Issue 35 February 2024

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Issue 24 May 2021

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Issue 22 November 2020

Issue 21 August 2020

Issue 20 May 2020

Issue 19 February 2020

Letter from the Editor –Lindsay Preston Zappas
Parasites in Love –Travis Diehl
To Crush Absolute On Patrick Staff and
Destroying the Institution
–Jonathan Griffin
Victoria Fu:
Camera Obscured
–Cat Kron
Resurgence of Resistance How Pattern & Decoration's Popularity
Can Help Reshape the Canon
–Catherine Wagley
Trace, Place, Politics Julie Mehretu's Coded Abstractions
–Jessica Simmons
Exquisite L.A.: Featuring: Friedrich Kunath,
Tristan Unrau, and Nevine Mahmoud
–Claressinka Anderson & Joe Pugliese
Reviews April Street
at Vielmetter Los Angeles
–Aaron Horst

Chiraag Bhakta
at Human Resources
–Julie Weitz

Don’t Think: Tom, Joe
and Rick Potts

at POTTS
–Matt Stromberg

Sarah McMenimen
at Garden
–Michael Wright

The Medea Insurrection
at the Wende Museum
–Jennifer Remenchik

(L.A. in N.Y.)
Mike Kelley
at Hauser & Wirth
–Angella d’Avignon
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Issue 18 November 2019

Letter from the Editor –Lindsay Preston Zappas
The Briar and the Tar Nayland Blake at the ICA LA
and Matthew Marks Gallery
–Travis Diehl
Putting Aesthetics
to Hope
Tracking Photography’s Role
in Feminist Communities
– Catherine Wagley
Instagram STARtists
and Bad Painting
– Anna Elise Johnson
Interview with Jamillah James – Lindsay Preston Zappas
Working Artists Featuring Catherine Fairbanks,
Paul Pescador, and Rachel Mason
Text: Lindsay Preston Zappas
Photos: Jeff McLane
Reviews Children of the Sun
at LADIES’ ROOM
– Jessica Simmons

Derek Paul Jack Boyle
at SMART OBJECTS
–Aaron Horst

Karl Holmqvist
at House of Gaga, Los Angeles
–Lee Purvey

Katja Seib
at Château Shatto
–Ashton Cooper

Jeanette Mundt
at Overduin & Co.
–Matt Stromberg
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Issue 17 August 2019

Letter From the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Green Chip David Hammons
at Hauser & Wirth
–Travis Diehl
Whatever Gets You
Through the Night
The Artists of Dilexi
and Wartime Trauma
–Jonathan Griffin
Generous Collectors How the Grinsteins
Supported Artists
–Catherine Wagley
Interview with
Donna Huanca
–Lindsy Preston Zappas
Working Artist Featuring Ragen Moss, Justen LeRoy,
and Bari Ziperstein
Text: Lindsay Preston Zappas
Photos: Jeff McLane
Reviews Sarah Lucas
at the Hammer Museum
–Yxta Maya Murray

George Herms and Terence Koh
at Morán Morán
–Matt Stromberg

Hannah Hur
at Bel Ami
–Michael Wright

Sebastian Hernandez
at NAVEL
–Julie Weitz

(L.A. in N.Y.)
Alex Israel
at Greene Naftali
–Rosa Tyhurst

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Issue 16 May 2019

Trulee Hall's Untamed Magic Catherine Wagley
Ingredients for a Braver Art Scene Ceci Moss
I Shit on Your Graves Travis Diehl
Interview with Ruby Neri Jonathan Griffin
Carolee Schneemann and the Art of Saying Yes! Chelsea Beck
Exquisite L.A. Claressinka Anderson
Joe Pugliese
Reviews Ry Rocklen
at Honor Fraser
–Cat Kron

Rob Thom
at M+B
–Lindsay Preston Zappas

Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age
of Black Power, 1963-1983
at The Broad
–Matt Stromberg

Anna Sew Hoy & Diedrick Brackens
at Various Small Fires
–Aaron Horst

Julia Haft-Candell & Suzan Frecon
at Parrasch Heijnen
–Jessica Simmons

(L.A. in N.Y.)
Shahryar Nashat
at Swiss Institute
–Christie Hayden
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Issue 15 February 2019

Letter From the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Letter to the Editor
Men on Women
Geena Brown
Eyes Without a Voice
Julian Rosefeldt's Manifesto
Christina Catherine Martinez
Seven Minute Dream Machine
Jordan Wolfson's (Female figure)
Travis Diehl
Laughing in Private
Vanessa Place's Rape Jokes
Catherine Wagley
Interview with
Rosha Yaghmai
Laura Brown
Exquisite L.A.
Featuring: Patrick Martinez,
Ramiro Gomez, and John Valadez
Claressinka Anderson
Joe Pugliese
Reviews Outliers and American
Vanguard Art at LACMA
–Jonathan Griffin

Sperm Cult
at LAXART
–Matt Stromberg

Kahlil Joseph
at MOCA PDC
–Jessica Simmons

Ingrid Luche
at Ghebaly Gallery
–Lindsay Preston Zappas

Matt Paweski
at Park View / Paul Soto
–John Zane Zappas

Trenton Doyle Hancock
at Shulamit Nazarian
–Colony Little

(L.A. in N.Y.)
Catherine Opie
at Lehmann Maupin
–Angella d'Avignon
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Issue 14 November 2018

Letter From the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Celeste Dupuy-Spencer and Figurative Religion Catherine Wagley
Lynch in Traffic Travis Diehl
The Remixed Symbology of Nina Chanel Abney Lindsay Preston Zappas
Interview with Kulapat Yantrasast Christie Hayden
Exquisite L.A.
Featuring: Sandra de la Loza, Gloria Galvez, and Steve Wong
Claressinka Anderson
Photos: Joe Pugliese
Reviews Raúl de Nieves
at Freedman Fitzpatrick
-Aaron Horst

Gertrud Parker
at Parker Gallery
-Ashton Cooper

Robert Yarber
at Nicodim Gallery
-Jonathan Griffin

Nikita Gale
at Commonwealth & Council
-Simone Krug

Lari Pittman
at Regen Projects
-Matt Stromberg

(L.A. in N.Y.)
Eckhaus Latta
at the Whitney Museum
of American Art
-Angella d'Avignon
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Issue 13 August 2018

Letter From the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Letter to the Editor Julie Weitz with Angella d'Avignon
Don't Make
Everything Boring
Catherine Wagley
The Collaborative Art
World of Norm Laich
Matt Stromberg
Oddly Satisfying Art Travis Diehl
Made in L.A. 2018 Reviews Claire de Dobay Rifelj
Jennifer Remenchik
Aaron Horst
Exquisite L.A.
Featuring: Anna Sew Hoy, Guadalupe Rosales, and Shizu Saldamando
Claressinka Anderson
Photos: Joe Pugliese
Reviews It's Snowing in LA
at AA|LA
–Matthew Lax

Fiona Conner
at the MAK Center
–Thomas Duncan

Show 2
at The Gallery @ Michael's
–Simone Krug

Deborah Roberts
at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles
–Ikechukwu Casmir Onyewuenyi

Mimi Lauter
at Blum & Poe
–Jessica Simmons

(L.A. in N.Y.)
Math Bass
at Mary Boone
–Ashton Cooper

(L.A. in N.Y.)
Condo New York
–Laura Brown
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Issue 12 May 2018

Poetic Energies and
Radical Celebrations:
Senga Nengudi and Maren Hassinger
Simone Krug
Interior States of the Art Travis Diehl
Perennial Bloom:
Florals in Feminism
and Across L.A.
Angella d'Avignon
The Mess We're In Catherine Wagley
Interview with Christina Quarles Ashton Cooper
Object Project
Featuring Suné Woods, Michelle Dizon,
and Yong Soon Min
Lindsay Preston Zappas
Photos: Jeff McLane
Reviews Meleko Mokgosi
at The Fowler Museum at UCLA
-Jessica Simmons

Chris Kraus
at Chateau Shatto
- Aaron Horst

Ben Sanders
at Ochi Projects
- Matt Stromberg

iris yirei hsu
at the Women's Center
for Creative Work
- Hana Cohn

Harald Szeemann
at the Getty Research Institute
- Olivian Cha

Ali Prosch
at Bed and Breakfast
- Jennifer Remenchik

Reena Spaulings
at Matthew Marks
- Thomas Duncan
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Issue 11 February 2018

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Museum as Selfie Station Matt Stromberg
Accessible as Humanly as Possible Catherine Wagley
On Laura Owens on Laura Owens Travis Diehl
Interview with Puppies Puppies Jonathan Griffin
Object Project Lindsay Preston Zappas, Jeff McLane
Reviews Dulce Dientes
at Rainbow in Spanish
- Aaron Horst

Adrián Villas Rojas
at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA
- Lindsay Preston Zappas

Nevine Mahmoud
at M+B
- Angella D'Avignon

Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960- 1985
at the Hammer Museum
- Thomas Duncan

Hannah Greely and William T. Wiley
at Parker Gallery
- Keith J. Varadi

David Hockney
at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (L.A. in N.Y.)
- Ashton Cooper

Edgar Arceneaux
at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (L.A. in S.F.)
- Hana Cohn
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Issue 10 November 2017

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Barely Living with Art:
The Labor of Domestic
Spaces in Los Angeles
Eli Diner
She Wanted Adventure:
Dwan, Butler, Mizuno, Copley
Catherine Wagley
The Languages of
All-Women Exhibitions
Lindsay Preston Zappas
L.A. Povera Travis Diehl
On Eclipses:
When Language
and Photography Fail
Jessica Simmons
Interview with
Hamza Walker
Julie Wietz
Object Project
Featuring: Rosha Yaghmai,
Dianna Molzan, and Patrick Jackson
Lindsay Preston Zappas
Photos by Jeff McLane
Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA
Reviews
Regen Projects
Ibid Gallery
One National Gay & Lesbian Archives and MOCA PDC
The Mistake Room
Luis De Jesus Gallery
the University Art Gallery at CSULB
the Autry Museum
Reviews Cheyenne Julien
at Smart Objects

Paul Mpagi Sepuya
at team bungalow

Ravi Jackson
at Richard Telles

Tactility of Line
at Elevator Mondays

Trigger: Gender as a Tool as a Weapon
at the New Museum
(L.A. in N.Y.)
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Issue 9 August 2017

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Women on the Plinth Catherine Wagley
Us & Them, Now & Then:
Reconstituting Group Material
Travis Diehl
The Offerings of EJ Hill
Ikechukwu Casmir Onyewuenyi
Interview with Jenni Sorkin Carmen Winant
Object Project
Featuring: Rebecca Morris,
Linda Stark, Alex Olson
Lindsay Preston Zappas
Photos by Jeff McClane
Reviews Mark Bradford
at the Venice Biennale

Broken Language
at Shulamit Nazarian

Artists of Color
at the Underground Museum

Anthony Lepore & Michael Henry Hayden
at Del Vaz Projects

Home
at LACMA

Analia Saban at
Sprueth Magers
Letter to the Editor Lady Parts, Lady Arts
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Issue 8 May 2017

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Kanye Westworld Travis Diehl
@richardhawkins01 Thomas Duncan
Support Structures:
Alice Könitz and LAMOA
Catherine Wagley
Interview with
Penny Slinger
Eliza Swann
Exquisite L.A.
Featuring:
taisha paggett
Ashley Hunt
Young Chung
Intro by Claressinka Anderson
Portraits by Joe Pugliese
Reviews Alessandro Pessoli
at Marc Foxx

Jennie Jieun Lee
at The Pit

Trisha Baga
at 356 Mission

Jimmie Durham
at The Hammer

Parallel City
at Ms. Barbers

Jason Rhodes
at Hauser & Wirth
Letter to the Editor
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Issue 7 February 2017

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Generous
Structures
Catherine Wagley
Put on a Happy Face:
On Dynasty Handbag
Travis Diehl
The Limits of Animality:
Simone Forti at ISCP
(L.A. in N.Y.)
Ikechukwu Casmir Onyewuenyi
More Wound Than Ruin:
Evaluating the
"Human Condition"
Jessica Simmons
Exquisite L.A.
Featuring:
Brenna Youngblood
Todd Gray
Rafa Esparza
Intro by Claressinka Anderson
Portraits by Joe Pugliese
Reviews Creature
at The Broad

Sam Pulitzer & Peter Wachtler
at House of Gaga // Reena Spaulings Fine Art

Karl Haendel
at Susanne Vielmetter

Wolfgang Tillmans
at Regen Projects

Ma
at Chateau Shatto

The Rat Bastard Protective Association
at the Landing
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Issue 6 November 2016

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Kenneth Tam
's Basement
Travis Diehl
The Female
Cool School
Catherine Wagley
The Rise
of the L.A.
Art Witch
Amanda Yates Garcia
Interview with
Mernet Larsen
Julie Weitz
Agnes Martin
at LACMA
Jessica Simmons
Exquisite L.A.
Featuring:
Analia Saban
Ry Rocklen
Sarah Cain
Intro by Claressinka Anderson
Portraits by Joe Pugliese
Reviews
Made in L.A. 2016
at The Hammer Museum

Doug Aitken
at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA

Mertzbau
at Tif Sigfrids

Jean-Pascal Flavian and Mika Tajima
at Kayne Griffin Corcoran

Mark A. Rodruigez
at Park View

The Weeping Line
Organized by Alter Space
at Four Six One Nine
(S.F. in L.A.)
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Issue 5 August 2016

Letter form the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Non-Fiction
at The Underground Museum
Catherine Wagley
The Art of Birth Carmen Winant
Escape from Bunker Hill
John Knight
at REDCAT
Travis Diehl
Ed Boreal Speaks Benjamin Lord
Art Advice (from Men) Sarah Weber
Routine Pleasures
at the MAK Center
Jonathan Griffin
Exquisite L.A.
Featuring:
Fay Ray
John Baldessari
Claire Kennedy
Intro by Claressinka Anderson
Portraits by Joe Pugliese
Reviews Revolution in the Making
at Hauser Wirth & Schimmel

Carl Cheng
at Cherry and Martin

Joan Snyder
at Parrasch Heijnen Gallery

Elanor Antin
at Diane Rosenstein

Performing the Grid
at Ben Maltz Gallery
at Otis College of Art & Design

Laura Owens
at The Wattis Institute
(L.A. in S.F.)
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Issue 4 May 2016

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Moon, laub, and Love Catherine Wagley
Walk Artisanal Jonathan Griffin
Reconsidering
Marva Marrow's
Inside the L.A. Artist
Anthony Pearson
Mystery Science Thater:
Diana Thater
at LACMA
Aaron Horst
Informal Feminisms Federica Bueti and Jan Verwoert
Marva Marrow Photographs
Lita Albuquerque
Interiors and Interiority:
Njideka Akunyili Crosby
Char Jansen
Reviews L.A. Art Fairs

Material Art Fair, Mexico City

Rain Room
at LACMA

Evan Holloway
at David Kordansky Gallery

Histories of a Vanishing Present: A Prologue
at The Mistake Room

Carter Mull
at fused space
(L.A. in S.F.)

Awol Erizku
at FLAG Art Foundation
(L.A. in N.Y.)
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Issue 3 February 2016

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Le Louvre, Las Vegas Evan Moffitt
iPhones, Flesh,
and the Word:
F.B.I.
at Arturo Bandini
Lindsay Preston Zappas
Women Talking About Barney Catherine Wagley
Lingua Ignota:
Faith Wilding
at The Armory Center
for the Arts
and LOUDHAILER
Benjamin Lord
A Conversation
with Amalia Ulman
Char Jansen
How We Practice Carmen Winant
Share Your Piece
of the Puzzle
Federica Bueti
Amanda Ross-Ho Photographs
Erik Frydenborg
Reviews Honeydew
at Michael Thibault

Fred Tomaselli
at California State University, Fullerton

Trisha Donnelly
at Matthew Marks Gallery

Bradford Kessler
at ASHES/ASHES
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Issue 2 November 2015

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Hot Tears Carmen Winant
Slow View:
Molly Larkey
Anna Breininger and Kate Whitlock
Americanicity's Paintings:
Orion Martin
at Favorite Goods
Tracy Jeanne Rosenthal
Layers of Leimert Park Catherine Wagley
Junkspace Junk Food:
Parker Ito
at Kaldi, Smart Objects,
White Cube, and
Château Shatto
Evan Moffitt
Melrose Hustle Keith Vaughn
Max Maslansky Photographs
Monica Majoli
at the Tom of Finland Foundation
White Lee, Black Lee:
William Pope.L’s "Reenactor"
Travis Diehl
Dora Budor Interview Char Jensen
Reviews Mary Ried Kelley
at The Hammer Museum

Tongues Untied
at MOCA Pacific Design Center

No Joke
at Tanya Leighton
(L.A. in Berlin)
Snap Reviews Martin Basher at Anat Ebgi
Body Parts I-V at ASHES ASHES
Eve Fowler at Mier Gallery
Matt Siegle at Park View
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Issue 1 August 2015

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
MEAT PHYSICS/
Metaphysical L.A.
Travis Diehl
Art for Art’s Sake:
L.A. in the 1990s
Anthony Pearson
A Dialogue in Two
Synchronous Atmospheres
Erik Morse
with Alexandra Grant
SOGTFO
at François Ghebaly
Jonathan Griffin
#studio #visit
with #devin #kenny
@barnettcohen
Mateo Tannatt
Photographs
Jibade-Khalil Huffman
Slow View:
Discussion on One Work
Anna Breininger
with Julian Rogers
Reviews Pierre Huyghe
at LACMA

Mernet Larsen
at Various Small Fires

John Currin
at Gagosian, Beverly Hills

Pat O'Niell
at Cherry and Martin

A New Rhythm
at Park View

Unwatchable Scenes and
Other Unreliable Images...
at Public Fiction

Charles Gaines
at The Hammer Museum

Henry Taylor
at Blum & Poe/ Untitled
(L.A. in N.Y.)
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Moon, laub, and Love

 

Jennifer Moon and laub, Video still from 3CE: A Relational Love Odyssey (2015). HD video (TRT: 11:15). Image courtesy of the artists and Commonwealth and Council.

Jennifer Moon and laub, film still from 3CE: A Relational Love Odyssey (2015). HD video, 11:15. Image courtesy of the artists and Commonwealth and Council.

It was early afternoon on the last Saturday in January when artists Jennifer Moon and laub, newly lovers and collaborators, maneuvered an odd contraption across the porch of a fake old-Western house. Never meant for real inhabitants, the house belongs to Paramount Ranch, a town built as a movie set. The artists’ contraption consisted of, among other things, green and yellow glass tubes, a hamster cage, a wooden stand and a hand-drawn sign that read: “Donate $1 to the Revolution.” Moon has been planning the Revolution, with various degrees of dedication, for years. laub (who always writes his name in lowercase letters) has been involved since the two artists met in July 2015 (“I’m in the Revolution,” laub apparently told Moon—a perfect pick-up line).1 Once situated on the porch, laub would take out a banjo. Moon would lecture, wearing the same black, sleeveless dress and shiny fanny pack she’s worn in other recent performances.

An art fair droned on around them. Since its inception, the Paramount Ranch fair’s Hollywood-engineered, Deadwood-style setting, just far enough from L.A., has purportedly underscored its identity as an off-the-grid pioneer among art fairs. Really, you see many of the same people at the Ranch as at the concurrent, professionalized ALAC fair in Santa Monica. Only, at the Ranch, visitors wear boots and plaid instead of suits or heels. The town is a facsimile of a frontier, the fair a facsimile of an alternative. So, even though their names were on the official roster, Moon and laub—whose work really does explore off-gridding—seemed like interlopers, or minstrel panhandlers, using the fair to fundraise unabashedly for the bigger project that consumes them.

When listing life-artists, who turned their lives into art performatively, it’s still primarily those from the dawn of conceptualism who come to mind: Lee Lozano, Stephen Kaltenbach, Linda Montano, and David Hammons, among others. Moon and laub play into this lineage; they’re interested in art as a tool for living. And now that they’re working and living together, it’s hard to engage with their art without thinking about their personal relationship. But unlike their predecessors—who, as conceptualist Hans Haacke pointed out in a 2007 interview, started working when no establishment was really paying attention—Moon and laub are participating in the current, ultra-professionalized version of the art world. Moon, after all, won the People’s Choice award at the Hammer’s Made in L.A. Biennial in 2014. Plus, she and laub keep talking about revolution, something that requires public attention to succeed. Thus, the balance between earnest, open-ended self-exploration and public strategy is a key (sometimes confusing) component of their life-art.

Jennifer Moon and laub, Video still from 3CE: A Relational Love Odyssey (2015). HD video (TRT: 11:15). Image courtesy of the artists and Commonwealth and Council.

Jennifer Moon and laub, film still from 3CE: A Relational Love Odyssey (2015). HD video, 11:15. Image courtesy of the artists and Commonwealth and Council.

Jennifer Moon was still studying art at UCLA in 1993, when she made a pact to give up romantic love in favor of art. Even now, the pact comes up as pivotal in her writing and in interviews she gives. After receiving an MFA from Art Center in 2002, drug addiction took her out of the local art scene, and a crack-inspired robbery attempt landed her in prison for nine months of an eighteen-month sentence. In prison, she “learned of love.”

Her first show post-prison at the artist-run space Commonwealth & Council in 2012 was called Phoenix Rising, Part 1: This is Where I Learned of Love. The show documented her prison experience and consisted of framed photographs of objects—a waterproof watch, a plastic typewriter, and her certificate of discharge—hanging above cardboard shelves. Each shelf held a copy of the same book, also called This is Where I Learned of Love. The book described the significance of the photographed objects and included love letters Moon wrote while incarcerated. At first glance, the whole object-text arrangement felt dry and rational. But in the book, which viewers were reminded to read at every turn, Moon grapples openly with how to be a vulnerable revolutionary. She describes attending a parenting class at the correctional institute (“just to get the fuck out of my cell”). The instructor asked the women to make a list of “Twenty Things You Love to Do!” and to share one thing with the whole group. Moon responded that she loves to “plan & execute the revolution to destroy capitalism and other oppressive forces.”

Another prisoner wanted to know if Moon was incarcerated for fighting oppression, and Moon wished that she was. She liked that fantasy: the incarcerated radical working away at manifestos. But she’s the kind of revolutionary leader who slips up, gives into impulses and, in some ways, thrives behind bars, with all control wrested from her. Later in the book, she recounts acts of tenderness in the prison yard, and her first romantic relationship with a woman. She writes, “There is more sharing here than I have ever witnessed out in the free world.” When she began making art again, she would try to channel that kind of sharing, exposing her own life to viewers and losing herself in collaborations.

Before Moon began collaborating with laub, she had already presented Phoenix Rising, Part 2 at the Hammer Museum. That installation was sexier than Part 1—in one piece, Moon posed like Huey P. Newton, and appearing as a tiny figurine inside a gorgeous sculpted egg, about to fly off a cliff to her death (she’d decided age 80 was an ideal age to die, or to execute her “last performance”). In her Book of Eros, she listed all romantic or sexual encounters since 1993. She designed this book in an attempt to nullify the pact she’d made years ago, which kept her from ever having a thriving art practice and love life simultaneously. (She often quotes Michael Hardt, who argues we’ve neutered love’s political power by isolating the more personal, passionate Eros from the more communal Agape).2

JLS (Jennifer laub Smasher) (installation view) (2015). K’NEX, Habitrail tubes, popsicle sticks, foam sheets, ceramic 3D print figurines, electrical wire, electrical tape, dental floss, hemp, duck tape, wood, inkjet prints, cardboard, construction paper, foamcore, fabric, folding table. 2 parts: Approx. 68.5 x 156 x 152 inches; 77 x 48 x 24 inches. Photo: Ruben Diaz.

JLS (Jennifer laub Smasher) (installation view) (2015). K’NEX, Habitrail tubes, popsicle sticks, foam sheets, ceramic 3D print figurines, electrical wire, electrical tape, dental floss, hemp, duck tape, wood, inkjet prints, cardboard, construction paper, foamcore, fabric, folding table. 2 parts: Aprroximately 68.5 x 156 x 152 inches; 77 x 48 x 24 inches. Photo: Ruben Diaz.

Phoenix Rising, Part 3: laub, me and the Revolution (The Theory of Everything) opened at Commonwealth & Council in November 2015. The last installment in Moon’s Phoenix Rising series, it looked a bit like a grade-school science fair. Tiny 3D modeled figurines of Moon and laub stood on a pedestal, about to enter the unwieldy, waist-high maze of Hamster tubes that took up much of the main gallery. Throughout the maze, you could see various additional laub and Moon figurines, and collections of their entangled limbs, shooting through to another reality. A video, made in that magical “Cosmos with Carl Sagan” style, played in a side gallery. Graphics in the video could be quite complex, but a thin, hard-to-hear audio made the video seem impulsively made. “Love is neither a closed system,” Moon says near the end, “nor is it the absorption into preexisting romantic relationship rules, designed to create a system rooted in hierarchy, binaries and capital.” laub, wearing a white suit, enters the frame: “Much like faith, it does not stem from anything we currently know or understand in the observable world.” Then they ask us to journey with them, away from certainty toward a space where the rules of behavior remain unformed. The video’s final moments have a cultish feel.

In work by earlier practitioners of life art, this dance between self-involvement and evangelism occasionally takes place too. Conceptual artist Lee Lozano, whose art by this point in her career mainly consisted of written instructions for herself, made a statement to the Art Workers Coalition in April 1969: “I will not call myself an art worker but rather an art dreamer and I will participate only in a total revolution simultaneously personal and political.” Her words, spoken in a public forum, suggested that others should join. Later, though, when she dropped out of the art world altogether, her withdrawal from a public arena made her life-art seem more introspective and private than it had before. When Linda Montano chose to convert back to the Catholic faith late in life—a simultaneously aesthetic and sincere act that would bring her life full circle (she had been raised Catholic)—she could no longer read tarot cards or dabble in mysticism as she had before, publically or privately. Critics and historians wrote about Montano’s life shift, but her return to Catholicism still seemed largely personal, not a conceptual shift that would require anything of her audience.

JLS (Jennifer laub Smasher) (detail) (2015). K’NEX, Habitrail tubes, popsicle sticks, foam sheets, ceramic 3D print figurines, electrical wire, electrical tape, dental floss, hemp, duck tape, wood, inkjet prints, cardboard, construction paper, foamcore, fabric, folding table. 2 parts: Approx. 68.5 x 156 x 152 inches; 77 x 48 x 24 inches. Photo: Ruben Diaz.

JLS (Jennifer laub Smasher) (detail) (2015). K’NEX, Habitrail tubes, popsicle sticks, foam sheets, ceramic 3D print figurines, electrical wire, electrical tape, dental floss, hemp, duck tape, wood, inkjet prints, cardboard, construction paper, foamcore, fabric, folding table. 2 parts: Approximately 68.5 x 156 x 152 inches; 77 x 48 x 24 inches. Photo: Ruben Diaz.

Moon and laub’s effort to integrate their personal relationship into a public call for revolution sometimes makes them feel like anglers, or comic actors. “You don’t believe that Moon and laub believe what they are saying, but you can’t help but wonder if they’re on to something,” wrote David Pagel in an L.A. Times review.

Just before Phoenix Rising, Part 3 closed in December, the two artists did a performance in the intimate basement theater at Machine Project in Echo Park. Part of Machine’s Explorations in Teledildonics series, it combined monologues with short lectures about God, trust, and sex. Moon and laub appeared stiff during the performance. (“Jennifer and I, we have sex together,” laub said at one point.) It seemed they hadn’t yet figured out how to instrumentalize their personal intimacy sincerely, in order to inspire an audience. You wanted them to either be more charismatically Billy Graham-like (so their desire for a more radical world would grab you in the gut), or more messily personal (even though wanting them to further mine their personal dynamic felt salacious).

Not long after they met, in August, Moon had laub on her monthly podcast, Adventures Within. In that context, their connection felt rawer. They’re uncertainty kept rearing. On the podcast, they discussed the concern their friends had when they got together and Moon started posting about their relationship on Facebook and Instagram. The advertising of their fast intimacy made people uncomfortable, afraid one or the other would get hurt. “I’m fine to be hurt,” said Moon.

“Do you think it’s love?” laub asked at one point, about their relationship.

“I think it’s love. But I’m probably pretty quick to say things are love,” replied Moon.

“I think something that’s happening in this relationship is the breaking down of what is real….of the emotions that come with love, and of faith, I’d say.”

“The breaking down of it to get to what?”

“To get to what?”

“To get to a purity. A realness of it?” asked Moon. “What are we trying to do? What are we doing?”

“I don’t know,” said laub.

They agree they are figuring something out together, in the open, and because their relationship is also the subject of their collective public art practice, their project/ relationship feels daring and unhinged. There’s no clear strategy discernible behind the progression of their relationship, just an eagerness to understand that’s compelling partly because it’s still so unformed.

This essay was originally published in Carla issue 4.

JLS (Jennifer laub Smasher) (detail) (2015). K’NEX, Habitrail tubes, popsicle sticks, foam sheets, ceramic 3D print figurines, electrical wire, electrical tape, dental floss, hemp, duck tape, wood, inkjet prints, cardboard, construction paper, foamcore, fabric, folding table. 2 parts: Approx. 68.5 x 156 x 152 inches; 77 x 48 x 24 inches. Photo: Ruben Diaz.

JLS (Jennifer laub Smasher) (detail) (2015). K’NEX, Habitrail tubes, popsicle sticks, foam sheets, ceramic 3D print figurines, electrical wire, electrical tape, dental floss, hemp, duck tape, wood, inkjet prints, cardboard, construction paper, foamcore, fabric, folding table. 2 parts: Approximately 68.5 x 156 x 152 inches; 77 x 48 x 24 inches. Photo: Ruben Diaz.

  1. aub recounts saying this in an August 2015 interview with Emi Kuiyama on Notes on Looking. http://notesonlooking.com/2015/12/phoenix-rising-part-3-laub-me-and-the-revolution-the-theory-of-everything-a-conversation-with-emi-kuriyama-jennifer-moon-and-laub/
  2. Michael Hardt discussed about love as a political concept in his 2007 lecture at the European Graduate School, and in his co-authored book Multitude (2004). Moon explored his ideas in her debut Adventures Within podcast in July 2012.

Catherine Wagley writes about art and visual culture in Los Angeles.

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