Karl Haendel at Susanne Vielmetter

Karl Haendel BY AND BY (2016) (installation view). Image courtesy of the artist and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. Photo: Robert Wedemeyer.

In a moment as politically and culturally fraught as our own, it’s grating to recall the old, tired axiom that the greatest art comes out of times of tragedy—or, in our case, mounting, compounding discontent. It’s worth considering the slippage between art in the contemporary era that responds to tragedy, seeking to transform it, and that which revels in or even actively participates in it—capitalizing on pain by anointing oneself it’s spokesperson and interpreter.

Haendel’s recent exhibition at Susanne Vielmetter prominently featured portraits of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, as well as a number of works in specific reference to the 2016 election and the history of U.S. politics in general. Perhaps the pain of the 2016 U.S. presidential election is still too sharp, the warp of “post-truth” still too disorienting. But in yoking just over half of the works in the show to an aimless glide over the surface of contemporary politics, Haendel begat something far more craven and cynical: art as fandom, pain as capital. Thy will of the market’s “invisible hand” be done.

Haendel’s portrait of Obama was one of the more anemic catharses you’re likely to experience, depending, as all portraiture does, on the meeting between your opinion of the subject and the material and compositional choices of the artist. Haendel’s portrait of Hillary Clinton leans heavily, if not totally, on Clinton’s conveniently pliable cultural figuration, little of which has to do with the actual reality of who she is or what she’s accomplished. Her gaze out from Haendel’s graphite void is somber, and sobering for those of us who supported her candidacy. But Haendel’s portrait, a remarkably flat, one-to-one depiction of Clinton, seems to rely on the contemporary mood to do all the heavy lifting of meaning. Facile facsimile, however painstakingly rendered, trumps perspective—art attenuated into meaninglessness.

Compounding Haendel’s at once breezy and unerringly precise portraiture of Clinton and Obama were a number of nominally political works (a list of presidents’ and vice-presidents’ names, a map of the United States with each state’s motto written within its borders) leaving the viewer to huff an exasperated “Yes, and?” Haendel’s nonsensical rep- etitions of the text “Post-Truth” and “No on Yes” felt like tentative steps towards grasping the meaning and impact of our current state rather than uniquely wrought translations of an especially bewildering reality. Contrast this with Wolfgang Tillmans’ recent exhibition at Regen Projects, in which the artist successfully navigated a complex narrative of the United States’ political impact over the rest of the world, offering a window out of the self-absorbed political reality that Haendel’s vision could not seem to stretch beyond.

Other works in the show included four large action portraits of young women riding horses, and a video of a man’s body, with accompanying interview text with the subject (who was accused of committing sexual assault as a minor). These works, while deserving of evaluation in their own right, seemed peculiarly unanchored to their surroundings, transmuting contrast into afterthought.

The political portraits impact on several levels, none of which ultimately have to do with art in its transformative sense, or even art as a lens through which to deepen one’s understanding of reality. Rather, Haendel’s works are of technical, photographic precision. Photography, in strictest terms, is a kind of representation without interpretation, and the images of Clinton and Obama resemble journalistic photography, in keeping with the medium through which both regularly appear. Haendel’s portraiture, in its unerring precision, collapses the distance between source and interpretation in a render so perfect it nearly erases the hand itself. Haendel’s skill in rendering grain for grain and at a massive scale is impressive, even beautiful, but seems directly at odds with the often-vacuous touch with which he handles the vivid, horrify-
ing reality to which we are becoming accustomed.

Contemporary art often seems marked, and marred, by privatization and a lack of impact in the public sphere. Beyond this, the ways in which art is, perhaps, supposed to function—placing great value on nuance, complexity, and thought—seem directly in opposition to the functioning of American politics, and its out- size dependence on false contrast and dire imperative. The distance between necessitates a politically charged art that is tricky, and clever, straddling the line between nuance and didactics. Haendel’s work here instead left the feeling of an empty spectacle.

This review was originally published in Carla issue 7.

Karl Haendel BY AND BY (2016) (installation view). Image courtesy of the artist and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. Photo: Robert Wedemeyer.

Karl Haendel BY AND BY (2016) (installation view). Image courtesy of the artist and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. Photo: Robert Wedemeyer.

Karl Haendel BY AND BY (2016) (installation view). Image courtesy of the artist and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. Photo: Robert Wedemeyer.

Karl Haendel BY AND BY (2016) (installation view). Image courtesy of the artist and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. Photo: Robert Wedemeyer.

Aaron Horst is a writer and architect based in Los Angeles. He has written for Carla, Art Review, and Flash Art.

More by Aaron Horst