XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX CURATED BY ROSE BOUTHILLER, ASSOCIATE CURATOR & MEGAN LYKINS REICH, DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF PROGRAM, PLANNING, AND ENGAGEMENT WITH ELENA HARVEY COLLINS, CURATORIAL ASSISTANT XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX ON DISPLAY IN THE MUELLER FAMILY GALLERY, ROSALIE + MORTON CO- HEN FAMILY GALLERY, GUND COMMONS, KOHL ATRIUM, AND OTHER SPACES THROUGHOUT THE MUSEUM. Mary Ann Aitken Derf Backderf Cara Benedetto Christi Birchfield dadpranks Kevin Jerome Everson Ben Hall Jae Jarrell Harris Johnson Jimmy Kuehnle d.a. levy Michelangelo Lovelace Sr. Dylan Spaysky Carmen Winant On View JUNE 12 – SEPTEMBER 5 59 TO FEEL, TO FEEL MORE,TO FEEL MORE THAN BY FRED MOTEN 1 63 HOW TO REMAIN HUMAN I WILL ALWAYS CREATE ROSE BOUTHILLIER & MEGAN LYKINS REICH JAE JARRELL & ROSE BOUTHILLIER 7 69 OF SINGULARITY JAE JARRELL AND THE FASHIONING OF BY ROSE BOUTHILLIER BLACK CULTURE BY DAVID LUSENHOP 9 75 A LANGUAGE OF SELF QUEASY AND UNSURE, HAPPY AND AFRAID BY ED FRAGA HARRIS JOHNSON & ROSE BOUTHILLIER 13 81 PRELUDE HARRIS JOHNSON: PAINTING AND ANXIETY BY ROSE BOUTHILLIER BY OWEN DUFFY 19 85 LAST NIGHT #PINKTHINGMOCA BY AMY FUNG JIMMY KUEHNLE & MEGAN LYKINS REICH 21 89 FLAT LINES, ROUND BODIES INTO THE PINK BY MEGAN LYKINS REICH BY TERRY SCHWARZ 25 91 RECONFIGURATION / PAINTING FALLING APART SOMEBODY SHOULD JUST GIVE HIM A HAIRCUT BY INDRA K. LĀCIS BY ELENA HARVEY COLLINS 29 95 FEEL YOURSELF STRANGE D.A.LEVY: AWARENESS & ECLIPSE BY ELENA HARVEY COLLINS BY INGRID SWANBERG 31 101 A CROWD-SOURCED ESSAY ON THE NATURE OF MEET ME AT THE CROSSROADS DADPRANKS (CHRISTINA VASSALLO REMIX) BY ELENA HARVEY COLLINS 35 105 MAGGOTS, METAPHORS, AND MAGEE LOOKING BACK FROM THE FUTURE AT BY MEGAN LYKINS REICH MICHELANGELO LOVELACE BY EBONY L. HAYNES 41 DEAR MISGUIDED IVORY TOWER DWELLING 109 DILETTANTE BY KEN EPPSTEIN SOFT THINGS BY ROSE BOUTHILLIER 43 PRACTICE MAKES PERFORMANCE 113 BY MEGAN LYKINS REICH US: AFTER DYLAN SPAYSKY BY LYNN CRAWFORD 47 GRACE AND GRIND: NOTES ON THE WORK 117 OF KEVIN JEROME EVERSON TOUCHING AND TRAINING BY MICHAEL B. GILLESPIE CARMEN WINANT & ELENA HARVEY COLLINS 53 121 THE SPACESHIP IS CRASHING CARMEN WINANT: THE SPACE IN-BETWEEN BY ELENA HARVEY COLLINS KRIS PAULSEN INTRODUCTION ROSE BOUTHILLIER & MEGAN LYKINS REICH ... have arrived from elsewhere. Their goal is to reflect critically on & everyday i sit here contemporary art that comes out of, trying to become one of you or passes through, particular places, after another here or nearby. We say particular as trying on those high school dreams opposed to certain, because we are not for size working from a strict definition or it doesnt work geographical boundary. “The region” you dont fit me is equal parts geo-political, social, as a poet i try to learn and psychological. It regularly how to remain human shifts and transforms. Realization despite technology is Better than Anticipation (2013) & there is no one to learn from was MOCA Cleveland’s first exhibition i am still too young to built from this vantage point, and be quiet & contemplative it generated a topology for ongoing inquiry. ... How to Remain Human continues the —d.a. levy, excerpt from “SUBURBAN conversation with 14 artists working MONASTERY DEATH POEM,” 1968 across a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, film and video, performance, fashion design, sound, and architectural installation. They How to Remain Human is both a question share a need to make, in order to and a proposition. The question question, clarify, or understand points to all that de-humanizes, the life. They explore various ways of challenges and breakages that divide acting in and experiencing the world, people and make the way forward examining how we can go on, relate, unclear. The proposition suggests and be. that there are ways to re-imagine, practice, and hold on to our humanity. d.a. levy is a key figure in the exhibition. He was someone who was This exhibition is MOCA Cleveland’s truly all-in, an artist who lived and second iteration of a bi-annual breathed his work. The show’s title series featuring artists connected to is drawn from his “SUBURBAN MONASTERY Cleveland and the surrounding region, DEATH POEM,” an epic work that brings including neighboring cities in Ohio, to life a range of his desires and Michigan, and Pennsylvania. These frustrations with the world at that shows bring together emerging and time. He battled, protested, resisted, established artists, some with deep and ultimately insisted on other ways histories in the region, others who to live and make. levy was a pillar 1 of Cleveland’s underground literature Elsewhere in How to Remain Human, and art scene in the 1960s, centered artists are using disparate mediums around the University Circle/East to look closely at people and Cleveland area. He worked tirelessly, communities. Derf Backderf’s renowned publishing original manuscripts and comix and graphic novels give honest, several alternative newspapers, along unapologetic voice to Midwest living. with making prints, paintings, and Featuring stories from his upcoming collages. Ardent and aching, his book, Trashed, the sampling of hand- work expresses a passionate love/ drawn pages in How to Remain Human hate relationship with Cleveland. show a range of Derf’s wild garbage- In the reactionary climate of 1960‘s collecting experiences. The exploits Cleveland, levy’s anti-establishment serve as subtle metaphors for broader sentiments, disheveled appearance, sociopolitical and existential unconventional lifestyle, and talk conditions: bar brawls (class); trash of drugs made him an easy target for collecting blues (culture); government the authorities. Repeated arrests bureaucracy (democracy’s failings); and ongoing harassment left levy foreclosed properties (capitalism’s exhausted and paranoid. On November failings), unsuccessful come-ons 24, 1968, he committed suicide at (sexual rejection), used condom hunts the age of 26. Perhaps because his in a civic baseball field (sexual work did not fully mature, his words fulfillment), trips to the cemetery, retains a youthful rawness, a way of lots of dead animals, and Marv’s (the using words searchingly. curmudgeonly city dog catcher) passing (mortality). The ultimate symbol is, Cara Benedetto also use words in an of course, all the garbage. Page after intimate, feeling out (and up) way. page, Derf portrays the relentless Her texts and performance-based events gluttony of consumer culture. use language to confound communication and subvert power structures. Often, Speaking to the significance of place, she will take up vernacular and Michelangelo Lovelace’s figurative structures from romance novels, paintings depict Cleveland’s urban fundraisers, and advertisements. She fabric, combining environmental, then shifts, mutates, and destabilizes social, and political experiences these forms. For her participation in into vibrant expressions. According this exhibition, Benedetto produced to Lovelace, art saved him from an Prelude Her patron, a private event uncertain future, and it continues at the Museum modeled on a traditional to offer him a platform for self- preview party with a soft S/m theme. preservation and expression. Works The artist directed all aspects of like These Urban City Streets (2013) the project, from designing the represent inner city neighborhoods invitations and writing the press that bustle with life, depicting release, to providing special napkins community parties and people going and lip balm for guests. Rather about their errands. Lovelace also than doing a disservice to the BDSM reflects on themes of social justice— community with “a hack portrayal or violence, inequality, criminal tourism into their world,” Benedetto lifestyles, and racial conflict—often seeks to “draw a parallel to exploits hinting at personal struggles and in current academia, specific to the redemption. institution of MFA, where all art students are treated as masochists Deeply informed by his upbringing and contracts are unclear.” Prelude in Northeast Ohio, Kevin Jerome brings an element of vulnerability Everson focuses on the performance of and the unknown into the Museum, identity and the rituals of labor. asking staff, guests, artists, and His African American subjects perform the institution to question, explore, simple, obligatory, or repetitive and feel the boundaries of their actions for the camera: high school relations. athletes running football drills, magicians doing sleights of hand, young men watching a fireworks 2 display, an old man blowing out under the influence of the “male birthday candles. Studying and re- gaze.” It may be a world without men, imagining the quotidian activities of yet they are very much present. real life, Everson creates deliberate vignettes that combine fiction and Jae Jarrell’s radical fashions use realism. These poetic montages that the body as a vessel for protest, speak to practice, effort, futility, resistance, and identity. In 1968, mortality, and reward. Jae, her husband Wadsworth Jarrell, and fellow artists Jeff Donaldson, Similar themes resonate with Ben Barbara Jones-Hogu, and Gerald Hall’s complex sculpture and Williams founded the collective audio installations. Concerned AFRICOBRA (which stands for African with politics, identity, social Commune of Bad Relevant Artists). interaction, and the histories held by The group formed in response to a objects, his works are mash ups with a lack of positive representation of multitude of references. Hall created