Elton Motello
From proto, to post, an abridged ride on the periphery of punk.
Temporal Vertigo: Read Isabelle Albuquerque's Interview Of Nicolas G. Miller →
Everett Sloane in Yohji Yamamoto S/S 2000
photograph courtesy ofstudio photography
interview by Isabelle Albuquerque
photographs by ofstudio photography
If you look up close and if you have an exceptional memory for Old Hollywood character actors, you will clearly make out the distinctive face of Everett Sloane with his signature wide-set eyes and crooked nose. Known primarily for his roles in The Twilight Zone, The Andy Griffith Show, and Citizen Kane, the actor, songwriter, and theatre director took his life by way of barbiturate overdose in 1965 at the age of 55. Here, he is immortalized and miniaturized by artist Nicolas G. Miller in the form of a bronze statuette. He appears to move with a brisk, yet cool stride walking down an imaginary runway wearing Yohji Yamamoto S/S 2000. In the following interview, Isabelle Albuquerque sits down with Miller to discuss the temporality of fashion, the process of sculpting in bronze, and the act of breathing life into the deceased. Read more.
Silly Walks, An Editorial by Bastian Thiery
leather blouse: Joseph
tights: Wolford
shoes: Scarosso
Photography by Bastian Thiery at Bird Production
Styling by Camille Franke
Talent by Mariia Ivanova at Mirrrs Models
LEFT
headpiece: stylistโs own C.N.F.
pink mini dress: Versace via Vestiare Collective @ Reference Studios
tights: Falke
heels: Gucci archive
RIGHT
embroidered blouse: Ganni
dress: Prada archive
dress: Joseph
shoes: Scarosso
LEFT
necklace: Capsule Eleven
fluffy cardigan with XXL collar: Ganni
dress: Leon Emanuel Blanck
shoes: CAMPERLAB via Reference Studios
coat: Perfect Moment
tights: Falke
heels: Gucci archive
dress: Prada via Vestiare Collective @ Reference Studios
black leather clogs: GANNI
bodysuit: Perfect Moment
shoes: modelโs own
Thought Girl Winter: Read Our Interview Of Nada Alic →
interview by Annabel Graham
portraits by Paige Strabala
I first met Nada Alic in the fall of 2019, in New York, at a literary reading held at the Nolita headquarters of a womenโs sleepwear brand. The small storefront was packed, and readers perched on the edge of a gigantic feather bed in the center of the room. Most of the guests were there to see a certain Instagram poet with an especially rabid fan baseโI witnessed actual tears of joy when said poet opened her mouthโbut it was Alic who captured my attention. Radiating her trademark blend of confidence, self-deprecation, and deadpan humor, she read from a short story in progress. In it, an anxious, painfully cerebral young woman questions โthis whole business of being alive,โ pursues an obsessive friendship with a woman named Mona, and considers the pros and cons of lightly grazing her hand across a strangerโs penis. At a cocktail party with her husbandโs business associates, Alicโs narrator muses: โThey all looked so vulnerable, so up for grabs; concealed only by a thin layer of fabric. I imagined them as windchimes waiting to be struck. The impulse wasnโt sexual, it was destructive. I just stood there, not touching anyoneโs penis, quietly frightened by who I was and what I was capable of.โ Suffice it to say that I was riveted.
Alic and I struck up a conversation after the reading, exchanged email addresses, and made loose plans to get together for a coffee next time I was in Los Angeles, where she lives. What followed almost immediately was a global pandemic, a government-imposed lockdown, and a 19th-century sort of pen-pal correspondence conducted over the entire year of 2020. Alicโs emails are just as surprising and enjoyable as her short fictionโwitty, dark, vulnerable, sharp-edged; weird in all the best ways. The story she read that night in New York (featuring the penis-windchime simile thatโs eternally burned into my brain) is now entitled โMy New Lifeโโthis past year, it was published in the literary journal No Tokens, where I serve as fiction editor. You can read it here.
2021 was a landmark year for Alicโshe married her partner (Ryan Hahn, of the indie band Local Natives), and sold her short story collection, Bad Thoughts, to Knopf, in a two-book deal (her second book, a novel, is slated for release in 2023). The title Bad Thoughts stems from the eponymous Instagram series Alic created in 2020 during quarantine, wherein she posted bimonthly lists of Tweet-like aphorisms that were at once wildly humorous, razor-sharp, and deeply relatable. The stories in the collectionโwhich will be published in July 2022โare brash and heady, breaking established rules of narrative and form. Like the Instagram series, theyโre also delightfully funny. In one, the spirit of an unborn child hovers over the bodies of its future parents, willing them to copulate and bring it into embodied existence. In another, a womanโs musician boyfriend goes on tour, leaving her alone in their home for the first time ever; she proceeds to question all of her life choices and tumble down a frighteningly familiar Internet rabbit hole; chaos and body dysmorphia ensue. Alic is well-versed in the awkward, writing into our most neurotic, shameful habits and thought patterns with an unparalleled acuity.
For Autre, I sat down with Alic in her Mount Washington living room to talk about the holiness of humor, becoming an artist with no formal training, and the archetype of the eternal child-god. Weโre real-life friends nowโa true privilege!โbut sometimes I miss our extremely long emails. Read more.
Goin Yachty: Read Harper Simon's Report On Art Basel Miami Beach →
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Autre Magazine Biodiversity Issue Celebration with Nicodim Gallery At Honey's Brooklyn
Autre Magazine celebrates its Biodiversity Issue with Nicodim Gallery ahead of their group exhibition, Hollow Moon, which opens in New York on December 9th. Autre also celebrates the release of Murder Suey, a serial novella by Brad Philips and Gideon Jacobs, which is available to purchase here. Wine generously provided by Gia Coppola. photographs by Oliver Kupper
Afrodite: A Celebration Of The Variegated Female Essence In Contrast To The Standardization Of Beauty
gloves ANASTASIA BULL, earrings model's own
photography, casting & set design by Erika Denis
photography assisted by Mimi Dey
styling by Daniela Benaim
styling assisted by Victoria Maldonado & Ana Flores
makeup by Mari Kuno
hair by Aya Kuraoka
LEFT: trousers ANASTASIA BULL, bikini panty HUNZA G
RIGHT: dress COSTAIIA, necklace WAIVORI
LEFT: earring ANASTASIA BULL
RIGHT: total look (bag, earrings and shoes) BURBERRY
LEFT: coat SIMONE ROCHA, shorts stylist's own
RIGHT: dress VELVET GLOVE, earrings ESPELETIA, shoes JOHN LAWRENCE SULLIVAN
LEFT: dress BY EFRAIN MOGOLLON
vest VINTAGE EMANUEL UNGARO, trousers VELVET GLOVE
LEFT: dress SONG FOR THE MUTE, bag ANASTASIA BULL
RIGHT: total look (top, miniskirt, bag and shoes) PAULA CANOVAS DEL VAS, socks stylist's own
total look (dress and bodysuit) BURBERRY , earrings model's own
models: Florence @ MILK Models , Vakare and Precious @ ANTI Agency, Yiling, Willow, & Altagracia
Wolfgang Tillmans "Concrete Column" @ Regen Projects In Los Angeles
Installation view of Wolfgang Tillmans Concrete Column at Regen Projects, Los Angeles November 6 โ December 23, 2021. Photo: Evan Bedford, Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles
German artist Wolfgang Tillmans is arguably one of the most important photographers of the past thirty years. But what many people donโt know is that his musical ambitions are what led to his career as a fine art photographer who captured the ecstatic decadence of youth culture with a serious and discerning eye. On view now at Regen Projects in Los Angeles, an exhibition entitled Concrete Column focuses on some of Tillmansโ most recognized body of work, along with new photographs, and a dedicated listening room for his first full-length album Moon In Earth Light. The album, a collection of spoken word, field recordings, and pulsating electronic beats, is a culmination of a life long obsession with music and music making. Below is an excerpt from a conversation between writer and musician, Sasha Frere-Jones, and Wolfgang Tillmans on the occasion of his current exhibition in Los Angeles that will be published in full in an upcoming print issue of Autre. Concrete Column will be on view until December 23 at Regen Projects.
SASHA FRERE-JONES How long did it take to make the new record?
WOLFGANG TILLMANS Some of the first bits are four-years-old. The lockdown was kind of productive because the musician I work with, Tim Knapp, his studio is on the same street as mine. And we were able to use time very fruitfully. Otherwise it's been sort of a process over two, three years. But then in the last few months it came together within a couple of weeksโthis composition of the eighteen elements that make up the album. It was a bit of a full circle moment from when I started to make music again around 2015. I had collected an archive of field recordings that I've been doing over the previous five years, which I had sort of just stocked up because I saw them as audio photographs, photographing sound. But I never really had time, or peace and quiet, to do something about it. And then I finally committed time to it, and put together these different sources, from spoken word to field recordings and jams and proper studio productions.
FRERE-JONES Do you just open up a particular machine and start singing or howโwhatโs your way of composing? What's your way of putting this stuff down?
TILLMANS It usually starts with a word or words, a line, and a melody that comes with it. For example, โDevice Control,โ the song that made it onto Frank ocean's Endless album, I recorded it in one take on an iPhone in one morning, slightly hungover. I had mused and thought about the new technology and sort of weird transferโthis shift from living life to broadcasting life for some time. But then one morning these words just came out and that happens sometimes with sentences that stayed with me over decades. For example, the line, โWe can't escape into space, we're in it." And the other line is, โHe wants to change, but not be seen changing." That's something that sort of stayed with me all my life. It's about myself, but it's about seeing others as well. But I work with a sort of notes that in sessions become a particular melody. So it always usually starts with a melody, a vocal melody, and a line. I donโt always get the verse so oftenโ more the hook only [laughs].
FRERE-JONES You know, people don't have a lot of time now, the hook is all they want. I'm really curious about your whole journey. Iโm somebody who does two things. I make music and I write. Iโm not saying you only do two things, but I know you have a specific history of making music. You started pretty young if I'm not mistaken, is that correct?
TILLMANS Yeah, there was a short year and a half, two years, when I was seventeen to nineteen, which is when I was very productive with some songs, which I actually then later put them out in 2016. But we never performed, we never did anything. And I stopped for 25 years.
FRERE-JONES What kind of stuff was it?
TILLMANS It was 1985, so various electronic, post punk, new wave, pre-house. This was right before house music hit.
FRERE-JONES Was there somebody you wanted to emulate or you wanted to be, or you wanted to play like? Who were your heroes?
TILLMANS I mean, clearly, Soft Cell and New Order, and Pet Shop Boys and Psychedelic Furs. I always had a strong affinity to two poles: the more serious electronic, industrial, stuff. And on the other hand, Italo Disco, which was a genre that is nowadays held in great esteem, and consider one of the coolest things, but not then.
FRERE-JONES I'm also curious aboutโwhere were you hearing this stuff? What was the mood where you grew up? Was that the popular music? Was it the unpopular music and all the kids were all listening to something else?
TILLMANS In the mid-80s, there was still a very large divide between serious guitar music made by hand and electronic music that was considered not so serious because it's easy to make. Currently, it's only pressing a few buttons. It seems ridiculous nowadays that there was such value value system applied. But I was from a medium, small industrial city in the larger area of the Ruhr in Germany, near Cologne and Dรผsseldorf, which is an area of rich culture and musical history. Kraftwerk are from Dรผsseldorf and Karlheinz Stockhausen is from Cologne. And a lot of English bands would come through the area to play. So I feel really blessed by having grown up in, at that time in that neighborhood where Sigmar Polke, Joseph Beuys, and lots of great artists were just living and working. I was a little bit too young for that, but when I left the Rhineland and moved to Hamburg after school I found myself, for the first time, old enough and actually located near enough to a burgeoning scene, which was a house scene, acid house music. That was a tectonic shift, definitely in Europe music. To a lesser extent, all across America, but it also had a huge impact in the big cities.
FRERE-JONES Is that when you made those first recordings?
TILLMANS I did at them in my hometown, which was before Hamburg.
FRERE-JONES I think we all have our, we all have our ideal cities when weโre young. Wherever it is, itโs not where we are.
TILLMANS I once had an assistant in Berlin who was born on Tottenham Court in London, the street where I first saw Boy George and Culture Club play when I was 15. And I thought like, wow, it must have been so incredible to be born in the West End. Or I had an assistant who was born 200 meters from Alexanderplatz in Berlin. I mean, I find it glamorous in itself, but on the other hand, I don't, I don't envy them because they never had this sort of imaginary space, this place to project into, because they come from a place where other people project their dreams and ambitions to.
FRERE-JONES But you stopped for 20 yearsโwhy did you stop?
TILLMANS Because my musical partner, surprisingly, left literally overnight. There was some personal drama with his girlfriend and he literally just left. I didn't muster up the courage to find somebody else to work with. But then I was in Hamburg and wanted to capture the energy of this newfound solidarity and democracy on the dance floor. It had a very egalitarian spirit and that totally inspired me. I wanted to communicate that and communicating that meant preserving it in pictures. And thatโs when I took my first editorial photographs.
Francesco Clemente "Twenty Years of Painting: 2001-2021" Presented By Vito Schnabel At The Old Santa Monica Post Office
Twenty years of painting. Twenty years of ecstatic, radical sensuality. A romantic paroxysm of western and eastern imagination with a tinge of Italian anarchism. Francesco Clemente 20 Years of Paintings: 2001-2021, the artistโs first solo show in Los Angeles in nearly 20 yearsโpresented by Vito Schnabel Gallery at the Old Santa Monica Post Officeโis a love letter to the medium, to the brush stroke, to paint, to materiality, to size, scale, and beauty itself. In one large painting, easily the piรจce de rรฉsistance, an ancient Grecian helmet is haloed by a bright red glow, a formidable metaphor for the psychosis of frantic empires, symbolized by a single, imposing hieroglyph of war, protection and survival. It connotes an impending sense of decline, but also hope in triumphant renewal. Painted during the pandemic, the work might also be something of a glorified self-portrait. The title, Our Backs to the Sea Far From Our Native Land 4-3-2021 is a reference to the Ilyad, but also to Homerโs Odyssey, the epic that depicts the hero Odysseusโ ten-year journey home from fighting the allegorical Trojan War, which lasted a preceding ten years. Twenty years of war and return, twenty years of painting. The painter as mythic hero, Clementeโs 20 Years of Paintings is more opus than oeuvre, that feeling of the quiet moment just after a symphonic crescendo, when the last note dies out and there is a pure kind of silence. Clemente proves that he is an artist of the body and the mind, a rare twin quality belonging to only a few painters before him. His paintings proof of the artists existential pain and exuberance and exhilaration. Francesco Clemente "Twenty Years of Painting: 2001-2021โ will be on view until January 16 at Vito Schnabel Gallery at the Old Santa Monica Post Office, click here to make an appointment.
Sharon Eyal's Rambert2 Slays The Stage With Killer Pig @ Sadlers Wells In London
Rambert2 Dancers in Sharon Eyal's Killer Pig ยฉ Deborah Jaffe
text by Lara Monro
photographs by Deborah Jaffe
In February 2020, 650 early career dancers auditioned to join Rambert2: a new and exciting programme founded to develop the artistic practices of a diverse cast of daring performers. Eleven practitioners were selected for their unique talent. Starting in May this year, the ensemble toured the UK to perform Sharon Eyalโs Killer Pig. Designed to extend the Rambert companyโs traditional reach, the Rambert2 collective takes distinctive, world-class dance to more people in more places.
Born in Jerusalem, Eyal established the contemporary dance company L-E-V (meaning heart) with her long-standing collaborator Gai Behar in 2013. Prior to this, Eyal danced with the Batsheva Dance Company from 1990 - 2008. From 2009, she began to form her own choreographies including Killer Pig (2009) and Corps de Walk (2011). Since 2013, L-E-V has had more than 200 performances in some of the most exclusive venues and festivals around the world: The Joyce Theatre โ NYC; Jacob's Pillow โ Berkshires; The Montpellier Danse Festival โ France; Julidans โ Amsterdam.
Last weekend, Sadlers Wells welcomed Rambert2 to its stage. Eight of the eleven performers executed Killer Pig with unwavering raw passion. The minimalist expression, intense honesty, and uncompromising physicality of the piece is provocative, carnal, and adrenaline-inducing. L-E-V uniquely combines ballet with hip hop: a head-bop seamlessly morphs into a pirouette. At forty minutes in length, the performance is the epitome of artistic endurance. The audience witnesses fearless determination and dedication as the performers bodies are pushed to extremes. The dance explores a spectrum of emotion: dark, obsessive, and beautiful.
Instantly submerged within what feels like a club room dedicated to pounding industrial techno, the bodies move mainly in unison โ part of a whole organism that ebbs and flows across the stage โ until one, or a few break off and offer up an independent performance before dissolving back into the collective. It's tribal, at times trance-like, with a sassy aggression.
Tight, beige leotards leave little to the imagination, allowing every part of the anatomy to be celebrated for its athletic achievement: muscles bursting, ribs protruding. The harsh, white lights designed by Kevin A. Jones draw attention to their facial expressions: passioned, pained, sometimes crazed.
Home was also performed by Rambert2: a new commission created by the American choreographer Micaela Taylor. The first dance of the evening is recognized for its numerous influences that encompass classical ballet, hip hop and Gaga.
Long-term L-E-V collaborator, Ori Lichtik, is the genius behind the multifaceted industrial soundscape, which arguably seals the deal for making the performance an all-around superlative piece of contemporary dance. The standing ovation, and emotional reaction this provoked in the audience, was a poignant nod to the long-overdue return of live performance post COVID.
Read Our Interview Of Akeem Smith On The Occasion Of His Solo Exhibition In Berlin →
Click here to read.
adidas Originals and Wales Bonner Launch Autumn/Winter 2021 Collaborative Collection
adidas Originals and Wales Bonner return once again to present their latest collaborative endeavor. Forming an integral part of the designerโs Autumn/Winter 2021 collection, entitled โBlack Sunlightโ, the apparel, footwear, and accessories on offer follow on from the themes developed in Spring/Summer 2021 with โEssenceโ and Autumn/Winter 2020 with โLovers Rockโ.
Concluding the trilogy of collections, Black Sunlight illuminates a world of Caribbean Thought and Black British intellectualism, reflecting on the scholars, poets and artists from the Caribbean, India, and West Africa whose work and writings advanced postcolonial discourse in the UK and across the globe.
Where the previous two collections saw Wales Bonner reimagine the aesthetics and stylistic tendencies of the 70s, for Autumn/Winter 2021 the designer turns her attention to the diasporic radical thinkers of the 80s. Here, the apparel and accessories offering features iconic adidas pieces refreshed through Wales Bonnerโs inimitable lens โ implementing popular 80s inspired cut lines and silhouettes on items including t-shirts, pants, trackpants, a tracksuit, an anorak, and a sunhat. Inspired by scholarly iconography, select pieces are then elevated with collegiate graphics, representing academic and spiritual growth.
Photographs by Tyler Mitchell. The adidas Originals by Wales Bonner Autumn/Winter 2021 collaborative apparel and accessories is available at adidas.com, on Confirmed, and through select retailers. Footwear will launch beginning of 2022 (on Confirmed and through selected retailers).
Cocobunny Founder Renรฉe Parkhurst Shoots Petite Meller and Talks Bucket Hats →
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Wicker Man: Chris Wolstonโs โTemperatureโs Risingโ At Casa Perfect in Los Angeles
New York and Medellรญn-based artist and designer Chris Wolstonโs new series of sculptural domestic objects are a high Fahrenheit, alchemical fever dream of organic forms, materiality and erotic cheekiness. Most known for his anatomically enhanced woven rattan chairs featuring their striking embonpoint and delectable gluteal rotundness, Temperatureโs Rising brings a new breed of beasts to the bestiary. A standing mirror rests on its generous bondonkadonk, a cabinet is aortal and coral-like, a snaking sofa is upholstered with rich bouclรฉ and upcycled animal hides, there are metallurgic vessels, and even a leafy fireplace screen. Wolstonโs newest generation of Nalgona Chairs (nalgona is Spanish slang for someone with a great ass) has taken on a new dimension of celebratory gestures, colors and formsโa post-pandemic, post-apocalyptic tropical wedding of form and function where the punch has possibly been spiked with the hallucinogenic secretions of some shamanic monkey frog. Brightly colored red, blue and purple outdoor Nalgonas look like sex dolls for giant pool nymphs. A multi-limbed chandelier, with palms holding lightbulbs, is nucleic and yet at the time is reminiscent of hands peaking out above the fog on a dance floor at an Ibizan foam party. All in all, Temperatureโs Rising is also an example of how to make furniture conscientiously: by using ethically sourced 100% Colombian mimbre (wicker) and weavers that are compensated using a profit sharing model. Make sure to bring a bucket and a mopโWolstonโs world is a wet dream during a nap under an ancient Incan temple. Temperatureโs Rising will be on view at Casa Perfect through December 2021. Make an appointment here. Photos: William Jess Laird
Sterling Ruby And More Guest Artists Team Up With Prison Arts Collective
Huxley, the global talent agency announce their collaboration with the California-based organization Prison Arts Collective (PAC), a university-based, non-profit program offering a multidisciplinary arts curriculum in 12 California State prisons. PAC is headquartered at San Diego State University. Throughout 2021, Huxley has worked with PAC to design a guest artist program, made up of 15 individual lessons over 15 weeks. This fall, PAC will teach the new program in one prison, and eventually bring it to the 12 menโs and womenโs California State Prisons where PAC holds programming. By providing multidisciplinary arts programming in correctional institutions, PAC supports the development of self-expression, reflection, communication, and empathy through collaboration and mutual learning. Guest artists include photographer Tyler Mitchell, creator of the Wim Hof Method Wim Hof, American artist Sterling Ruby, British fine artist Issy Wood, cartoonist David Ostow, creative and art directors Willo Perron and Brian Roettinger, and more as contributors. Guest artist lessons focus on a range of topics, including logo design and typography, scriptwriting and creative storytelling, cartooning and illustration, collage making, creative mindfulness, and more. Click here to learn more.
Read Our Interview Of Will Sheldon On The Occasion Of His New Exhibition "My Small Super Star" →
Click here to read the interview.
Her Data: Read Our Interview Of Maria Mavropoulou On Algorithmic Gender Bias →
Maria Mavropoulou installation image courtesy of the artist.
โHave you ever wondered why Siri, Alexa and Cortana are given female voices and names? How do machines see women? Can machines perceive diversity?โ
Women currently occupy a minority of positions in the tech field. As a result of this, there is growing evidence that the gender imbalance affecting the tech sector extends to data science and AI. Gender and racial biases found in AI training data sets, algorithms, and devices have the tendency to reinforce harmful stereotypes that stigmatize and marginalize women on a global scale. With the increasing ubiquity of AI in our societies, such biases put women at risk of being left behind in all realms of economic, political and social life. Her Data is a group exhibition currently on view at Romantso, Athens that explores the role of data and algorithms in the current age of artificial intelligence through the female perspective, and focuses on how technologies used daily might affect our identities and ways of thinking. Curated by Katerina Gkoutziouli & Foteini Vergidou, the show includes the work of 4 female artists, Eli Cortiรฑas, Maria Mavropoulou, Mimi แปnแปฅแปha, and Paola Palavidi. Each artist highlights the need for inclusive technologies due to the various ways that dominant technological narratives influence our experienced identities through social media, search engines and AI applications. Together these works raise questions about the tech industry and its collection and distribution of our data. They invite us to look deeper at the design of current technological systems, exposing how they work and the world views that they propagate. We spoke with Greek artist Maria Mavropoulou to learn more about her involvement in the show and how she investigates the algorithmic classifications of women according to race, gender, and age through the use of personalized ads. Read more.
After Touch: Portraits Of Caring Connection In The Face Of Global Fracture @ Ochi Projects In Los Angeles
How do you decolonize the art of portraiture? How do you strip away the traditional signifiers of status and hierarchy so that the essence of oneโs character can properly supersede all notions of taxonomy? Marcel Pardo Arizaโs solo exhibition, After Touch, at Ochi Projects Los Angeles is one example of how this is accomplished. Born in Colombia and raised by theater artists, Arizaโs multidisciplinary practice challenges institutional pedagogies and opens the floodgates of perception regarding the constitutions of performance, portraiture, and installation. Portraitureโs customary status symbols, such as professional costume, Delsartean postures, and meticulously curated mises-en-scenes have been eschewed, leaving subjects nude in flat, empty spaces of warm, fleshy colors where they don sparing accessories and undergarments. These gloves, flogs, durags, masks and ropes play a much different role in describing their subjects. They texturize moments of intimacy, acting as signifiers of a hungry haptic drive, wholly bereft of social status. Digital watches provide chronological context for bodies that are in a constant state of transformation. Bodies emerging from a year in isolation. Bodies whose grooming and scarring are consequences of both biology and agency. Bodies that relate to one another based on personal histories, pheromones, and physical absence. They engage one another at times without acknowledging the camera, allowing for a moment of intimate connection that is unaffected by outside influence. At other times, they do engage the camera, affording the viewer a certain privilege in the process of perception. The caveat of these eye-contact-giving portraits is their adherence to the gallery wallsโan act that irreversibly restricts their salability, thereby reifying the self-determination of their subjects. Bringing the role of mutual support sharply into focus, Ariza portrays the strength of their queer, Bay Area-based community of creators by describing the qualities of their connections, rather than that of their individual accomplishments. In this sense, After Touch, can be felt as a soothing balm for the isolated ego following a global catastrophe that left many of us wondering what lies behind our veils of desire.
After Touch is on view through October 23 @ Ochi Projects 3301 W Washington Boulevard, Los Angeles.
Michael St. Johnโs "The Passions" Essay by Robert Hobbs
text by Robert Hobbs
Michael St. Johnโs series of twenty-four paintings entitled The Passions was inspired by Charles Le Brunโs engravings of expressive heads, which illuminate ideas articulated in his 1668 lecture โConfรฉrence sur lโexpression gรฉnรฉrale et particuliรจre.โ The purpose of Le Brunโs physiognomic depictions of the passionsโthe seventeenth-century word for emotionsโwas didactic: as director of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, he aimed to teach aspiring artists how to represent human emotions nobly.
Key to St. Johnโs series is Le Brunโs linkage of โgรฉnรฉrale et particuliรจreโ to establish a continuum between the customary and the idiosyncraticโa variance reminiscent of Roland Barthesโs โThe Third Meaning,โ cited in Douglas Crimpโs 1979 October essay โPictures,โ [1] which brings together photo-based art by such Pictures Generation artists as Sherrie Levine, Robert Longo, and Cindy Sherman. Barthesโs โThe Third Meaningโ focuses on the slippage that can occur between actors and their characters: this situation involves โan actor disguised twice over . . . without one disguise destroying the other; a multi-layering of meanings which always lets the previous meaning continue . . . [by] saying the opposite without giving up the contrary.โ [2] Instead of subscribing to the Pictures Generationโs preference for types, as epitomized by Shermanโs masquerades and Longoโs dancing/dying yuppies, St. John confronts the subject of mass-media figures in his painted portraits in order to reveal breaks in their cinematic facades, thereby disclosing hints of a more profound reality. Moreover, his project is predicated on Barthesโs punctum, the Latin word employed in Camera Lucida to indicate an ever-so-slight prick or break in an otherwise seamless photograph, usually taking the form of an incidental detail or glitch that makes an image unique, personal, and affective. [3] Although Barthesโs punctum is often catalyzed by disparity in a photograph, this reaction depends on the viewerโs ability to identify it, making the process of identifying punctum both extrinsic and intrinsicโand this external/internal type of response occurs when looking at works in St. Johnโs Passions.
In this series, punctum shakes up the identities of selected filmic characters by setting the stage for interpretative shifts such that St. Johnโs paintings are far removed from fandomโs slavish idolization of fictionalized personalities. Instead, his work serves as the basis for layered meanings in which extrinsic facts either work in tandem with the fictive character he is portraying or challenge it. From a formal perspective, St. Johnโs decision to render all works in The Passions in grisaille, while relying on a number of painting stylesโranging from soft to sharp focus and blended to pronounced brushwork, sometimes in the same workโendows his series with an overarching abstractness, enabling his collection of portraits at the outset to differ significantly from their prototypes. This cohesiveness then works in partnership with decisions unique to each image to ensure its proximity to and distance from its cinematic source, and the resultant tension between this polarity affords viewers the opportunity to experience the workโs punctum.
From the vantage point of subject matter, St. John establishes circumstances for the small, yet pointed, pricks characterizing punctum that provide oblique hints of an authentically sensed world beyond or beneath his fictive subjects, and he does so in a number of ways. Sometimes, St. John selects films in which well-known actors are cast in atypical roles. Examples include Marilyn Monroeโs disenchanted Roslyn Taber in The Misfits and Brigitte Bardotโs defiant Camille Javal in Contempt. At other times, St. John chooses characters who metonymically segue with their off-the-film actors. A compelling example is Warren Beattyโs many love affairs, which complement the infidelities of his George Roundy character in Shampoo, so that St. Johnโs rearview portrayal of Roundyโs head at the filmโs end becomes markedly poignant. Similarly, Mia Farrowโs newsworthy bonds with her adopted and biological children retroactively inflect the overwhelming maternal needs she expressed as Rosemary Woodhouse in Rosemaryโs Baby. More straightforward metonyms include the business card of Patrick Bateman, the superficial rich yuppie investment banker in American Psycho. This trope can also be extended to Mr. McGuireโs prophetic statement in The Graduate about plastics, which continues to resonate, especially with the deluge of microplastics now invading the planetโs oceans, and this recent outcome becomes the occasion for yet another type of punctum.
St. Johnโs predilection for metonymic connections is playfully implemented in works that obliquely reference familiar art world tactics. Gloria Wandrousโs lipstick-written message โNo Saleโ in BUtterfield 8 can be construed ironically to refer to both this character, who ultimately sells herself, and St. Johnโs marketable painting. This work is sardonically countered by Paul Muniโs wrongfully accused character in I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, James Allen, whose stealing is paralleled by many appropriation artists who take from others, albeit with different objectives in mind. St. John finds Gwyneth Paltrowโs Margot Tenenbaum (from The Royal Tenenbaums) particularly evocative because of her ability to switch roles from performer to observer. Thus, his portrait depicts a fictional character, who also serves as a surrogate viewer.
In The Passions, St. John has generated conditions for punctum by amplifying the number of roles some of his sitters have undertaken. These include the revealing masquerade assumed by the eight-year-old Jehovahโs Witnessesโraised character Phillip โBuzzโ Perry, played by T. J. Lowther in A Perfect World, who transgressively wears a shoplifted Casper-the-Friendly-Ghost mask, and the haunting clown paint covering the visage of mentally ill Arthur Fleck, played by Joaquin Phoenix in Joker. St. John magnifies the mix-up between fiction and reality in his depiction of Gary Oldman, who plays the Sex Pistolsโs bassist, Sid Vicious, as the portrait is a painting of an actor assuming the role of a character, who is intended to represent an actual person. And his portrait of Pris from Blade Runner centers on the involved simulation of depicting an actor (Daryl Hannah) who is in turn playing a science-fictional replicant, who hopes to pass as a human being, thereby embodying a layering of three constructed views.
In conclusion, rather than revealing his sittersโ emotionsโa process that would reify and render them opaqueโSt. Johnโs works from the Passions series offer viewers different routes for participating in the deconstruction of their mass-media cinematic figures, thereby encouraging them to participate in the modest yet revelatory breaks Barthes associates with punctum. In his individualized portraits, St. John relies on representation while putting it on notice. With his admirable mixture of painterly styles, he characterizes mimeticism as a limited, yet useful, form of empiricism capable of catalyzing for viewers different small tears in the mass-media images he appropriates from twentieth- and twentieth-first-century films. Most notable among his mimetic strategies is metonymy, which is evident in the contingent, tangential, and contextual relations Iโve suggested, which depend on established conventions and readily available associations among actors, films, and real-life situations. While these metonymical contingencies extend the cinematic into daily life, they also constitute the ways reality and a range of emotions can infiltrate mass-media fictions. Although St. Johnโs approach might appear as an ingenious artistic ploy, its ramifications extend far beyond the art network since we all inhabit hyperreal worlds in which reality can easily be confused and even replaced with the models for producing it, thus making it incumbent on all of us to find ways to mine whatever sparks of genuine feeling we can discern in todayโs vast stockpile of mass-media images.
[1] Douglas Crimp, โPictures,โ October 8 (Spring 1979): 83, n10.
[2] Roland Barthes, โThe Third Meaning: Research Notes on Some Eisenstein Stillsโ (1970), trans. Stephen Heath in A Barthes Reader, ed. Susan Sontag (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982, rpt. 1983), 323.
[3] Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), 26โ27.
Michael St. Johns The Passions will be on view at De Boer Gallery until November 6.
Timo Fahler "Light, First and Foremost" @ Stanley's Gallery In Los Angeles
Stanley's Gallery In Los Angeles presents new work by Timo Fahler. In Light, First and Foremost, self portraits of the artist, alter egos, and other iconography in the form of stained glass are held up by model casts of the artistโs hands. Through this medium, Fahler explores his own psyche with ecclesiastical expressions that shape-shift like desert mirages that melt into the asphalt of psychological roads that always seem to lead back to the unconscious. Medusa, Aztec gods of fertility, a corpulent Venus, a Mexican cowboyโthe three dimensional sculptural works are prismatic as they refract illuminated doubles, thus furthering deep Jungian symbological paradoxes of the anima and animus, good and evil, light and dark. In this solo exhibition, Fahler crashes into the iceberg of the selfโthe result: a beautiful shipwreck of new exalted idols. Light, First and Foremost is be on view through October 23 at Stanleyโs Gallery in Los Angeles.