebrity of hype.” This style of circular connectivity Cologne, ed. Rhea Anastas with Michael that flips cause and effect on its head is then applied Woman: All the time. It’s the only thing that keeps me Brenson (Annandale-on-Hudson, New York to money: for example, when this lyric is splayed across away from the TV. Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, the bottom of the screen, “This time the plastic that 2006), 130. connects you to the world will be borrowing your image Cleveland: And you know how I feel about television to reflect its deep concern.” This phrasing reflects late (chuckles). 1960s Marxist critiques of television as a corporate tool for advertisers and a distraction that appeases Woman: Oh, for sure. I mean my friends have always the masses into submission as “the genuine players thought I was over the top with the television but there of the game” (to quote Noland) run the show. Through have been times when television is the only thing left. its exploration of these themes, writes reviewer Kyle 40Kyle Gann, “MUSIC; An Opera That’s Gann, “’Dennis Cleveland’ undermines commercialism by Cleveland: Television never lets you down sort of thing a Talk Show That’s a Philosophy,” The pretending to flow with it. Still, by the opera’s end, you New York Times (April 28, 2002), http:// get a sense that the title character is deeply troubled by Woman: Television as collective memory. www.nytimes.com/2002/04/28/arts/ his own emptiness, even though it is that emptiness that music-an-opera-that-s-a-talk-show-that-s-a- makes him such a facile receptacle for the fantasies of 40 20 Cleveland: Thank you. (applause) 21 philosophy.html his talk show guests.” In a way, “Dennis Cleveland” operates as a grand finale for “I hear it everywhere I go,” bringing allegory and narrative together in one performance that layers commentary about celebrity with fictional stories of dissatisfaction. Its placement near Rodney McMillian’s “an audience,” a video that appropriates footage of an actual celebrity isolated by adoration, 41Cady Noland interviewed by Michèle amplifies each work’s intersection with Noland’s Cone, “Michèle Cone Cady Noland 1990,” thinking about how “people visit their frustrations on WITNESS TO HER ART: Art and Writings by other individuals.”41 In these videos, the absence of a Adrian Piper, Mona Hatoum, Cady Noland, “language of dissention”42 that Noland cites is replaced Jenny Holzer, Kara Walker, Daniela Rossell with the safety valve of spectacle. Noland posits that and Eau de Cologne, ed. Rhea Anastas with “if there weren’t these more individual forms of venting Michael Brenson (Annandale-on-Hudson, there would more likely be rioters or committees 43 New York Center for Curatorial Studies, expressing dissatisfaction in a more collective way.” Bard College, 2006), 155. In “I hear it everywhere I go,” the hope is that by framing the exhibition’s works—in part using Cady Noland’s 42Ibid. observations about American life—new discoveries around existing languages of dissention in contemporary 43Ibid. art might emerge.
16 September 2017
22 23 Checklist
24 25 CHECKLIST CHECKLIST
Alex Bag Michael Blake Untitled, Fall ‘95, 1995 Untitled (Ring #2), 2016 Video, color, sound Foam, plastic, sock, hardware Running Time 00:60:00 Courtesy of the artist Courtesy of the artist and Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York
Michael Blake Untitled (3 Partitions), 2016 Foam and aluminum hardware Courtesy of the artist
26 27 CHECKLIST CHECKLIST
Michael Blake Nayland Blake Jocked, 2014 Ibedji (Quick), 1996-97 Athletic cup, foam, latex Mixed media Courtesy of the artist Courtesy of the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery, New York
28 29 CHECKLIST CHECKLIST
Nayland Blake Jen DeNike Untitled, 2007 The Pimp, 2015 Plastic bottles and wire Video, color, sound Courtesy of the artist and Running Time 00:05:22 Matthew Marks Gallery, New York Courtesy of the artist and Anat Ebgi Gallery, Los Angeles
Jonah Freeman & Justin Lowe Mouth to Mao. A Communist Tease Situation, 2014 Collage © Jonah Freeman & Justin Lowe Courtesy of Marlborough Contemporary, New York
30 31 CHECKLIST CHECKLIST
Rashid Johnson Adam McEwen In Circles, 2015 Untitled (Bret), 2011 Burned red oak flooring, black soap, wax, C-Print spray enamel, vinyl, shea butter, books Edition of 3 plus II AP Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth Exhibition Copy 1 Courtesy of the artist and Petzel, New York
32 33 CHECKLIST CHECKLIST
Adam McEwen Rodney McMillian Obituaries, 2011 Untitled, 2009 LP Chair, cardboard tube, latex paint Courtesy of the artist and Courtesy of Rodney McMillian and Petzel, New York Maccarone, New York/LA
34 35 CHECKLIST CHECKLIST
Rodney McMillian Tameka Norris an audience (excerpts from Michael My First Semester, Jackson’s 30th Anniversary Special 2001), Yale School of Art, 2010-2012 2003 My Second Semester, Video, color, sound Yale School of Art, 2010-2012 Running Time 00:05:00 My Third Semester, Edition of 3 Yale School of Art, 2010-2012 Courtesy of the artist and My Fourth Semester, Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects Yale School of Art, 2010-2012 My Graduation, Yale School of Art, 2010-2012 Five videos on a loop, color, sound Total Running Time 00:35:40 Courtesy of the artist
Rodney McMillian Untitled (sheet performance), 2005 Video, color, sound Running Time 00:03:41 Edition of 5, 1 AP
36 37 CHECKLIST CHECKLIST
Cheryl Pope in Collaboration with Cheryl Pope in Collaboration Students at Kenyon College with Chicago Youth Community is Built on Empathy Just Yell, A Guidebook for Yellers, 2013 (SOMETIMES I FEEL LIKE I HAVE 308-page hand-bound book, bronze prayer TWO HEARTS), 2017 book stand, painted plywood Digital print on vinyl mesh Courtesy of the artist and Courtesy of the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery Monique Meloche Gallery
38 39 CHECKLIST CHECKLIST
Cheryl Pope in Collaboration with Cheryl Pope Incarcerated Youth, Washington, D.C. Speculum Speculorum, 2014 WHEN I GET OUT, 2015 Digital video Mixed media Directed by Matteo Frittelli Courtesy of the artist and Running Time 00:02:17 Monique Meloche Gallery Courtesy of the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery
Mikel Rouse Dennis Cleveland (premiered at The Kitchen, New York City), 1996 Video, color, sound of performance of Dennis Cleveland at Lincoln Center in New York City, 2002 Running time 01:22:57 Courtesy of the artist
40 41 CHECKLIST CHECKLIST
Melissa Vandenberg Melissa Vandenberg Braided Rapunzel, 2016 Clouds of Vertical Development, 2012 US flags, steel, flag pole base & Light box and found image mannequin head Courtesy of Maus Contemporary Courtesy of Maus Contemporary
42 43 Artist Biographies
44 45 67, New York, NY; The Can Gallery, New character studies challenge static notions York, NY; and “Untitled/Everyone All At of gender, race and sexuality with the Once Together” at Ashes/Ashes, visual frame of a sublime dissonance. Los Angeles, CA. Since receiving her MFA from Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, DeNike has exhibited n a y l a n d b l a k e internationally including solo shows and special projects, such as: “Die Grünen After earning his MFA from the Löwen,” DUVE BERLIN, Berlin, DE; “The California Institute of the Arts in Star Card,” Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA; 1984, Nayland Blake has exhibited his “Rope Mirror,” Mendes Wood, Sao Paulo, work internationally in solo and group BR; and “SCRYING, PopRally,” Museum exhibitions. Interracial desire, same-sex of Modern Art, New York, NY; and, most love, and racial and sexual bigotry are recently, “777” (Jen DeNike and Damien recurrent themes in Blake’s sculptures, Echols), at Participant Inc, New York, NY. drawings, performances, and videos, DeNike lives and works in New York City which reflect his preoccupation with and Los Angeles and is represented by his own racial and sexual identities. ANAT EBGI, Los Angeles. Blake participated in the 1991 Whitney Biennial and the 1993 Venice Biennale. The Tang Teaching Museum and Art j o n a h f r e e m a n & j u s t i n l o w e Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York, presented a survey Jonah Freeman (b. 1975) and Justin of his performance-based work in 2003, Lowe (b. 1976) have collaborated with and his work was the subject of a 2008 each other since 2007, making collages, a l e x b a g New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art; survey exhibition at Location One, New prints, sculptures, and architecturally Centre d’art contemporain Saint-Geneve, York. In 2012 Yerba Buena Arts Center transformative, often labyrinthine, site- American artist Alex Bag (b. 1969) has Geneva; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; in San Francisco presented a one-man specific installations. Their projects, been making video work since the Tate Modern, London; P.S. 1 Center for exhibition entitled “Free!Love!Tool!Box!” which include real life references, early 1990s and her intentionally DIY, Contemporary Art, New York, and Pitti and Blake was awarded a Guggenheim psychotropic style illusions, and invented lo-fi, performance-driven videos have Immagine, Florence, Italy. fellowship. Blake chairs the International narratives, are influenced, in part, by influenced a generation of younger Photography Center-Bard MFA program American counter culture, sci-fi literature, artists. She often employs humor and and lives and works in Brooklyn. 1960s and 70s utopias, and underbelly irony in her work, mining the languages m i c h a e l b l a k e aspects of American culture, such as of advertising, music videos and reality drug houses and outlaw entrepreneurship. TV to critique the neo-liberal systems, Michael Blake (b. 1990 Los Angeles, CA) j e n d e n i k e They have exhibited internationally in including the art world itself. Since lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. solo exhibitions, including Art Basel; receiving her BFA from Cooper Union, He received his BA from California State Jen DeNike (b. 1971) draws on a legacy the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Bag has exhibited extensively including University Northridge, CA, and MFA from of film, literature, and pop culture Angeles, CA; the Ballroom Marfa, TX; solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum Hunter College, New York, NY. Blake’s archetypes in layered video, photographic The Storefront for Art and Architecture, of American Art; Elizabeth Dee Gallery, sculptures explore both formal and and performative works. Creating new New York; as well as numerous group New York; Zaal de Unie, Rotterdam, The autobiographical themes, often related mythologies and cultural narratives exhibitions worldwide. The artists Netherlands; the Andy Warhol Museum, to desire, sexuality, and the relationship that spin out of experiences real and currently live and work between New York Pittsburgh; and 303 Gallery, New York, between public and private space. Recent imagined, her recent video works navigate and Los Angeles. among others. She has participated in group and two-person exhibitions include the psychogeography of California numerous group exhibitions at venues “I’d Rather Be Here Than Almighty” at 315 through a distinct cinematic gesture. 46 including The Museum of Modern Art, Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; group exhibition at 47 The choreographic performances of her r a s h i d j o h n s o n includes elements of dead-pan humor NY. McMillian has previously had solo “QueerSexing,” Human Resources, Los and poetic transformation. Showing exhibitions at The Aspen Art Museum, Angeles; “Prospect.1.5 Biennial,” Good Rashid Johnson (b. 1977) has been his lineage with Pop art, McEwen has Aspen, CO; The Institute of Contemporary Children Gallery, New Orleans. considered a central figure in the “post- appropriated everyday items such as Art, Boston, MA; the Kitchen, New black” movement since he drew critical newspaper obituaries, text message York, NY; and at Triple Candie, New attention for his work in “Freestyle,” a displays, credit cards and store signs. He York, NY. His work has been featured c h e r y l p o p e 2001 group exhibition curated by Thelma is perhaps best known for a series of large prominently in many group exhibitions Golden at the Studio Museum in Harlem. prints that feature newspaper obituaries including “Ruffneck Contstructivists,” Chicago-based visual artist Cheryl While his early work was often photo- about living celebrities such as Kate Moss, curated by Kara Walker at the Institute Pope, whose work garnered she and based, he is now best known for his Jeff Koons and Bill Clinton. Since receiving of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA; her collaborators an invitation to the sculptures and installations that use a his B.F.A. from the California Institute “Blues for Smoke,” curated by Bennett White House by President Barack Obama, wide-range of everyday materials and of the Arts, Valencia, McEwen has Simpson at the Museum of Contemporary specializes in sculpture, installation, objects, including wax, wood, steel, shown internationally in dozens of solo Art, Los Angeles, CA; the 2008 Whitney and performance art. Pope is known for brass, shea butter, ceramic tile, books, exhibitions and countless group shows. Biennial, Whitney Museum of American her collaborative exploration of identity records, VHS tapes, live plants, and CB His work can be found in more than twenty Art, New York, NY; and “BLACK IS, BLACK in relation to race, gender, sexuality, radios. With shamanistic inspiration from public collections, including The Brant AIN’T,” curated by Hamza Walker at class, history, power, and place. Her both African-American and art history, Foundation Art Study Center, Greenwich, the Renaissance Society, Chicago, IL. work melds seamlessly into the city of many of Johnson’s more recent works Connecticut; Centre Pompidou—Musée McMillian is represented by Susanne Chicago, as she collaborates with young employ these materials in a way that National d’art Moderne, Paris, France; Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Culver poets in her project entitled “Walk With suggests an indefinite form of mysticism The Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; City, CA and Maccarone Gallery, Me”—an effort to amplify the voices of and a role as devotional objects. He Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; New York, NY. young artists in Chicago through one- has exhibited internationally and solo The Sculpture Center, LIC, NY; and the on-one poetry recitations with adults. exhibitions include: ‘Rashid Johnson. Hail Whitney Museum of American Art, Pope earned her BFA and MD from the We Now Sing Joy’, The Kemper Museum New York, NY. t a m e k a n o r r i s School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and of Contemporary Art, Kansas City (2017); currently serves as a full-time professor ‘Within Our Gates’, Garage Museum of Tameka Norris (b.1979) uses painting, in their Fashion Department. Her artwork Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia (2016); r o d n e y m c m i l l i a n video, photography, music, performance, is represented by the Monique Meloche ‘Blocks’, commissioned for The High Line, and installation to explore the internal Gallery in Chicago and Galleria Bianconi in New York NY (2015); ‘Rashid Johnson. Rodney McMillian (b. 1969) received drives and external influences that shape Milan. While studying under sculptor and Anxious Men’, Drawing Center, New York his MFA in 2002 from the California identity. She came to art through music, performance artist Nick Cave for twelve NY (2015); ‘Smile’, Hauser & Wirth London Institute of the Arts and his BFA from which informs her practice. In addition years, Pope worked as a teaching artist (2015); and the major touring exhibition the School of the Art Institute of Chicago to making her own music videos, full of at the Museum of Contemporary Art for ‘Message to Our Folks’ (2012). Johnson, in 1998. McMillian is the first recipient tongue-in-cheek hip-hop posturing and seven years. She also trains as a boxer, a Chicago native, earned his MFA from of the Suzanne Deal Booth Art Prize songs about her identity as an artist and which has found its way into her artwork the Art Institute of Chicago in 2005 and and will have a solo exhibition at the mixed race, creole-black womxn, she as a metaphor for the dynamics of seeking currently lives and works in New York City. Contemporary Art Museum Austin’s samples and mixes materials liberally mutual understanding. Jones Center in 2018. McMillian had in her other works. Norris received her three solo museum exhibitions in the undergraduate degree at the University of a d a m m c e w e n United States in 2016: “The Black Show,” California, Los Angeles before graduating m i k e l r o u s e curated by Anthony Elms at the Institute with an MFA from Yale University School British-born artist Adam McEwen (b. 1965) of Contemporary Art, University of of Art in 2012. Norris has participated in Mikel Rouse is a New York-based has developed a practice that employs a Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA; “Views numerous group exhibitions including composer, director, performer and variety of media, including photographic of Main Street,” curated by Naima Keith “Radical Presence: Black Performance recording artist hailed as “a composer prints, graphite sculptures, wall-mounted at the Studio Museum Harlem, New in Contemporary Art” at The Studio many believe to be the best of his text works, and site-specific installations. York, NY; and “Landscape Paintings” Museum in Harlem, New York; “Gifted and generation.” (NY Times) His works include His work is in conversation with popular curated by Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson Talented,” Third Streaming Gallery, New 31 records, 7 films (including Funding 48 culture and consumerism and often and Peter Eeley at MoMA PS.1, New York, 49 York; “Prospect.2 Biennial,” New Orleans; and Music For Minorities), and a trilogy of media operas: Failing Kansas, Dennis acknowledgements Cleveland and The End Of Cinematics. His work has frequently appeared on Top Ten This exhibition was a group effort that included the exhibiting artists, lists around the country. He has received gallerists, art shippers, friends, text editors, and art installers. First, as commissions from the Brooklyn Academy always, I want to thank the Franklin Street Works team for their support, of Music, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable engagement in the process, patience with my grumpiness during install, Trust and the Meet the Composer/ and contributions to the show’s planning and execution. I especially Reader’s Digest Commissioning Program. want to thank Franklin Street Works’ executive director, Bonnie Wattles, Rouse’s compositions have been for her support and encouragement and Judy Emmett and Josh Smith performed at Lincoln Center, the New York for keeping their eyes on package deliveries and other logistics when I State Theater, and Alice Tully Hall, and wasn’t on site. I also want to thank the entire cafe staff for making sure throughout the United States and Europe. all of the art workers received delicious food and hospitality while here. More information is available at www. Two key board members were amazing as sounding boards and editors, mikelrouse.com. Mikel Rouse’s music is Tracy McKenna and Tom O’Connor. I am grateful to all of the artists available on iTunes. in this exhibition who contributed their time and talents, answering random questions and providing me with materials for the exhibition catalog. I would also like to thank the galleries involved in this exhibition m e l i s s a v a n d e n b e r g and their teams: New York City Galleries, Hauser & Wirth, Maccarone, Marlborough Contemporary, Matthew Marks, and Petzel; Los Angeles Born and educated in Detroit, Melissa Galleries, Anat Ebgi Gallery and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Vandenberg is a multidisciplinary artist, Projects; as well as Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago, and Maus educator and curator living in eastern Contemporary, Birmingham, AL. Big shout out to Emily Saltman, former Kentucky. Her studio practice explores intern and aspiring art handler, for painting the entire black box room the political landscape using national pink, to Joe Kay for building the bench in that gallery, and Beth Royer for identity, folk art, ancestry, immigration fabric shopping and offering her seamstress skills gratis to make that and the perception of a homeland as room’s cushion. As always, it was great working with Jami Sherwood points of departure. She gravitates at Simply Signs producing the intro vinyl and the banner out front and to everyday materials like matches, working with our amazing graphic designer Maura Frana. I also am very fabric, stickers, wood, temporary grateful to friend and former gallerist, Nancy Solomon, for taking the tattoos and found objects. Her work time to help me with finishing touches the day before the show opened has been exhibited in Canada, Germany, and to Chris Hartley for his stellar work in editing my exhibition essay Luxembourg and extensively throughout and intro. Thanks also to our UConn-Stamford intern, Gabby Perez, who the United States. Melissa received a wrote texts about the show for the cafe tables. Finally, I am forever BFA from College for Creative Studies indebted to everyone who helped get Rashid Johnson’s work (it’s heavy!) in Detroit, Michigan (1999) and a MFA into the building and hang it, including: Jonah Emerson-Bell, Japeth in Sculpture from Southern Illinois Mennes, RJ Mercede, Jon Rick, Tad Day Trucking, and Scott Troyer— University—Carbondale, Illinois (2005). and to Jonah and Japeth for being generally wonderful and their skilled She has been the recipient of numerous assistance installing the entire exhibition. grants including a Kentucky Foundation for Women Artist Enrichment Grant, the Al Smith Fellowship and was recently shortlisted for the Luxembourg Art Prize. She is currently an Associate Professor of Art at Eastern Kentucky University.
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