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Preface by Lisa Phillips

Essays by Richard Flood, Laura Hoptman, and Massimiliano Gioni

MERRELL
LONDON * NEW YORK
 eon
wan BNP PARIBAS

When you mention the BNP Paribas name to anyone familiar with global banking and finance,
you will likely hear the tag line we use with our name: the bank for a changing world.

That’s more than a slogan for the 150,000 people who work at BNP Paribas. It’s the
approach we take in everything we do. We’ve become one of the most respected names
in our industry by combining the expertise and resources gained over more than a century
of banking success with a spirit of continuous innovation and attention to serving the ever-
changing, ever-more-complex challenges facing each individual client.

Through the BNP Paribas Foundation, we have long supported organizations that share our
contemporary spirit, especially those making important contributions to the arts. Our support
for architecture, dance, theater, sculpture and painting has been extensive, and global. We’re
extremely pleased to provide our support to the New Museum during its grand reopening.

Those of us in New York enjoy a vibrant arts culture, and the New Museum has played a
pioneering role in it. The New Museum has looked into the future of contemporary art, and
found exciting ways to help it come alive for the public.

Since its founding in 1977, the New Museum has introduced us to the work of important
emerging contemporary artists. We’ve seen art education and art appreciation programs
brought to our high schools. We’ve seen anthologies created that open the doors of insight
for people everywhere. We’re proud and honored to be part of that effort, and we look forward
to seeing that role extend not just across the United States but around the world.

That spirit of looking ahead and recognizing the future is very much in line with the BNP
Paribas approach to business.

We’re committed and responsive individuals, with the creativity and ambition that lead to
deep, close relationships with others. Those characteristics are driving us in our expansion
across North America. You can count on us to apply that same approach to our support
for the New Museum—and by doing so, to add to our worldwide efforts to foster not just a
vibrant environment for contemporary art but other activities important to a better world and
higher quality of life we all seek.

On behalf of BNP Paribas’ global team, let me express our pleasure to be associated with
the New Museum. We’re excited to see what we can do by working together.

Sincerely,

Everett Schenk
CEO, BNP Paribas North America
Preface
Lisa Phillips
Toby Devan Lewis Director, New Museum of Contemporary Art

This book, Collage: The Unmonumental Picture, accompanies the second chapter of the
New Museum's inaugural exhibition, Unmonumental, a dynamic exhibition which changes
over time in an additive installation that layers sculpture, collage, sound, and Internet
works. Collage: The Unmonumental Picture expands upon the presentation of sculpture
that uses common materials and amplifies the themes of fragmentation, hybridization, and
appropriation. The works in Collage: The Unmonumental Picture offer a view of where we
find ourselves as a culture—whether it is through the use of detritus from the throwaway
landscape and the planned obsolescence of high consumerism or through the use of
images from the 24/7 information superhighway. There is a remarkable consistency to the
work on view and a strong political dimension, as the artists confront the images and debris
of our real world; scavenging and tearing at the remains and residue, then recomposing the
fragments to formulate a compelling vision.

Collage involves the simplest of acts, the pasting of torn or cut paper. It is humble and
democratic in that anyone can do it. Perhaps it is this simplicity and accessibility and
strong graphic presence that lent collage a sense of revolutionary possibility since it was
first adopted by the avant-garde almost a century ago. Given the wide use of images from
printed materials in collage—magazines, advertisements, books, newspapers—it is a most
appropriate medium in a world where words and images bombard us in rapid succession
and conspicuous consumption is tied to personal happiness as well as patriotic duty. As
Martha Rosler writes, collage is a “symptom, a strategy, and a form of resistance.”

| would like to thank the New Museum’s curatorial team—Richard Flood, Chief Curator;
Laura Hoptman, Senior Curator; and Massimiliano Gioni, Director of Special Exhibitions—
for bringing together a group of artists who explore the changing role of collage as it enters
the twenty-first century and for contributing their fresh insights on contemporary collage
to this book.

We are very grateful for BNP Paribas’ lead support of our important, inaugural exhibi-
tion, Unmonumental. We also extend our thanks to two key foundations: The Andy Warhol
Foundation for the Visual Arts and The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation.

Additional support for the exhibition is provided by the Toby Devan Lewis Emerging Artists
Exhibitions Fund, and the catalog is made possible with support from the J. McSweeney and
G. Mills Publications Fund.

Finally we extend our deep appreciation to the artists who contributed words and images to
the catalog and to the lenders for their support and generosity in lending the artworks on view
in the exhibition.
 Digitized by the Internet Archive
In 2023 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation

https://archive.org/details/collageunmonumenOOOOtloo
 ESSAYS

8 ‘Tear Me Apart, One Letter at a Time

Richard Flood

9 Collage Now: The Seamier Side

Laura Hoptman

11 It’s Not the Glue that Makes the Collage

Massimiliano Gioni

ARTISTS’ TEXTS PLATES

24 © Mark Bradford
34 2 Jonathan Hernandez
a x Lhomas Hirschhorn
54 a Christian Holstad
64 ss Kim Jones
74 es Wangechi Mutu
8s 7s Henrik Olesen
96 ss Martha Rosler
106 xs Nancy Spero
116 1s John Stezaker
128 10 Kelley Walker

130 Exhibition Checklist

136 Biographies
141 Acknowledgments
143 Photo Credits
Richard Flood Tear Me Apart, One Letter at a Time

Collage has been kicking around for centuries. It has most often fallen into the cat-
egory of anecdotal, perhaps as a sentimental billet-doux or maidenly remembrance.
In the early twentieth century, collage found a new life as something torn and cut
from newspapers, magazines, cigarette packages, theater programs, posters, and
musical scores. The results were no less anecdotal, but the subject matter (whether
abstract or figurative) became elevated as it served to liberate compositional formats
(Pablo Picasso) and political realities (John Heartfield). Collage gradually became
identified with such artistic practices as cubism, Dada, and surrealism. Its strong
graphic presence bled into the world of design, where its influence grew and flowed
into architecture, literature, and music. The creation of collage is one of this
and the last century’s great, popular, international pastimes. Anyone can make
it and most do.

As a mass phenomenon, collage coincided with the rise of radio and, later, television.
The world has been gradually transformed into a series of non-linear opportunities
dominated by sound, motion, and space. Traveling through this expanded landscape
of moving images, audio alternatives, and the insistently transformative Internet
can be a delirious safari: eBay fire sales, fast-breaking news, YouTube provocations,
celebrity sex tapes, beheadings, Wikipedia entries, and Al Jazeera headlines. On the
highways of the world, radio stations manically switch between rock anthems, bully
pulpits, psychotic phone-ins, and traffic and weather reports. iPods are embedded
with collages that keep the public on its treadmills and Exercycles, riding on buses
and jogging out of Shady Rest into the sunset. The most basic playground for con-
temporary collage is the human body where tattoos of crucifixes vie for space with
Maori totems, and Our Lady of Guadalupe rises from roiling oceans brimming with
raging dragons and busty mermaids. In literature, William Burroughs, the master
of the cut-up, has been followed by wild boys from Iran, Chile, and Japan who mold
hip-hop and rap into word tornados that spin across the globe.

The future of collage feels secure. Newspapers and Web sites are filled with juxtaposi-
tions and extreme abutments that simmer with tension. Attempts to interlink patches
of boldface type result in a sort of cultural Tourette syndrome. Nothing really lines
up; there are no helpful parallels to be discovered. Everything is whacked together in
fragments that temporarily cohere but cannot hold fast. The density of the informa-
tion becomes puzzlingly abstract while understanding takes a backseat to the esthet-
ics of arrangement. Headlines appear pasted together like ransom notes and truth
is taken hostage. Images are edited, manipulated, scrambled, and reassembled to
serve a multiplicity of motives. In a plague of plagiarism and autobiographical inven-
tion, the value of authorship grows weak as truth is woven into a collage of fiction
 and preassigned fact. The creative highs that come from a construction of fractures
create a public of junkies who simply becomes another element in the field. We are
all changing parts in the respirant collage.

Laura Hoptman Collage Now: The Seamier Side

As utopian as it seems to have an endless field of formal, theoretical, and subjective

possibilities out of which to create meaning, coherence (although not necessarily
order) and—emphatically—relevance are crucial criteria in the creation of contem-
porary visual culture. We don’t need literally everything in the world to be our art or
an element of our art or even a subject of our art. Life as an artwork has proved to be
a frightening prospect; life in our artwork seems a necessity at this moment.

Although it is not an intrinsic characteristic, collage has traditionally been the

conduit through which elements of real life—a bit of wallpaper, a stuffed goat—
have entered into the language of contemporary art. This gentle invasion of the
lived world into a more rarified one emblematized the most important conundrum
of post-realistic art; namely, how to bridge the unavoidable gap between what we
call art and what we call life. The art/life split can arguably be called a by-product
of modernism, a perfect example of a kind of division of cultural labor called forth
by critics and aficionados before the Second World War who were eager to absolve
art from its complicity in the pressing issues of humanity in ethical turmoil. After
that war, when collage and its three-dimensional cousin assemblage appeared in
Europe and in America (without the surrealistic slant of their pre-war incarnations),
their marriage of objects found and made didn’t solve the conundrum. Instead
it embodied the existential frustration of coming extremely close but never, ever
bridging the divide. Marcel Duchamp famously characterized this space forever
fated to exist as a seam between components as the infra-slim (infra-mince).
Called into being by the juxtaposition of two elements, almost but not completely
conjoined, the nature of the infra-slim, indeed its very existence, was predicated on
the nature of the two elements that defined its parameters. As Duchamp explained:

When
the tobacco smoke
also smells
of the mouth
that exhales it
the two odors
are married by
the INFRA-slim'
Duchamp’s notion that there was meaning in the space between elements was
recognized by Robert Rauschenberg who famously staked out the gap between
art and life as his preferred area of concentration in his series of massive
assemblages created during the decade of the fifties that he called Combines.
Learning by example from Picasso's Still Life With Chair Caning (1912), which
neatly solved the problem of the virtual by incorporating the actual, and from
the work of his friend Jasper Johns in which “two flinty things” were “made to
work against one another so hard” that a spark ensued,’ Rauschenberg formed
a painting/sculpture hybrid out of the chaos of war, planned obsolescence,
American exceptionalism, supermarkets, films, television, and tabloid news.
Collaged compositions that were neither art nor life but both, the Combines were
not reflections of their historic moment in all its complexity, but rather results
of it. As Rauschenberg scholar Brandon Joseph has pointed out, these works
manage to approach Walter Benjamin's desideratum of Erfahrung, the ability
to experience a moment historically, as opposed to Erlebnis, the state of merely
living through a moment in time.’ They did this, not through their incorporation
of found objects within what is clearly a painterly matrix, but rather through the
chemical repulsion/attraction (what Leo Steinberg has called the “alienating
togetherness’) of one element to another. Despite Rauschenberg’s compositional
brilliance, one reads a Combine in pieces, with the eye running across its surface
like it is scanning faces in a crowd or items on a shelf in a supermarket.’

Although collage is the strategy in which coherence is pressed upon objects

through composition, choice, and the creation of parameters, its peculiarity is
that in the best examples, individual elements do not, in the words of the photo-
collage maker John Stezaker “disappear into their use,” but rather, retain their
identity even as they contribute to a larger narrative. A recurrent strategy of
artists who use collage is to incorporate photo reproductions of objects, people,
and activities that are familiar from the popular cultural discourse, and then
through juxtaposition of one element to another, make us rethink the significance
of those familiar images altogether. Put to good use by surrealist collage makers
who lived for creating a frisson of otherworldiness, contemporary artists exploit
this kind of estrangement for exactly the opposite reason: to encourage skepticism
towards the images themselves and seek the truth beyond them. As Martha
Rosler explains, contemporary collage suspends the perceiver between “the
possible and the impossible or unlikely” in that infinitely slim space between the
real and the simulated. If surrealist collage aspired to emulate a product of our
subconscious, contemporary collage aspires to be a product of, and a participant
in, the real-time discourse that our consciousness perceives as constituting our
real-world circumstances.

10
 By its very nature—by its obvious seams—a collage can never be a fact. It is always,
in the words of Thomas Hirschhorn, “an interpretation,” an expression of opin-
ion. This makes it uniquely suited to the job of bringing the world and its cultural
efflorescence into close proximity, with no burden to mimic reality or impart truths.
Rauschenberg’s Combines can be seen as artifacts of postwar America; the collages
created at the beginning of the twenty-first century can be considered appropriate
responses to contemporary fractures caused by vast political, social, and cultural
unrest, technological change on an unprecedented level, and vicious, multi-national
war. Two-dimensional expressions of the carnage of a suicide bomb attack, a roar
of protest from an enraged crowd, the collision of signs in an urban landscape, the
apocalyptic moment when art is finally subsumed by popular culture, contempo-
rary collage work seeks to create a space between the rarefied museum and the
chaos outside. Inflected by both, contemporary collage is, as Rosler has written, “a
symptom, a strategy, a form of resistance” to the world it confronts, but by its nature
is never subsumed by.

Notes
1. Marcel Duchamp, View 5, no. 1 (March 1945). Originally published in French.
2. Leo Steinberg, “Jasper Johns: The First Seven Years of His Art,” Other Critera: Confrontations with 20th
Century Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 19.
3. Brandon W. Joseph, Random Order: Robert Rauschenberg and the Neo-Avant Garde (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 2003), 128.
4. Leo Steinberg, Encounters with Rauschenberg (Houston: deMenil Foundation, 2000), 67.
5. Brian O’Dougherty as quoted in Joseph, Random Order, 122, 128.

Massimiliano Gioni It’s Not the Glue that Makes the Collage

Collage is a dirty medium, infected as it is by waste. It appropriates residues and

leftovers, trafficking with what is deemed to be valueless. Its origins are more than
modest— they are almost sordid and impure, for collage feeds off the pollution of
visual culture. Collage casts its roots into a lower, inferior realm, as it scavenges
through dark matters and seedy places.

The handbills, catalogs, posters that sing out loud and clear, that’ the morning poetry,
and for prose there are the newspaper... tabloids lurid with police reports
Guillaume Apollinaire

The first cubist collages described squalid still lives that immediately evoked the set-
tings of bars at closing time or the corners of badly lit artists’ studios, where objects
were abandoned to rot away in the darkness. Old chairs, broken bottles, cigarette
packs, tablecloths, and torn newspapers: the iconography of early collages was pro-
foundly connected to the mythology of the café as a space of transgression and to the
domestic perimeter of the studio where artists lived according to a careless, bohe-
mian lifestyle. Since its very first appearance, then, collage has chronicled the birth
of a new culture of both social and ethical mobility, an age of restlessness propelled
by a new sense of immediacy and synchronicity. With its generous embrace of chaos
and its participation in the polyphonic explosion of city life at the beginning of the
century, collage has represented a joyful urge to both lay waste and recuperate the
resulting debris; it is an art that has incarnated a tension between dissipation and
conservation. In this dialectical opposition, collage anticipated a much more dra-
matic contrast that agitated Europe, as it got torn between the rush to destroy and
the need to recompose the fragments left behind by world conflicts. From its very
beginning, in fact, collage appeared as an art bound to flourish in times of war.
In Picasso’s collages, the appropriated newspapers and the torn-out pages often
made direct reference to the conflicts in the Balkans and to the socialist uprisings
in France. Meanwhile in Milan, the futurists turned collage into a new weapon
of mass agitation, the visual arts equivalent of a machine gun firing cruel slogans
of war. A few years later in Berlin and Moscow, collages and photomontages
conquered a strategic role in counter-information campaigns and propaganda
battlefields— collage turned into a form of incendiary art-journalism. As the early
twentieth century discovered the power of images and photography, artists felt the
urge to reconfigure this amorphous mass of anomic images by creating connections,
links, possible narratives, sudden clashes, and interpretations. It was an attempt to
make sense of the world, to structure it, while still preserving its absurdly cacoph-
onic, at times sublime, multiplicity.

Since its very origin, collage has appeared as an art of crisis that has entertained a
deep relationship with traumas and violations. There is something basic in collage,
something almost guttural and visceral that immediately connects it with rupture
and intervention. It’s this sense of urgency that ricochets all through the twentieth
century, with collage and its symbolic collisions resurfacing almost systematically at
every new resurgence of collective panic and social change. That’s why collage has
gathered a new momentum in this first decade of the century. Once again we live
in a time of war, and once again we are experiencing an explosion of images— more
invasive and volatile than ever— that have completely colonized and shaped our
social space. Arching back to a century-old tradition but with their feet solidly
planted in the first years of the new millennium, some artists have felt the need to
recuperate collage not only as an art form but also as an act of ethical responsibility.
Thomas Hirschhorn and Martha Rosler offer two of the most remarkable examples
of the current practice of collage. While belonging to completely different genera-
tions, both artists are familiar with activist practice and agitprop communication.
Both have addressed directly the current war in the Middle East in their works,
and— quite significantly
— both have incorporated, and fought against, the pictures

12
of fashion and glamour that represent the gravitational center of our contemporary
visual culture.

As it feeds off magazines, television, and the Internet, in fact, contemporary collage
reveals a complicated relationship with the realm of desire and, often, with desires
of a darker sort. In the works of Hirschhorn and Rosler, but also in the obsessive
and minute collages of Kim Jones, in the hieroglyphics of Nancy Spero (both, Jones
and Spero, are great chroniclers of wars), or in the monstrously grotesque creations
of Wangechi Mutu, bodies are often reduced to pieces. Details such as lips, teeth,
hands, and nails are exaggerated and blown up out of proportion, while heads, arms,
and legs are amputated, broken apart, or devoured by neurotic scribbles, and skin
is often exposed. The works of these and of many other contemporary artists betray
an almost sadomasochist desire to take bodies apart and explode them. It is a return
to the tradition of collage as envisioned by the surrealists, but it is as though this art
of oneiric montage and free associations has suddenly discovered a secret connection
to the spectacle of reality as it unravels in our contemporary mass media.

When real bodies explode in the streets of Baghdad and acts of submission and
torture that we thought were only possible in the fantasy of the Marquis de Sade
are carried out in military prisons and transmitted by TV around the world, a new,
strange space of representation seems to emerge where the distinction between
surrealism and hyper-reality is completely blurred. Just as there were almost one
hundred years ago, there are artists who try to contrast these visions by using collage
to make sense of the insanity, while there are others who find in collage a space
to cultivate a sense of obscurity and opacity, an escape from the excess of clarity
promoted by mass media.

If Hirschhorn and Rosler are among the best examples of the first attitude, the
isolated practice of John Stezaker can serve as a primary example of the latter.
Stezaker uses found photos to create images of ambiguity. His portraits condense
fragments of publicity photographs, family albums, and torn pictures: the resulting
images reveal nothing of the psychology of the people portrayed; often in fact
they completely erase any recognizable physiognomic feature, transforming the
characters into mysterious sphinxes. While they seem to adopt the vocabulary of
celebrity, Stezaker’s collages actually deny its very foundation, because they conceal
instead of reveal, they make things invisible rather than accessible.

This dialectical tension between exposure and invisibility is charged with new
possible readings in the work of many younger artists. Collage is often a clandestine
gesture, carried out in the dark, for it violates private property and copyright. So it
comes as no surprise that in an age of file sharing and digital replicas, collage has
gained a new centrality in contemporary art. Among many of today’s artists, collage
participates in a larger logic of appropriation that digital culture has once again made
urgent. Cutting and pasting, cloning and scanning: both the technology and the
terminology of collage have been incredibly expanded by the digital revolution, which
in turn seems to operate on the very same bases of juxtaposition and proximity that
collage had familiarized us with. The work of Kelley Walker, for example, complicates
the notion of collage by recycling existing images, contemporary ads, and cultural
icons of the sixties along with his own creations.

Reclaiming one’s own position within the collective space seems to be one of the
many exciting possibilities that collage has opened up for contemporary artists.
By connecting to the tradition of the decollagists, artists as diverse as Jonathan
Hernandez and Mark Bradford explore the public dimension of collage and its
urban roots. Hernandez uses posters that are overlapped with historical motives
stolen from the iconography of Mexican murals. In his collages, Bradford has
incorporated both posters and materials that explicitly refer to African-American
culture. His large compositions resemble intricate maps and political banners in
which the messages and slogans might appear unclear, but the energy is raw, almost
electric, still preserving intact the fury one would associate with the first ripped
collages of Jacques de la Villeglé and Raymond Hains.

It is precisely through these vandalic gestures that collage has defined its identity in
the last century and in the beginning of this new one. Collage is the visual language
of the underdog —a minor art form that allows sudden acts of insubordination.
Some artists have adopted collage as a Trojan horse, a tactic with which to insert
unexpected meanings and messages into existing images, contexts, and histories.
It’s once again some kind of violation, an embezzlement of sort.

Henrik Olesen, for example, has collapsed all these ideas into his work Anthologie
de l'Amour Sublime (2003) in which Max Ernst’s collages are suddenly inhabited by
contemporary images that refer to queer sexuality, strange rituals of subjugation,
and military violence. Olesen’s underworld has something profoundly obscure about
it, an unsettling ambiguity in which one is tempted to find secret and disturbing
affinities between distant worlds and sexualities.

The representation of sex is almost a genre unto itselfinthe history of collage.

Its origins are to be found in the morbidity of surrealist imagery, which, in turn,
was infused with new energy and relevance by the countercultural and feminist
movements of the sixties and seventies. Many younger artists are connecting to this
eccentric legacy: Christian Holstad’s work, for example, with its combination of
decorative patterns and graphic love scenes, re-appropriates the excessive palette

14
of psychedelia and recharges it with a new vigor borrowed from today’s gay club
culture. The embraces of Holstad’s couples on bathroom floors replicate the intricate
dance of pictures that have animated the history of collage all through these years.
After all, collages are nothing but knots of bodies and entanglements of images in
the fissures of which lay our deepest fears and most secret desires.

Bibliography
Guillaume Apollinaire, “Zone,” in Alcools, 1913.
Thomas Crow, “Modernism and Mass Culture,” in Modernism and Modernity, edited by Serge Guilbaut, Benjamin
H.D. Buchloh, and David Solkin, Halifax: The Press of Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1983.
Jeffrey Deitch, “The Culture of Collage,” in Monument to Now, Athens: Deste Foundation, 2004.
Max Ernst, Beyond Painting:
And Other Writings by the Artist and his Friends, New York: Wittenborn Schultz Inc., 1948.
Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, and Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, eds., Art Since 1900: Modernism,
Antimodernism and Postmodernism, New York: Thames & Hudson, 2004.
Hal Foster, Prosthetic Gods, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2004.
Patricia Leighten, Re-Ordering the Universe: Picasso and Anarchism, 1897-1914, Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1989.
 Ridin’ Dirty, 2006 (installation view)
Cut and pasted papers on paper; seventy-eight panels
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Los Moscos, 2004 (detail)
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Bradford Work in progress, 2007 (detail)

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 Work in progress, 2007 (detail)
Bradford Photographed in situ in Mark Bradford’s studio, Los Angeles
Work in progress, 2007 (detail)
Photographed in situ in Mark Bradford’s studio, Los Angeles
Mark Bradford with Eungie Joo

EJ: Your work seems intrigued by the history of Los Angeles, a history pay attention to inner-city style, if only as a new site for colonization.
of Los Angeles. When we last spoke, you were teaching me a little But inner-city style has always been here, the skeleton in the closet
about the ongoing presence of a migrant trade class and the implica- now worth some money, but still hardly official or respected. | use
tions of its historical presence on the makeup of the city. I know that the aesthetic of southeast Los Angeles to highlight that region and
in some ways this is your own personal history as a trades person, but all it carries, not in a romantic sense but to explicate its tenacity and
also in your art this history seems always to ghost your work. Can you complexity—a hybridity from within, a kind of boundedness.
tell me a little about this history and its currency with regard to your
current project? EJ: Discussions of your work have often situated it in the abstract
tradition of Agnes Martin, Robert Ryman, or Brice Marden. Somehow
MB: As an artist, |became interested in the aesthetic of the people these comparisons seem flawed. Franklin Sirmans has compared you to
who stayed within the black community, within the city. Until about Felix Gonzales-Torres and Janine Antoni for “extending the discourse
1950, Central Avenue and the southeast part of the city were the only of minimalism by injecting it with content.” |wonder whom you would
places blacks, and for that matter, Mexicans could live. The housing identify as your predecessors and influences. In what “tradition?”
covenants started lifting and the middle class fled to the northern and
western parts of the city. The urban population became imbalanced. MB: I too am curious as to why the association with all of these ab-
With the absence of the professional class, the dope man and the stract painters. For me, there is an abstraction that happens in the city
“gangsta” became the norm, as did out and out violence on any male that interests me, a dislocation of reality when you have the Mexican
who was “sissy” or other. taqueria next to the black wig shop across the street from the Korean
Really I think it was my anger that first got me motivated. By nail shop. I translate this suspension and interruption into my own
anger, I am referring to dissatisfaction with representation. Shifting palette. There’s an ongoing erasure and rewriting of ownership that
between being an insider and outsider, | could not help but observe flows in the “hood,” a constant collision of signs. I get a lot of my
our romantic relationship to the all-black city that was dependent inspiration/information from the “supposedly” mad bitches—black
upon a blanket of silence. Most of our critiques are geared toward feminist writers. I just finished the history of abstract painting by
white America—meanwhile, nobody wants to talk about the shit in our Francis Colpitt, and I do greatly appreciate the work of Felix Gonzalez-
house, and this silence is really a co-conspirator in a lot of this bullshit Torres, Glenn Ligon, and the concepts behind arte povera are cool.
we've got going. I have repeatedly said that | am concerned with a
black-on-black dialogue—an in-house critique. Before we can blow up EJ: Your references to hair products and design have been discussed
the “white” house we've got to put a few sticks of dynamite under the as corporeal, stand-ins for skin and the body in a very visceral and
"black” house. See, there I go again with the revolution! literal sense. Do you agree? For me, the burnt end papers and gel-like
What I find interesting is the shift in the aesthetic model. | colors are melancholic, but perhaps more ambiguous. They connote
believe that the departure of the middle class holds a lot of historical a kind of endless desire and futility, but their translucency offers a
importance because they became entrenched in a new integrated transcendence of the surface, conveying hope, peace. Tell me about
model that was more palatable to the mainstream white society, and how your work relates to minimalism.
inner-city style went virtually unnoticed until the entertainment indus-
try tapped the commercial potential of “gangsta rap.” Throughout the MB: I look at my work as a collection of tensions/interruptions and re-
1960s, 70s, and 80s, the integrated style got attention and devel- negotiated lines and color fields. The color choices I use are limited to
oped as a new official form of blackness. Other important sites were what is available at Office Depot in the color copier. I then choose an
developing concurrently, but they just were not as interesting to the art color that will mimic the colored paper and paint the surface of the
majority of black or white folks. Baby, gangsta rap made everybody canvas first with that paint. The first relationship to the surface is with

24
paint, in the traditional sense. As I begin the process of repetition community that suppresses those urges to critically address codes of
and layering, the colored paper becomes the stand in for the “real” male normativity. It is dangerous to fuck with the brothers. Look to
color and what is left is the memory of the real color, but articulated any rap video or gangsta narrative movie, and the ways in which it
through the colored copy paper. And the burnt edges of the perma- prescribes black male ritual—all that thuggin’ across the screen.
nent wave papers become line. The titles I use are usually aggressive or at least point toa
Limitation, structures such as gender roles, culture, and stereo- particular “hard” vernacular. "Dreadlock can't tell me shit,” is one par-
types present a set of immovable historical symbols. Having to negoti- ticular example that comes to mind. | hear a lot about being hard, so
ate being black and 6'8"—I was born into some specific stereotypes, I operate within that paradigm of “hard” but inject it with a counter
and | worked it! Still do, so the strategies for individuality that I have position. I use the model to critique a narrative that normalizes and
adopted acknowledge the rules. Hence the use of a limited palette in anticipates an attitude, behavior, and fate for the urban male. I am
my choice of materials. I work within a series of rules that put a pres- other; I am street; | am a baller—get used to it! In moments of crisis
sure on my psyche to find ways around the model and engage my de- something can happen. But you have to first throw a few stones.
sire. When I am speaking of minimalism, I am speaking about a series
of limitations and restrictions that I impose to create a certain artistic {Mark Bradford with Eungie Joo” was originally published in an exhibition brochure for
Project 16: Mark Bradford by Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont, California, in 2002.]
tension much like the tension | feel going into my own opening and
the receptionist or someone in the elevator either asking whether I am
there to set the catering or if I play basketball. Damn! Minimalism in
the traditional sense is about the absence of something,a stripping
away to the essence. | see a minimal palette as a preexisting palette
“to inject with content.”

EJ: Your approach to content reminds me of bell hooks’ astute discus-

sion of white male supremacist culture in Black Looks: Race and
Representation. hooks writes “Racial integration has had a profound
impact on black gender roles. It has helped promote a climate
wherein most black women and men accept sexist notions of gender
roles.” She interrogates the integrationist goals of the Civil Rights
Movement as promoting a doctrine of black imitation of white values.
She continues, “In every black community in the United States there
are adult black men married, unmarried, gay, straight, who do not
assert patriarchal domination and yet live fulfilled lives, where they
are not sitting around worried about castration.” Again, | come back
to the concept of tradition. If we accept that the notion of a universal
black tradition (one that ignores class, ethnicity, region) is flawed,
there is room to consider your work as both a challenge to and operat-
ing within “tradition.”

MB: Many of the codes that I remix have a lot of historical authority,
where "keep it real” sounds like a threat. A policing from within the
 Rongwrong VI, 2006

Jonathan Hernandez
Newspaper collage on cardboard
57 1/4 x 58 5/8 in; 145.5 x 149 cm 26
Rongwrong VII, 2006
Newspaper collage on cardboard
49 3/8 x 61x 1 1/2 in; 125.5 x 155 x 4cm
 Rongwrong X, 2006
Newspaper collage on cardboard
Hernandez 51 1/8 x 47 1/4 in; 130 x 120 cm 28
 =
“PUaag

Rongwrong, 2004-2005
Newspaper collage on cardboard
58 5/8 x 39 in; 149 x 99 cm
 * En
Tarn
'
anal het
Praenen

le ae
st
carve aN

Rongwrong II, 2005

Newspaper collage on cardboard
Hernandez 39 3/8 x 31 1/2 in; 100 x 80 cm 30
Rongwrong III, 2005
Newspaper collage on cardboard
39 3/8 x 31 1/2 in; 100 x 80 cm
 AMBITION
Aepire osha high a yt ot dor

Mural, 2006
David Alfaro Siqueiros mural sketch, thirteen panels
Hernandez 157 1/2 x 275 1/2 in; 400 x 700 cm 32
Jonathan Hernandez

New Museum: What is collage?

JH: What I do every now and then...it is some sort of occupational

therapy.

NM: Where do you find your images?

JH: The images (photographs) proceed exclusively from the press

(national and international). I read the newspapers almost every day
while having breakfast.

NM: Are you recycling, appropriating, or stealing?

JH: There is a crossroads in between the appropriation, recycling,

and stealing of images with a public character. Curiously, these
three issues are implicit in the nature of press photography.

NM: Do you feel connected to the tradition of collage?

JH: I am not specially interested in the notion of tradition, and

even less in being personally linked to a tradition. There will
always be references throughout history. In the series “Rongwrong,”
these references to the history of collage are clear and direct.

NM: Is collage a political medium? Is it an activist’s medium?

JH: It is just another medium.

NM: Who owns images?

JH: Everyone.

NM: What happens between two images?

JH: Ping-Pong.

[May 2007]

34
 - ae — - a

ye eee ay ee
—

7 =
 Step Two Copyright (from the “Red” Series), 2001
ab H ° h Work on paper; paper, plastic foil, adhesive tape, prints, marker, and ballpoint
homas irsch orn. x161/2 in; 32x42 cm
12 5/8 36
No Life is Cheap (from the “1 Man = 1 Man” Series), 2001
Work on paper; paper, plastic foil, adhesive tape, prints, marker, and ballpoint
12 1/4 x 17 in; 31 x 43.4 cm
 Not Funny, 2003
Work on paper; paper, plastic foil, adhesive tape, prints, marker, and ballpoint
Hirschhorn 19 1/2 x 23 3/8 in; 49.5 x 59.5 cm 38
 FINE
NOt FINE!
co

Not Fine, 2003

Work on paper; paper, plastic foil, adhesive tape, prints, marker, and ballpoint
19 1/4 x 23 5/8 in; 49 x 60 cm
 Authentic (from the “Equality” Series), 2002
Work on paper; paper, plastic foil, adhesive tape, prints, marker, and ballpoint
Hirschhorn 12 5/8 x 16 1/2 in; 32 x 42 cm 40
Respect Now! (from the “Equality” Series), 2002
Work on paper; paper, plastic foil, adhesive tape, prints, marker, and ballpoint
12 3/8 x 17 3/8 in; 31.5 x 44 cm
 WY iio eee
Pew, ~ \
\ wren Wen "
By.
(0n 0-4 a
Bit new millen '

fie} 4

Vali De.

Vision of a New Millennium (from the “Blue Warning” Series), 2002

Work on paper; paper, plastic foil, adhesive tape, prints, marker, and ballpoint
Hirschhorn 14 1/8 x 18 1/8 in; 36 x 46 cm
42
Every Wound is my Wound II (from the “Every Wound is my Wound” Series), 2006
Work on paper; paper, plastic foil, adhesive tape, prints, marker, and ballpoint
33 x 35 in; 84 x 89 cm
Thomas Hirschhorn: About My Works on Paper

The series of works on paper that I have been doing for several years confront the violence of the world and my own violence. I am part of
are collages. the world and all the violence of the world is my own violence, all the
A collage is an interpretation. It’s a true, real, entire interpreta- wounds of the world are my own wounds. All the hate is my own hate.
tion, an interpretation that wants to create something new. Doing I love Dada and the collages of the Dadaists, I love the beautiful col-
collages means creating a new world with elements of this existing lages of Johannes Baader and his Das grosse Plasto-Dio-Dada-Drama,
world. Doing collages is unprofessional and it's easy. Everyone has it is an image that | always carry with me. I love John Heartfield
once in his life made a collage and everybody is included in a col- and his work, he said “use photography as a weapon!" I
love to do
lage. Collages possess the power to implicate the other immediately. collages, and I love to make this kind of work.
I like the capacity of non-exclusion of collages and I like the fact that
they are always suspicious and not taken seriously. Collages still resist [Thomas Hirschhorn, October 2006]

consumption, even if—like everything—they have to fight against

glamorousness and fashionability. I want to put together what cannot
be put together, I think that’s the aim of a collage and it's my mission
as an artist. The images that I put together are from printed matter
that had another existence before: photos or advertisements—always
printed—that I have taken from fashion and political magazines and
images I have printed out from the Internet, sometimes enlarged
with photocopy. The blue and red scribbling (markers and ballpoint
pen) is the flood of tears, of sadness, the flood of the too much. It's
the overflow, it is not blood, it’s only blue and red color. I want to do
a two-dimensional work that can be mentally deployed into a third
dimension. I want to break the scale and I want to break the angles
and the perspective. | want to put the whole world into my collages.
I want to put everything in, the whole universum. I want to express
the complexity and contradiction of the world into a single collage. |
want to express the world that I am living in, not the whole world as
the entire world but as a fragmented world. My collages are a com-
mitment to the universality of the world. I am against particularism,
against information, against communication, against facts and against
opinion. The question is not who is the victim, who is guilty, nor what
is it about. It's about the entire History and not just a single fact. With
my work, | want to reach, to touch History beyond the historical fact.
The question is always: What is my position? The question is about
myself, today. I want to confront the chaos, the uncomprehensibility,
and the unclarity of the world, not by bringing peace or quietness nor
by working in a chaotic way, but by working in the chaos and in the
unclarity of the world. I want to do something charged that reaches
beauty in its density. I want to work in emergency mode, I want to
do too much. The images that I use in a collage are an attempt to

44
‘i
 Solo Guy in Blue Bathroom (Series #1), 2002
Color xerox on archival paper
Chr istian Holstad 18 1/2 x 11 in; 47 x 27.9cm 46
Favors, or Disco Ball and Balloon, 2002
Color xerox on archival paper
24 x 19 in; 61 x 48.3 cm
 Happiness is Always Surprising, 2002
Color xerox on archival paper
Holstad 18 x 21 1/2 in; 45.7 x 54.6 cm 48
we is rgtnt bay *y Me

; \ ~

Bow Ties, Three Gentlemen and a Black Couch, 2003

Color xerox on archival paper
16 1/2 x 10 in; 41.9 x 25.4 cm
 Indigo Family Room with Group Embracing, 2002
Color xerox on archival paper
Holstad 10 x 12 in; 25.4 x 30.5 cm
 Fs
a
me
‘a
= 4,

Green Fern Bathroom, 2002

Color xerox on archival paper
10 x 12 in; 25.4 x 30.5 cm
 Flowers and Water, 2002
Color xerox on archival paper
Holstad 19 x 11 3/4 in; 48.3 x 29.9 cm
52
Separated Red Gem Gentlemen with Single Guy Looking at Bow, 2002
Color xerox on archival paper
8 1/2 x 12 in; 21.6 x 30.5 cm
Homophobic: Christian Holstad Talks to Aleksandra Mir

I began my “gay research” in January 2002. on the edge for a while—danced and looked and learned. But eventu-
At the public library they have a section called the picture files, ally, I left it thinking that everyone involved was shallow.
massive amounts of images in categorized files. The files are great. The “Homosexual” picture files are not there to give you some
They are for people who can’t deal with computers. They are to visual understanding of this kind of diversity in gay culture. Their function is
information what buses are to traveling. As a young midwesterner, I to show easily recognizable images. Gays have created a culture that
got hooked on flea markets, thrift stores, and estate sales. My favorite has always relied on costume codes to attract and inform others. The
was the latter. I liked that it was usually one person's stuff set out in files work best as a stereotype welcome wagon. It doesn’t matter that
some order, like a table full of old pens or plates. It was there that I all drag queens aren't gay, it only matters that they are what is consid-
learned that everyone is an artist, or at least that art is everywhere. ered gay looking. It's really a narrowing of thought. I love it. Men and
These sales started me on a lifetime of being a visual junkie. The pub- women already have a received idea of what their identities mean visu-
lic library picture files fulfill these same desires. It's a hodgepodge ally. Gay people section themselves off into an even smaller category of
of printed images from different times and sources—ads, magazines, stereotypes. The library employees decide what looks gay in the books
books, and product packaging. There are files on everything, really. and magazines and shrink the category down further yet. It's a funnel.
Some files, “Utopia,” for example, have only four or five images; When making this piece, |wanted to copy all of the “Homosex-
others have to be broken down into subdirectories. Roses are found ual” files the library had, in as short a time period as possible. But I
in the files “Flowers-Rose 1; 2; and 3”. You are only allowed to pull was only allowed to take out fifteen images at a time. So I would select
out and go through three or four files at one time. This takes place fifteen, check them out, run to Kinko's, copy them, run back, check
at American lunchroom-style communal tables. You then make your them in, select fifteen new ones and repeat. I also wanted to copy
selection. You are allowed to check out fifteen images from a category them onto eleven-by-seventeen-inch cardstock because it is cheap and
at a time. has some strength. The physical reality of all this was me running
I was making collages and needed older, dated images of back and forth for days carrying the equivalent of two phonebooks.
bathrooms. They have these, as well as photos of just toilets and Within the “Homosexuals” files, the images dated from around the
bathtubs. But while searching through them, I came across a file titled late 1800s to the present. The images | returned would be re-shelved,
“Homosexuals.” As soon as | found the “Homosexuals” files, I started and I started losing track of what I had copied. In order to not repeat
to cringe. On my first round | took out only one, but on my next | myself, | created my own categories: “Drag queens,” “Porn,” “AIDS,”
brought all the rest of the “Homosexuals” files back to the table. I left "Trying to Be Like Straight People (Passing),” “Military,” “Art.” The
that afternoon happy with my allowed fifteen images, and over the largest selection was "Gay Rights/ Protest.”
next few days I started to think about what I had seen. The files are full of response-triggering pictures. I started out
The library is a government institution. I was told that the files being very touched by a picture of a lawyer fighting for gay rights
“should be images that are as easily recognizable as their file descrip- or romanticizing a certain time period. | felt joy, shame, depression,
tion.” Hence the librarians cut out images to fit these ideas. I am so and even creepy bits of pride. But I didn’t have time to really digest
glad when someone can do what | find too confusing to do. anything. I just xeroxed and xeroxed, and loaded up feelings, until
When I was younger and first entered gay culture, I quickly I became numb and it was just stuff. When I finished the piece and
came to see it as boring. It was like leaving one small closet for a began to go through it, I found a lamp. I looked at it for a bit, trying
larger one. At seventeen, I'd joined the “ball scene” in Minneapolis. to find a penis carving or something, but couldn't see anything gay-
There was dancing and vogueing, disco and house, and all kinds of referential at all. It was just misfiled but in the end it really made just
characters. The black drag queens enthusiastically took me in, due to as much sense as anything else.
my dress style—I had long hair and wore shiny skirts. Although | took Aleksandra, here in my mind is the idea we discussed that it
no drugs, I have very weird nightlife memories of this period. I stayed only takes two people in agreement to create a reality.

54
 I had to be responsible to my choice of images. This was humili-
ating at times. I was looking through the material at a public table
where there was no privacy and everyone sees what everyone else is
looking at. I then had to present my selection to the librarians in order
to check them out. One librarian would quickly shuffle through them;
another would ask me straight out what I was doing. | started to try to
act proud of my “choices,” I failed. Then I would go to Kinko's where
the people surrounding me were always in flux. I would copy my porn
or rainbow flags or protest images, sandwiched in a line between
grandmas and the business bored. Other artists would want to chat
about art. “What are you doing?” became my least favorite question.
I found xeroxing porn in front of elderly women shameful. I found
xeroxing any of the file content in front of stereotypical gay people
gross. The library became a cruising zone. I was approached in the
bathroom. Just because I am working on this project doesn't mean
I feel any camaraderie with anyone, not gay people or artists, or gay
artists, for that matter. Pretty soon every third word crossing my brain
was “gay.” I began to realize at some point: I am homophobic.

(“Homophobic: Christian Holstad Talks to Aleksandra Mir” was originally published

on the Internet at http://www.aleksandramir.info/projects/homophobic/homophobic.
html
in 2002.]
 i)

ee
east (ar ay CE
+ see +
*
“{HF
4
ii

Untitled, 1970s-1980s-1990s-2006

Kim Jones
Acrylic, ink and cut paper on paper
20 x 30 in; 50.8 x 76.2 cm 56
 Beene
SS
to

Untitled, 1971-1972, 1997-2000, 2005

Acrylic, ink and cut paper on paper
22 1/2 x 24 1/4 in; 57.2 x 61.6 cm
 miner

Untitled, 1994-2004
Acrylic and ink on color photograph
Jones 28 1/2 x 39 in; 72.4 x 99.1 cm 58
 {/ ae
’ S/
yy om,MS
si Ade ue

Bs

mee AES LM
Untitled, 1991-2002
Acrylic and ink on color photograph
24 x 16 1/4 in; 61 x 41.3 cm
 Untitled, 1991-2002
Acrylic and ink on color photograph
Jones 15 7/8 x 20 in; 40.3 x 50.8 cm 60
Untitled, 1991-2002
Acrylic and ink on color photograph
16 1/4 x 23 3/4 in; 41.3 x 59.7 cm
 Untitled, 1984-2006
Acrylic and ink on photograph
Jones 10 1/8 x 8 in; 25.8 x 20.2 cm 62
 BE Ir
<{ A Vi

Ke oe ae r
bee é

Untitled, 1974-2006
Acrylic and ink on photograph
12 x 18 in; 30.5 x 45.7 cm
a story by kim jones: valley of death

i'm alone in the santa monica mountains. it’s the month of may. i caused by insecure and irresponsible members of society. 1 explain
don’t belong here. i prepare myself for the journey back to the city of this to them over and over again. they always chew this idea over
los angeles. i need to live with rats. i take a bottle of rat shit and blood in their heads sniff a little and dance around my boots. i think they
out of my bag. this is a gift from another time. the shit and blood are understand something.
mixed with mud and rubbed all over my body. lately i've discovered that fights between different rat commu-
i'm walking. it takes me 12 hours to reach macarthur park. i sit nities are often characterized by extreme brutality and even death.
there and rest in the shade of a palm tree. war kidnapping and can- the home range of the community i walk with is the city of l.a. the
nibalism this is what i think about as i look out across the lake. behind boundaries are regularly patrolled by adult male rats usually in groups
me a large group of rats are feeding. rats usually eat at night but this of three. if a rat patrol meets up with a group from another community
tribe likes to copy the habits of men. it is very peaceful. both sides after exchanging threats are likely to withdraw discreetly
i live with these rats. i watch them give birth grow to maturity back into home ground. but if a single individual is encountered or a
and die. mary and her son moses are enjoying their midday meal. mother and child the patrolling rats will usually chase and if they can
marine is sitting beside me. 1 knew her as a child rat now she is the attack the stranger. this rat race must have great hometown pride. i ask
mother of many sons. her oldest son mooney is playing tag with them why. they only smile and look up at me with their many small
his friend mike an adolescent like himself. they race around a park black eyes. i think to myself there are more ways than i know to chew
bench taking playful nips at an old woman’s legs. the old woman sniff and dance in this large world of ours.
squeals with joy. im walking alone near third and main in downtown La. i see
mary has moved to the edge of a large mound of trash. she is a small black form lying in the gutter. it’s moses my little rat friend.
nibbling on a rotten mango. three adult male rats are moving slowly he has been badly beaten and chewed up. this is obviously the work
around the trash pile sniffing. mickey the top ranking male rat is sit- of an invading valley rat group. he is still alive. deep red marks are
ting on top of the pile munching on an old mounds candy bar. i feel etched into his black fur. i sit on the curb and watch moses lick his
close to these rats. this must be where i belong. wounds. mary and several other females come by and sniff him. the
suddenly a strong male scent surrounds me. i turn around females are dancing back and forth on the sidewalk near us. i go into
looking for the source of this odor. two black eyes glare at me from a a macdonalds restaurant and buy a coke and donut to go. my friend
small bush nearby. wham. with a sudden lunge he slams against my in the gutter munches on the donut while i sip the coke. moses i whis-
back and charges off. this is moses marys son. he is at the brink of per where is the law. we must have revenge. i will help you moses. we
social maturity. it is typical adult male rat style to bully anything that are the law. my little rat friend tips over the coke and begins chewing
looks female. because of my long hair he must think i'm a female. the ice cubes.
poor moses appears to be nervous. he is sniffing the dirt and walking it is dark outside now. mary leads us to an all night movie
in circles. i begin peeing as i walk slowly toward him. the little rat theater. i pay for three adults. we sit in the back row. it is warm inside.
stops pacing and watches me. i continue peeing and get down on i fall asleep. in the morning when i wake up mary is gone. moses has
my hands and knees. i'm crawling toward him. i hold back a small chewed a large hole in his seat and is sleeping in it. i leave him there
amount of pee and let it go when i'm behind him. he sniffs it. we and go outside.
become close friends. i walk west on wilshire boulevard for a few hours alone. when
some of the social gestures i've noticed in this rat society are i reach vermont avenue there is a rat patrol marching south. maybe
sniffing chewing and dancing. threatening gestures and calls are this is the law and order group. i follow them. they look familiar. it's
also used by my rat friends but only to let off steam. they are not mike and mooney. how fast these rats grow. mickey is the leader.
mean. it just gets so hot and smoggy in the La. basin that the rats get we finally reach the freeway heading west and march up the ramp.
moody. sometimes actual fights even break out. i believe these are cars are slowing down to observe us as we walk along the freeway

64
shoulder. we move slowly past a massive traffic jam on our left side. i
barely manage to keep up with my little friends. at last we reach the
san diego freeway and head toward the valley. my muscles are aching.
i'm carrying the structure on my back. this slows me down. they seem
to understand and stop for a few minutes. mickey walks up and sniffs
my boots. mike and mooney sit and watch the cars zoom by. we are
marching again. after a few hours the valley is in sight. we get off at
the first valley exit.
the l.a. rat patrol immediately spots a small brown female rat
sitting on top of a parked ford mustang. they attack her. poor valley
rat doesn’t have a chance. she just sits there and shits on herself. in
a second mickey has her by the throat. mike and mooney each grab
a leg. they all tumble off the car into the dirt. brown fur shit and
blood are flying everywhere. after a few minutes the valley rat is dead.
mickey bites off her tail and brings it to me. i reach down and pick
it up. black l.a. rat eyes are watching me. seems like they want me to
eat it. iopen my mouth and swallow. it wiggles down my throat. i can
feel it in my stomach like it's still alive. the rat patrol gets back on the
freeway and heads home.
i'm sitting on the curb looking at the mangled body of the
brown rat. i gather up the blood shit and fur scattered around her
body. this is mixed with dirt and rubbed over my tired muscles. i
begin walking through the valley. i will meet the valley rats. i want to
know them.

(“a story by kim jones: valley of death” was originally published in High Performance II,
no. 4 (1979): 3-8.]
 The Ark Collection, 2006 (detail)
Cut paper on postcards displayed in vitrines
Wangechi Mutu 40 x 62 x 23 in; 101.6 x 157.5 x 58.4 cm (each vitrine) 66
The Ark Collection, 2006 (detail)
Cut paper on postcards displayed in vitrines
40 x 62 x 23 in; 101.6 x 157.5 x 58.4 cm (each vitrine)
 Wim CCG. AFR eof

The Ark Collection, 2006 (detail)

Cut paper on postcards displayed in vitrines
Mutu 40 x 62 x 23 in; 101.6 x 157.5 x 58.4 cm (each vitrine) 68
The Ark Collection, 2006 (detail)
Cut paper on postcards displayed in vitrines
40 x 62 x 23 in; 101.6 x 157.5 x 58.4 cm (each vitrine)
 The Ark Collection, 2006 (detail)
Cut paper on postcards displayed in vitrines
Mutu 40 x 62 x 23 in; 101.6 x 157.5 x 58.4 cm (each vitrine) 70
The Ark Collection, 2006 (detail)
Cut paper on postcards displayed in vitrines
40 x 62 x 23 in; 101.6 x 157.5 x 58.4 cm (each vitrine)
 The Ark Collection, 2006 (detail)
Cut paper on postcards displayed in vitrines
Mutu 40 x 62 x 23 in; 101.6 x 157.5 x 58.4 cm (each vitrine) ur
The Ark Collection, 2006 (detail)
Cut paper on postcards displayed in vitrines
40 x 62 x 23 in; 101.6 x 157.5 x 58.4 cm (each vitrine)
Wangechi Mutu

New Museum: What happens between two images when they are
joined or juxtaposed in your work?

WM: When images in my work merge, they participate in a

raucous mating dance producing a stinky, sinister, gorgeous,
little transgender fruit.

NM: Where do you find your images?

WM. I find my images everywhere they call to me from, often

places selling overpriced cigarettes and pork skin snacks.

NM: Are you recycling, appropriating, stealing? How would you

describe your putting together of images?

WM: All of the above and none really...I'm trying to slowly,

thoughtfully vandalize and eradicate that profane notion that
beauty is singular or objective.

NM: Do you feel connected to the tradition of collage?

WM: I'm not sure how to answer that, I need some time to think
about that...

NM: Is collage a political medium? Is it an activist’s medium?

WM: Collage is a little spell set out to administer doses of cultural

insomnia that may encourage the handwork in art making to survive
a couple more generations. I wish collage could stop a war or tear
the wheels off a tanker in Tiananmen Square...

NM: Who owns the images you use?

WM: We do.

[May 2007]

74
 409 [T afel 8 tw

413 [Tafel 94}

42 8 |Tafel 101]

Anthologie de I’Amour Sublime, 2003-2007

(from the chapter “Aus dem kapitalistisch-familialistischen Interieur”)
Henrik Olesen Cut paper and c prints
76
407 [Tafel 83 ]
414 [Tafel 95]

415 [Tafel 97]

436 [Tafel 152]

Anthologie de l’Amour Sublime, 2003-2007

(top six images on spread from the chapter “Aus dem kapitalistisch-familialistischen Interieur”)
Olesen Cut paper and c-prints 78
416 [Tafel 98]

431 [Tafel 14 es)

Anthologie de Il’'Amour Sublime, 2003-2007

(middle two images on spread from the chapter “Vater und Séhne”)
Cut paper and c-prints
 422 [Tafel 111}
422 [Tafel 111]

Anthologie de l’'Amour Sublime, 2003-2007

(top four images on spread from the chapter “Der Spaziergang”)
Olesen Cut paper and c-prints 80
422 [Tafel 111] 422 [Tafel 111 (EET

Anthologie de I’'Amour Sublime, 2003-2007

(from the chapter “Aus dem kapitalistisch-familialistischen Interieur”)
Cut paper and c-prints
 Anthologie de l'Amour Sublime, 2003-2007
(from the chapter “Aus dem kapitalistisch-familialistischen Interieur”)
Olesen Cut paper and c-prints 82
264, der wunderbare fischzug, jubel und liebe, [Tafel 96]

266 seelenfrieden, [Tafel 100]

Anthologie de I’'Amour Sublime, 2003-2007

(from the chapter “Vater und Sohne”)
Cut paper and c-prints
Henrik Olesen: References to a collage book made 2002-2003

"One does not dream like this, no-one dreams like this”

“The late pictures of sailors urinating have the quality of intimate confessions Protests from André Breton, Benjamin Péret, and Pierre Unik

or a memoir discovered long after its author has passed away.”* Pierre Unik: From a physical point of view | find homosexuality as disgusting
as excrements and from a moral point of view | condemn it.
In his lifetime, the homoerotic watercolors of Charles Demuth were Raymond Queneau: It is evident to me that there is an extraordinary prejudice
shown only to a small circle of viewers and intimate friends. They against homosexuality among the surrealists.
were not intended for public viewing, unlike, for instance, Marcel André Breton: | accuse homosexuals of confronting human tolerance with
Duchamp’s Fountain (1917). a mental and moral deficiency which tends to turn itself into a system and to
When Charles Demuth settled into New York's Greenwich Vil- paralyze every enterprise | respect.
lage in 1914 he befriended Duchamp, who often accompanied him to The debate continues until Breton makes a final threat of leaving:
the city’s more transgressive nightclubs and salon gatherings where André Breton: Do people want me to abandon this discussion? | am quite
Freudian theories of sexuality were being eagerly debated. As pointed happy to demonstrate my obscurantism on this subject.*
out by Jonathan Weinberg in discussing the work of Demuth, ironi-
cally Duchamp—who appeared in drag as Rrose Sélavy, and whose I will not eat that sort of bread
own work contains sexual innuendo—warned specifically against
giving too much weight to the issue of sexuality because it threatened Death to the Pigs is the only book in English that documents the
the integrity of the work of art: poems and texts of Benjamin Péret. Parallel to a lot of his celebrated
prose, it consists of political poems, love poems, letters from the Span-
“The little perverse tendency that he had was not important in Demuth’s life. ish civil war, and polemical and critical essays.
After all, everybody has a little perverse tendency in him. That quality in him had In the poem “André Gide’s Convention” (ca.1926—-1936), the
nothing to do with the quality of his work. It had nothing to do with his art.”° communist youth song “Young Guard" is put into the mouth of André
Gide. Intended as a snide witticism about homosexual Gide’s connec-
MODERNAPHOBIC tion to the communist party, Péret posits Gide enjoying fellatio while
being strangled by a communist (penis-) hammer:
The surrealist salons, Dada’s Cabaret Voltaire, and the situationist’s
cut-up map of Paris were all artistic spaces or investigations that Mister Comrade Gide
preceded the conceptual- and post-modern art movements. But it is sings the “young guard” between his arse and his shirt-tails
significant that even the most avant-garde, experimental (heterosexu- and tells himself it’s time to flash his belly like a red flag
al) groups didn’t attract explicit visual homosexual cultural produc- communist
tion or vice versa. a bit a lot all his heart
Superbly documented, the surrealists were notorious for their not at all
homophobia. In the first session of the legendary “Recherches sur la answer the balls of the choirboys he depilates
Sexualité,” on January 27, 1928, at 54, Rue de Chateau, Paris, the fol- like a tomato rocked by the wind
lowing conversation took place: Mister Comrade Gide makes a hell of a red flag

Benjamin Péret: What do you think of homosexuality? Oh yes Mister Comrade Gide
Raymond Queneau: From what point of view? Moral? You'll have the hammer and sickle
Benjamin Péret: If you like? the sickle through you guts
Raymond Queneau: If two men love each other, | have no moral objections to and the hammer down your throat®
their physical relations.

84
“André Gide's Convention" was first published by Editiones Surréalistes I must be dreaming: the beginning of a modernistic discourse
in the book Je ne mange pas de ce pain-la (1936), translated as “I will
not eat that sort of bread,” idiomatically: “I'd rather starve” or "I won't In The History of Sexuality, Foucault dated the birth of homosexual-
stand for it.” The book was illustrated by Max Ernst and published in ity (as a discursive category) to C. Westphal’s article “Die contrare
249 copies. Sexualempfindung" (Contrary Sexual Sensation) published in: Archiv
I went to the Max Ernst Museum in Brithl and I was able to see fiir Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten, no. 2 (1870).
an original edition of Je ne mange pas de ce pain-la. Placed in a glass
showcase next to some family photographs of Max Ernst, the book was The Paragraph 175—making homosexual acts between males a crime
opened to a page with a graphic of Max Ernst illustrating a skull. (known formally as §175 StGB; also known as Section 175 in English)—
was a provision of the German Criminal Code, taking effect from the
You are under arrest, Sir 15 May 1871, one year after the article by C. Westphal.

HANNOVER-DADA The Paragraph 175 existed until the 10th of March 1994.
KUMMERNISSPIELE / EIN DRAMATISCHER ENTWURF
Paragraph 175

a. Mein Herr:
b. Bitte! [edit] Version of May 15, 1871
a. Sie sind verhaftet. § 175 Unnatural fornication
b. Nein. Unnatural fornication, whether between persons of the

a. Mein Herr, Sie sind verhaftet. male sex or of humans with beasts, is to be punished by

b. Nein. imprisonment; a sentence of loss of civil rights may also

—Kurt Schwitters ® be passed.

In 2002 I was working on an exhibition at the Sprengel Museum {edit] Version of June 28, 1935

in Hannover. § 175 Lewdness between men

My starting point was established in the Museums collection of I. A man who engages as the active or passive

works by Kurt Schwitters and Max Ernst; in particular in two collages partner in lewdness with another man is to be punished

books by Ernst, La femme 100 tétes (The Hundred Headless Woman, by imprisonment.

1929) and Une semaine de bonté (A Week of Kindness, 1934). Both II. With an involved party who at the time of the

books fall back on reproduced material derived from late nineteenth- act had not yet reached the age of twenty-one years, the

century, German illustrations and folklore. Court can refrain from punishment in mild cases.

Following a period of studying the collages, my obsession with § 175a Severe lewdness (Schwere Unzucht)

the avant-garde departed from surrealism and the unconscious. | be- A punishment of up to ten years in the penitentiary,

came focused on the compulsive heterosexuality that exists in this ma- and even with mitigating circumstances no less than three

terial. I started to drag out the historic specificity and references of the months imprisonment for:

two books, not only of the times when the two books were produced
(the late twenties and thirties) but also back to the late nineteenth-cen- 1. aman, who by force or by threat of harm to

tury illustrations that were originally used by Ernst. life and limb forces another man to engage in such an act

as either the active or passive partner;

 2. aman, who by abusing a dependency founded in a INHALT
service-, work-, or employment-based relationship coerces I 1870, 1905 [Erfingung der Homosexualitat]
another man into engaging in such an act as either the ac- II Je ne mange pas de ce pain-la, 1871
tive or passive partner; III Vater-Mutter-Kind
3. a man over twenty-one years old who entices a IV Ende der Welt
male under twenty-one years old to engage in such an act V Anfagng der Welt
as either the active or passive partner; VI Aus dem kapitalistisch-familialistischen Interieur
4. a man who professionally offers himself for VII Angriff der Papa-Mama-Ich-Maschine
such an act as either the active or passive partner. L'intérieur de la vue. 8 poémes visible
IX Der Spaziergang
§ 175b Bestiality X Vater und Sohne
Unnatural fornication of a man with a beast is to be XI Abschied von den Eltern
punished by imprisonment; a sentence of loss of civil XII Die Verwandlung
rights may also be passed.

CONTENTS
click (on) select ] 1870, 1905 [The Invention of Homosexuality]
copy cut paste print (out) II Je ne mange pas de ce pain-la, 1871
III Father-Mother-Child
IV The End of the World
Cut/ Uncut: Reconstructing sexual history in the style of Max Ernst V From the Beginning of the World
VI Images from the Interior of Capitalistic Familialism
Anthologie de l'Amour sublime is a collage book that manipulates the VII The Papa-Mama-I-Machine Attacks
two collage books La femme 100 tétes and Une semaine de bonté by L'intérieur de la vue. 8 poémes visible
Max Ernst into telling a history of homosexuality in a period of time IX The Walk
from late nineteenth to early twentieth century. X Fathers and Sons
XI“ Farewell, My Parents!
ANTHOLOGIE DE L'AMOUR SUBLIME XII Metamorphosis

Tangle, which sweaty underarm escapes. {Henrik Olesen, June 2007]

Bent forward, he thunders! Sibie screamed out, by nature immensely.

Notes
Hemiglobes upwards.
1, Theodor W. Adorno, "Looking Back on Surrealism," in The Idea of the Modern in
Now burning pedal brushes (delightful!) an elsewhere-caressed
Literature and the Arts, ed. Irving Howe (New York: Horizon Press, 1968), 220-224.
Abdomen. An omen.
2. Jonathan Weinberg, "Demuth's Erotic Watercolors," in Speaking For Vice: Homosexual-
Unsurpassed licks his fattest thighs along, Isidor. ity in the Art of Charles Demuth, Marsden Hartley, and the First American Avant-Garde
O how! love life’s rabble! (In the evening, naturellement.) (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1995), 108.
—Walter Serner 3. Marcel Duchamp, "Interview with Marcel Duchamp at New York City, January 21,
1956," in Emily Farnham, Charles Demuth: His Life, Psychology and Works (PhD diss.,
Ohio State University, 1959), 973, quoted in Weinberg, Speaking For Vice, xiii.
4. José Pierre, ed., Investigating Sex: Surrealist Research 1928-1932, trans. Malcolm Imrie
(London and New York: Verso, 1991), 5.
5. Benjamin Péret, Death to the Pigs: Selected Writings of Benjamin Péret, trans. and
ed. Rachel Stella (London: Atlas Press, 1988), 33.
6. Reprinted in Kurt Schwitters, Eile ist des Witzes Weile (Stuttgart: Reclam Verlag, 1995).
 Cellular (from the “Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful” Series), 2004
Photomontage
Martha Rosler 20 x 24 in; 50.8 x 61 cm 88
Amputee (Election I!) (from the “Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful” Series), 2004
Photomontage
20 x 24 in; 50.8 x 61 cm
 Hooded Captives (from the “Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful” Series), 2004
Photomontage
Rosler 24 x 20 in; 61 x 50.8 cm
90
Lounging Woman (from the “Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful” Series), 2004
Photomontage
24 x 20 in; 61 x 50.8 cm
 Back Garden (from the “Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful” Series), 2004
Photomontage
Rosler 20 x 24 in; 50.8 x 61 cm
Election (Lynndie) (from the “Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful” Series), 2004
Photomontage
20 x 24 in; 50.8 x 61 cm
 Gladiators (from the “Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful” Series), 2004
Photomontage
Rosler 20 x 24 in; 50.8 x 61 cm 94
Photo Op (from the “Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful” Series), 2004
Photomontage
20 x 24 in; 50.8 x 61 cm
Martha Rosler

Collage is a fiction, a productive fiction. Many creations are cobbled the flaws of the originals, including page joins and color shifts, are
together that might be called collage, and sometimes these concoctions retained. So these works are already about how we picture things, and
are intended to deceive; their fiction is presented as a true record of about ways of reaching a mass public in the modern world. These
facts in the world. I am not interested in deceptions: quite the opposite. works do not have words in them (except for the words retained from
Collage, for me, suspends the perceiver between the possible and the some source materials, such as advertisements), because virtually every
impossible or the unlikely. | am interested in all kinds of collages, but image from a published source entails a text already known in advance.
the kinds that interest me most draw attention to spatiality, to the spatial These are the discourses that are dragged into conflict with one another
dimension. That can mean an improbable relation of the fragments when the disparate visual elements cohabit within the frame.
not only to each other but possibly also to the space within the frame, It is the creation of space itself that is often the underlying
creating a “no space” or a contradictory one. Such a fantasia suits me issue: the activation of the idea of spaces created for specific purposes
just fine. But I love the opposite even more: the creation of something and “readings” by our society. Yet I prefer the word montage to collage
that is spatially plausible, in which the construct within the frame obeys because it suggests an additional dimension, that of time; and time can
the laws of gravity and proportion, not to mention perspective and size also be bent, extenuated, or abridged. Montage, a far less static term
commensurability. |want to be welcomed into the frame, to have a than collage, also returns attention to the printed or published source.
place to stand within it. It suggests sequences held together by things other than glue. It is
But entering the frame is a beginning, not an ending. The viewer not for nothing that collage (montage) was declared the quintessential
may be drawn in, to look around and, I hope, will go on to consider medium of the twentieth century, but we seem to have simply
how the elements got together. My work poses a question, but it extended the franchise forward. It is a truism that fragmentation besets
doesn't generally offer the answer. The frame's open edge sends the modernity, and collage/montage is a symptom, a strategy, and a form
viewer out again, unclosing the finality of the work, which becomes a of resistance.
proposition in which one plus one leads to something entirely different.
The presence of intruding elements within a scene, for example, writes {Martha Rosler, May 2007]

a whole new view of the world and its workings. For those who care to
make a diagnosis, the montage invites you to perform an analysis, but
there is always a simple shock of collision to begin with.
The works ruffle the taxonomy by which we understand our
world: categories of home, war zones, oil paintings, advertising of
various kinds, pornography, you name it. The spatial comfort of these
constructed works is belied by the discomfort of the details, in which
two (or more) discourses are visibly made to collide, whether it is a host
of presuppositions about entitlement, citizenship, moral superiority,
good intentions, or propriety, or simply the emergence into visibility
of an unconscious desire for exhibitionistic/voyeuristic gratification,
rupturing the surface with the previously hidden, ripping a seam into a
seamless tale.
My collages—photomontages, properly—mostly begin as printed
matter, drawn from public or published sources. It is important to
stress that in general these works of mine find their public life as
photomontages, de-emphasizing the work of the hand; yet many of

96
 The Hours of the Night II, 2001
Handprinted and printed papers on paper, eleven panels
Nancy Spero 9 x 22 ft; 2.7 x 6.7 m (overall, approx.) 98
 The Hunt, 1997
Handprinted and printed papers on paper
Spero 25 1/2 x 74 3/4 in; 64.8 x 189.9 cm 100
On View, 1997
Handprinted and printed papers on paper
19 1/2 x 72 1/2 in; 49.5 x 184.2 cm
 Azur, 2002 (detail)
Handprinted and printed papers on paper, thirty-nine panels
Spero 2 X 277 ft; .6 x 84.4 m (overall, approx.) 102
Azur, 2002 (detail)
Handprinted and printed papers on paper, thirty-nine panels
2 x 277 ft; .6 x 84.4 m (overall, approx.)
 Antipodes II, 1997 (detail)
Handprinted and printed papers on paper
Spero 19 1/2 x 98 in; 49.5 x 248.9 em 104
Josephine, 2002
Printed papers on paper
24 1/4 x 23 in; 61.6 x 58.4 cm
Nancy Spero

New Museum: Why do you use collage? NM: Are you recycling, appropriating, stealing?

NS: Collage is a really open format. It gives me so much freedom. NS: Absolutely I'm recycling and appropriating. I don’t think of it as
I can change my mind. It's a continuous work-in-progress. stealing. I think that the way I recycle them and add things changes
Even if the subject is really serious, like in the “Torture of Women" them. For example, I added two breasts to Sheela-na-gig.
series, it diffuses somehow. | can choose the images I want to give the Sometimes when I'm in the doctor's office and I look through
work a character or emphasis. magazines (I've been in lots of doctors’ offices) I see an image. Some-
times I tear it out, and sometimes I ask if I can borrow it.
NM: Did you look at other art? The figure I was speaking about—the Victim of the Gestapo—is
from a history book, but it is so transformed by my working on it and
NS: I looked at them but they didn’t give me anything in terms of printing it and putting it in a new context that it is a different image.
myself and my work—Dada, maybe a little arte povera—but they aren't It is an extension of the life of the image.
a reference. When I saw the photograph of Marlene Dietrich—before she
went to Hollywood, before she slimmed down so much, the one in
NM: When did you begin to collage? which she is wearing a man’s suit—I suddenly thought, “She’s a
modern day goddess.”
NS: I don’t really remember how I got into it. There are small elements
in the War Paintings (1966-1970). Collage is something that isn’t [May 2007]

precious, the War Paintings were like manifestoes, but the irony is
that, in the end, they became precious objects anyway.

NM: How do you get your images?

NS: I see them, but I don’t search for them. I find them in books, art
books, sometimes in the media. I see something, and then | photo-
graph it—blow it up, there was a place on Union Square, a commer-
cial place that made large Photostats that I used to make the printing
plates. Sometimes my intimate friends and family find images for
me—Leon (Golub) found a bunch of images for me. He found the
image of the Victim of the Gestapo. Leon always read intensely. He
would see images and say “this is something for you.” Once my sister
sent me a figure, the one with her arms in the air, I’m not sure if it was
in triumph or in mourning.
I see them everywhere and anywhere—in the history of art, in
newspapers, in magazines.

106
 Film Portrait (Incision) I1, 2005

John Stezaker 7six 6Mine Cee

Film Portrait (Incision) IV, 2005
Photo-collage
7 3/4x 6 in; 19.7 x 15.3 cm
 Film Portrait (Incision) V, 2005
Photo-collage
Stezaker 7 3/4x 5 1/2 in; 19.7 x 14 cm
110
stiatvaiame
Pe 7
 Film Portrait (She) XIV, 2005
Photo-collage
Stezaker 9 x7 3/4 in; 22.9 x 19.7 cm
Film Portrait (Split) IV ‘Eve’, 2005
Photo-collage
7 3/4x 5 in; 19.7 x 12.7 cm
 Untitled (Film Portrait), 2005
Photo-collage
Stezaker 12 1/4
x10 in; 31 x 25.5 cm 114
Marriage I!, 2006
Photo-collage
9 1/2 x 12 in; 24 x 30.5 cm
The Encounter with the Real: John Stezaker in conversation with Krzysztof Fijalkowski and Lynda Morris

KF: Much of your work seems not really to involve collage so much as found image in a reverse way from the surrealists. |wanted to make
an economy of cutting and removing. conscious, to save the viewer from unconsciousness rather than release
the viewer to it. At the time (in the '70s) I found Jung's idea of the
JS: Yes, and this is something that occurred to me very early on collective unconsciousness useful in thinking about the collectivized
as what I saw as an apocalyptic possibility for art: that it could be unconsciousness of media or image consumption. | thought of the
reduced to a process of subtraction from the media image. Have readymade image as a kind of shadow manifestation of the commod-
you seen the postcard fragment that I used in “The End” from the ity image and of media unconsciousness. In the same way that we've
early ‘70s? It's a picture of Big Ben with an unreal, “apocalyptic” unconsciously created nuclear armaments, we've created a culture of
sunset—the result of a combination of atmospheric pollution and images. In both senses it is a culture headed by and heading to death.
the degradation of the printing plates. The original was one of those
giant postcards sold in souvenir shops of a scene of the Thames and KF: So is your appropriation of images a way of prospecting into a
Westminster with Big Ben in the corner. I cut this postcard-sized frag- kind of collective unconsciousness, into a dream life of society?
ment from the original: I thought of it as a cinematic zoom in. The
image has been in my possession since my teens and | kept it on the JS: Yes, and I started with a belief in a redemptive dimension to this pro-
mantelpiece wherever I lived as a student (and after) as a reminder of cess of prospecting. | felt Iwas searching for the archetypal amidst the
this apocalyptic possibility of an art subsumed by popular culture. It stereotypical. What if the stereotype represents truth rather than falsity?
took a decade for this possibility to become a reality in my practice. These days I'm less convinced by the promise of such connections.
So by the early '70s I had decided that I did not want to add to
the world of images but only to intervene in what was already there. LM: I've always said that I’m interested in art because things emerge
At the time I felt there was a revelatory or apocalyptic dimension to in it a little bit before they become part of a mass consciousness.
this unmediated relationship with the readymade image. But also Maybe it’s because the artist is working alone, but I’ve found that
perhaps the found represented something potentially redemptive. On even in a provincial art school you can feel certain things beginning
the one hand I wanted to find an absolute basis of what art could do to happen before one comes across them in the media. But it is also
in image terms in the representation of what was already there, of this the sense that art itself has a history contained within it, one that is
encounter with the real. On the other | felt | had discovered, in this important because it's a history that is getting lost: one only knows
merger with the culture of images, a potentiality for salvage, or of a about it or has clung on to it because of these representations.
redemptive relationship with the found image in that minimum sense
of separation. JS: I feel that art best represents a state of consciousness or of memory
The challenge was to represent the vantage point of the con- in a culture of amnesia. With an increasing acceleration of image-
sumer rather than that of the producer of images, and to evolve a consumption we seem to be entering an Alzheimer phase in cultural
practice that never departed from the position of the consumer whilst history. From the very beginnings of media culture (with the advent of
somehow betraying something of the strangeness of that vantage cinema) the dominant mode of image-consumption became uncon-
point. In The Third Mind, William Burroughs describes the feeling of scious. After all, it is physically impossible to consciously apprehend
paranoia induced by “really looking” at what is before our eyes on an an image in 1/24th of a second. In many ways the process of watch-
everyday level, in what he called the “naked lunch” of consumption. ing has become a process of forgetting. Milan Kundera’s Book of
In this sense the encounter with the readymade can be a convulsive Laughter and Forgetting explores this aspect of a totalitarian panoptic
moment of revelation within the universal blindness that the consump- culture in Eastern Europe. The book addresses the ultimate power of
tion of images has become: a glimmer of consciousness within the un- censorship (forgetting), the way identities, lives and historical events
consciousness of image reception. In this respect I felt I was using the can be erased from collective memory as deposed historical figures

116
are airbrushed out of official photographs and out of history. But JS: There is a smell of death in secondhand bookshops, even more
interestingly Kundera ended up recognizing a much more powerful than in charity shops. The majority of books arrive in these places
amnesiac force in the excessive proliferation of images in the West through house clearances.
than in the censorial control of the East.
KF: So your images are used images, but they're also abandoned im-
KF: You obviously tend to remember what the original source was for ages, particularly if they're from charity shops: an image that has not
each one of your images, while the viewer doesn’t. Does that original just dropped out of currency but has been given away is considered
context matter at all? no longer of value.

JS: Yes. The viewer does get a generalized sense of the source LM: In terms of collecting I also have a big thing about archiving.
but, as you point out, not the particularity of the image or of its I've never thrown anything away I've received from galleries since
original context. the ‘60s: I've kept all the invitation cards, all the press releases, and |
There have been occasions when I've wanted to explore details often wonder why. There's a vague academic hoarding here, but it's
of this sort, or of the particular nature of my encounter with certain more than that: there's the sense of a fear of destruction, that maybe
images. I'm currently looking at ways of communicating this neglected your little collection might survive in some way.
dimension of the encounter as a way of particularizing the contexts of
engagement with found images. I've been doing some research into JS: I think you're right: when you collect you are trying to master
the authorship of anonymous photographs and into the context of the something that resists mastery. You are trying to create a blockage
production of some of my main image sources—film still production, against the inexorable flowing away of things and images, to retain
the photo-roman, and so on. In the process I'm discovering all sorts of something consigned to disappearance. In this culture it is a way
strange things about the circumstances in which the images were pro- of making visible against the ground of the image in the process of
duced which have exerted an intuitive fascination on me. At this stage disappearance. But mastery is also an illusion, though perhaps a
it’s difficult to say whether this is any more than a personal interest. necessary one. In fact, rather than giving possession, the collection
There are also a lot of images which for (often superstitious) represents entrapment. It is the master, and you are its servant.
reasons | feel I cannot use in my work—and thus violate—precisely
because they are the images I most treasure in my collection, and KF: Jean Baudrillard says that the final term of the collection is
often because of some uncanny connection they have made with my the collector.
life. A close attention to the circumstances of my encounter with im-
ages often gives me the conviction that images find me rather than the JS: Yes, I agree with that. And the completion of the collection or se-
other way around—that they are somehow predestined to appear or ries is an exclusion of the collector. A complete collection is dead, and
manifest themselves under the particular circumstances of my life. represents the death of the collector. Collectors tend to donate their
In their everyday circulation, images “disappear into their use." collections at this point of completion. I'm always looking for ways to
In obsolescence (the death of the commodity), they appear. The bring my series to completion so that I can let go of them—to entrust
collection gives visibility to the image; it is a kind of after-life of the them to someone else. But I always seem to find ways of extending the
commodity-image. series. Maybe it's a way of deferring death.

LM: Your collecting often takes place in second-hand shops, and it's KF: Presumably in two generations someone wanting to practice upon
true that the whole sense of the charity shop is a tremendous cultural images will have almost nothing but digital images to work with; even
force amongst people of our generation. the printed material will all be digitally sourced and manipulated.
JS: Losing the last point of physical connection with the image is an Only the arrest of the mechanism of the turnover of images through
apocalyptic possibility. It would represent the apotheosis of the found obsolescence or technological accident is then capable of revealing
media image. The de-materialization of the image would represent this hidden visibility of the media image.
the fullest realization of its power. On the other hand this would also The image becomes visible by an estrangement from the familiar
represent the fullest subjection of the collectivized unconscious to context of its meaning or functionality. Alphonso Lingis, following
the powers of the cultural image. My work has been about negotiat- Blanchot, makes great claims for this estranged encounter with other-
ing that threshold between the materiality and the immateriality of ness, suggesting that it creates a bond with the other that he argues
the image, the real and the virtual in the image within the changing is necessary for human survival, indeed for the survival of life itself,
circumstances of image culture, and I'll continue to chase the increas- as he puts it, “on the only planet known to support it.” The bond with
ingly ephemeral experiences of the image. Most pessimistically, I see others in terms of their otherness he calls “deathbound subjectiv-
the punctuation of the image as a form of cultural resistance that is ity”: a relationship with them not in social terms based around an
destined to failure within the inexorable and seamless flows of the alignment of interests or of social utility, but in difference, and based
technologised image. on the unknowability of the life of another. This bond or communion
with others in the shared prospect of the unknowable—death—is one
LM: But we know that all systems are going to break down not far be- that has no space for representation in profane culture. For Lingis
yond our children’s lifetimes; we feel fairly certain that if global warm- this absence is literally disastrous. But there is a more hopeful view of
ing doesn’t do it, the oil crisis will. There are going to be fundamental this that suggests such encounters with alterity—which were once the
changes, so even within our culture at the moment any resistance to province of religious faith and the church—have not disappeared from
technology is itself inevitably based on earlier forms of technology. our culture, but have simply migrated and dispersed.

JS: Which brings us back to obsolescence, and the way that an earlier (The Encounter with the Real: John Stezaker in conversation with Krzysztof Fijalkowski and
Lynda Morris” was originally published in Norwich Gallery Dispatch 123 (April 2006).]
technology can reveal something essential about its successor in the
evolution of photo-optic technologies of the image. Raymond Bellour
and Garrett Stewart, interestingly, see a potentiality for the film still or
freeze-frame in these terms, as a revelatory punctuation of cinematic
experience. They see photography, in the form of the film still, as ca-
pable of communicating something about the film image that is some-
how inapprehendable in cinematic terms. Stewart makes eschatologi-
cal claims for the film still, suggesting that in the halting of cinematic
experience, the experience of ending in the stilled image there is a
return to the genesis of the cinematic illusion in the photograph.
I'm very interested in this debate, and in the way it reflects
surrealist attitudes to obsolescence. Maurice Blanchot refers to André
Breton’s interest in the revelatory power of obsolete objects and the
way, as Blanchot describes it, once separated from its functional
context by obsolescence or fragmentation, the utensil which ordinar-
ily “disappears into its use” suddenly appears in its strangeness.
Cinema in these terms can be seen as a use of images that makes
them disappear, beneath the threshold of conscious apprehension.

Stezaker
118
 ll Ik Installation view of the exhibition Andy Warhol and Sonny Liston fly on Braniff. (When you got it—flaunt it), 2006
Ke cy V Va er Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
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Untitled, 2007
Four-color process silk screen on canvas with magazine pages
Walker 36 x 47 in; 91.4 x 119.4 cm
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Four-color process s Ik screen on canvas with newspaper
48 x 29 in ’ 121.9 x 73.7 cm
 Macintosh in 1984

Untitled, 2007
Light box with duratrans print
43 x 86 x 4 in; 109.2 x 218.4 x 10.2 cm 124
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Walker Dimensions variable (overall), 21 x 16 in; 53.3 x 40.6 cm (each panel) 126
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Digital print on newsprint, twenty-seven panels
Dimensions variable (overall), 21 x 16 in; 53.3 x 40.6 cm (each panel)
Kelley Walker

My Epson scanner, G5, and Epson printer make collecting and using
disparate images and objects too easy and immediate—Apple and
Adobe programs like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Final Cut Pro are
designed especially for this sort of activity. |have noticed that this
technological ease underlines an anxiety within my practice. It seems
this anxiety in turn manifests certain systems, structures, and often
the repetition of specific images. A larger cultural anxiety, | think,
is apparent as well in what seems like an arbitrary and, at times,
fantasized global circulation of images that is increasingly enabled
by this technology. The idea of a mobius strip emerges when one
considers that the technology being used to develop and circulate
these images is also packaging and then repackaging itself.
The use of traditional collage techniques in my practice is one
way of slowing things down and achieving some distance: physical,
cultural, historical, etc. Relative to my use of technology, collage can
momentarily offer some resistance to a corporate aesthetic.
My G5 desktop is loaded with thumbnails showing various
things I am working on and thinking about. Each thumbnail is a
miniature image of what a file might look like printed; the thumbnail
doesn't show information, such as that the file is composed of
multiple layers. 1 am aware that these icons has influenced the way |
think about, make, and show objects; for example, I think of the things
I make as both temporal and as a placeholder for everything about
that work that can’t be physically represented. I know I get excited
when I turn on the computer and, because of a computing glitch,
thumbnails are scrambled all over my desktop, jumbled all on top of
one another. This allows me to see new connections between works.
When thinking about a space | will be working in, I often
produce both virtual (computerized) and actual models of that
space. There is a complex interplay between these two modes of
thinking about space. In both, re-arranging, layering, juxtaposing,
rotating, piling, and overlapping at times relate to more traditional
aspects of collage.

[Kelley Walker, July 2007]

128
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Exhibition Checklist Mark Bradford Jonathan Hernandez

Helter Skelter, 2007 Mural, 2006

Cut and pasted papers on canvas Forty-seven posters with traces from a David
12 x 70.25 ft; 3.7 x 2.1m Alfaro Siqueiros mural sketch, thirteen panels
Courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co. 157 1/2 x 275 1/2 in; 400 x 700 cm
Courtesy of the artist and kurimanzutto, Mexico City

130
Thomas Hirschhorn Christian Holstad

Works on Paper (from the “TATTOO” Series), Untitled (Pink Bedroom), 2003 Indigo Family Room with
2007 Color xerox on archival paper Group Embracing, 2002
Paper, prints, photocopies, plastic foil, 19 x 23 1/2 in; 48.3 x 59.7 cm Color xerox on archival paper
adhesive tape, stickers, marker, and ballpoint Courtesy the artist and Daniel Reich Gallery, New York 10 x 12 in; 25.4 x 30.5 cm
35 x 33 in; 89 x 84 cm each Collection of Andrew Ong, New York
Courtesy of Gladstone Gallery, New York It's My Nature, 2002
Color xerox on archival paper Bow Ties, Three Gentlemen
23 1/2 x 19 in; 59.7 x 48.3 cm and a Black Couch, 2003
Collection of Rob Teeters and Dr. Bruce M. Sherman, Color xerox on archival paper
New York 16 1/2 x 10 in; 41.9 x 25.4 cm
Private Collection
Green Couple in Pink French Bathroom, 2002
Color xerox on archival paper Separated Red Gem Gentlemen with
11 x 10 in; 27.9 x 25.4 cm Single Guy Looking at Bow, 2002
Bob Nickas Collection, New York Color xerox on archival paper
8 1/2 x 12 in; 21.6 x 30.5 cm
Flowers and Water, 2002 Private Collection
Color xerox on archival paper
19 x 11 3/4 in; 48.3 x 29.9 cm
Private Collection, Washington DC

Celebration of an Infinite Discussion, 2002

Color xerox on archival paper
19 1/2 x 14 1/2 in; 49.5 x 36.8 cm
Courtesy the artist and Daniel Reich Gallery, New York

Happy Birthday, 2003

Color xerox on archival paper
17 1/2 x 17 1/2 in; 44.5 x 44.5 cm
Private Collection

Solo Guy in Blue Bathroom (Series #1), 2002

Color xerox on archival paper
18 1/2 x 11 in; 47 x 27.9cm
Collection of Greg Asciola, New York

Green Fern Bathroom, 2002

Color xerox on archival paper
10 x 12 in; 25.4 x 30.5 cm
Private Collection

Happiness is Always Surprising, 2002

Color xerox on archival paper
18 x 21 1/2 in; 45.7 x 54.6 cm
Private Collection
Kim Jones Wangechi Mutu

Untitled, 1974-1980-2006 Untitled, 1974-2006 Will Honey Flavoured Milk Soften That
Acrylic and ink on paper and photograph Acrylic and ink on photograph Pig Fed Rage?, 2008
14x 17 in; 35.6 x 43.2 cm 18 x 12 in; 45.7 x 30.5 cm Various milky, wet, cream-colored, and
Private Collection, courtesy Pierogi, Brooklyn Courtesy Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp diaphanous materials
Courtesy of the artist; Susanne Vilemetter, Los Angeles;
and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York
Untitled, 1971-1972-—2000-2005 Untitled, 1974-2006
Acrylic, ink, and cut paper on paper Acrylic and ink on photograph
22 1/2 x 23 1/2 in; 57.2 x 59.7 cm 12 x 18 in; 30.5 x 45.7 cm
Courtesy the artist and Pierogi, Brooklyn Courtesy Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp

Untitled, 1994-2004
Acrylic and ink on photograph
22 1/2 x 24 1/4 in; 57.2 x 61.6 cm
Collection of Clifford P. Diver

Untitled, 1991-2002
Acrylic and ink on photograph
16 1/4 x 23 3/4 in; 59.7 x 41.9 cm
Private collection, courtesy Perogi, Brooklyn

Untitled, 1986-2005
Acrylic and ink on photograph
11 x 14 in; 27.9 x 35.6 cm
Courtesy the artist and Pierogi, Brooklyn

Untitled, 1970s-1980s-1990s-—2005
Acrylic, ink, and cut paper on paper
20 x 30 in; 50.8 x 76.2 cm
Private collection, courtesy Pierogi, Brooklyn

Untitled, 1991-2002
Acrylic and ink on photograph
15 7/8 x 20 in; 40.3 x 50.8 cm
Private collection, courtesy Perogi, Brooklyn

Untitled, 1991-2002
Acrylic and ink on photograph
24 x 16 1/4 in; 61 x 41.3 cm
Private collection, courtesy Pierogi, Brooklyn

NY, 1983-1984-2006
Acrylic and ink on photograph
8 x 10 1/4 in; 20.3 x 26 cm
Courtesy Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp

132
Henrik Olesen Martha Rosler

Anthologie de I’Amour Sublime, 2003-2007 Amputee (Election II) (from the “Bringing the Photo Op (from the “Bringing the War Home:
Cut paper and c-prints War Home: House Beautiful” Series), 2004 House Beautiful” Series), 2004
Courtesy the artist and Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Photomontage Photomontage
Cologne 20 x 24 in; 50.8 x 61 cm 20 x 24 in; 50.8 x 61 cm
Private Collection, courtesy Mitchell-Innes & Nash, Private Collection, courtesy Mitchell-Innes & Nash,
New York New York

Back Garden (from the “Bringing the War Home: Red & White Stripes (Baghdad Burning) (from
House Beautiful” Series), 2004 the “Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful”
Photomontage Series), 2004
20 x 24 in; 50.8 x 61 cm Photomontage
Private Collection, courtesy Mitchell-Innes & Nash, 20 x 24 in; 50.8 x 61 cm
New York Private Collection, courtesy Mitchell-Innes & Nash,
New York
Cellular (from the “Bringing the War Home:
House Beautiful” Series), 2004 Saddam's Palace (Febreze) (from the “Bringing
Photomontage the War Home: House Beautiful” Series), 2004
20 x 24 in; 50.8 x 61 cm Photomontage
Private Collection, courtesy Mitchell-Innes & Nash, 20 x 24 in; 50.8 x 61 cm
New York Private Collection, courtesy Mitchell-Innes & Nash,
New York

Election (Lynndie) (from the “Bringing the

War Home: House Beautiful” Series), 2004 Trophy (Running Woman) (from the “Bringing
Photomontage the War Home: House Beautiful” Series), 2004
20 x 24 in; 50.8 x 61 cm Photomontage
Private Coilection, courtesy Mitchell-Innes & Nash, 24 x 20 in; 61 x 50.8 cm
New York Private Collection, courtesy Mitchell-Innes & Nash,
New York

Gladiators (from the “Bringing the War Home:

House Beautiful” Series), 2004 Vanitas (from the “Bringing the War Home:
Photomontage House Beautiful” Series), 2004
20 x 24 in; 50.8 x 61 cm Photomontage
Private Collection, courtesy Mitchell-Innes & Nash, 20 x 24 in; 50.8 x 61 cm
New York Private Collection, courtesy Mitchell-innes & Nash,
New York

Hooded Captives (from the “Bringing the

War Home: House Beautiful” Series), 2004 Walker (from the “Bringing the War Home:
Photomontage House Beautiful” Series), 2004
24 x 20 in; 61 x 50.8 cm Photomontage
Private Collection, courtesy Mitchell-Innes & Nash, 20 x 24 in; 50.8 x 61 cm
New York Private Collection, courtesy Mitchell-Innes & Nash,
New York

Lounging Woman (from the “Bringing the

War Home: House Beautiful” Series), 2004 Wine (Muktada) (from the “Bringing the War
Photomontage Home: House Beautiful” Series), 2004
24 x 20 in; 61 x 50.8 cm Photomontage
Private Collection, courtesy Mitchell-Innes & Nash, 24 x 20 in; 61 x 50.8 cm
New York Private Collection, courtesy Mitchell-innes & Nash,
New York
Nancy Spero John Stezaker

The Hours of the Night II, 2001 Untitled (Film Portrait), 2005 Film Portrait (She) XIV, 2005
Handprinted and printed papers on paper, Photo-collage Photo-collage
eleven panels 12 1/4 x 10 in; 31 x 25.5 cm 9x 7 3/4 in; 22.9 x 19.7 cm
9 x 22 ft; 2.7 x 6.7 m (overall, approx.) Private Collection Collection of Pamela and Arthur Sanders

Private Collection, courtesy Galerie Lelong,

New York Film Portrait (She) 1, 2005 Mask VI, 2005
Photo-collage Photo-collage
9 1/4 x 7 3/4 in; 23.5 x 19.7 cm 8 3/4 x 6 1/2 in; 22.2 x 16.5 cm
Collection of Marty and Rebecca Eisenberg Private Collection

Film Portrait (Incision) Il, 2005 Marriage II, 2006

Photo-collage Photo-collage
7 3/4 x 6 in; 19.7 x 15.3 cm 9 1/2 x 12 in; 24 x 30.5 cm
Private Collection Private Collection

Film Portrait (Landscape) |, 2005 Marriage XIV, 2006

Photo-collage Photo-collage
9 1/2 x 8 in; 24 x 20.3 cm 10 x 8 in; 25.5 x 20.3 cm
Private Collection Private Collection

Film Portrait (Split) lV ‘Eve’, 2005

Photo-collage
7 3/4 x 5 in; 19.7 x 12.7 cm
Private Collection

Film Portrait (She) VIII, 2005

Photo-collage
9 1/4 x 7 3/4 in; 23.5 x 19.7 cm
Collection Rirkrit Tiravanija

Film Portrait (Incision) IV, 2005

Photo-collage
7 3/4 x 6 in; 19.7 x 15.3 cm
Collection of Pamela and Arthur Sanders

Film Portrait (Incision) V, 2005

Photo-collage
7 3/4x 5 1/2 in; 19.7 x 14 cm
Private Collection

Film Portrait (Landscape) IV, 2005

Photo-collage
9 1/2 x 8 in; 24 x 20.3 cm
Private Collection

134
Kelley Walker

Not Yet Titled, 2007

Digital prints and silk screen on paper
and canvas
Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
Biographies Mark Bradford Jonathan Hernandez

Born 1961, Los Angeles, California Born 1972, Mexico City, Mexico
Lives and works in Los Angeles, California Lives and works in Mexico City, Mexico

The social dynamics of community, determined Jonathan Hernandez’s collages are meticulous
by race, class, gender, sexuality, migration, and abstract designs built from the ubiquitous press
their attendant stereotypes, inspire Mark Brad- photographs that Hernandez has been extracting
ford’s work in collage, video, photography, and from public media as part of an ongoing archive.
installation. Bradford explores public space by In an interaction he describes as “ping-pong,”
excerpting and recomposing its contents—from Hernandez juxtaposes images that celebrate
billboard posters to beauty salon endpapers— victory alongside those that bear witness to
to create abstract compositions whose grids, atrocity—celebrities are next to victims of
lines, and fields of color flicker with the visual violence, expressions of euphoria are enmeshed
and informational juxtapositions that character- with those of despair, like the fusion that might
ize the urban experience. Through the formal be said to characterize the current moment.
limitations and restrictions that he imposes on
his artistic practice, Bradford structures his Hernandez received his degree in visual arts
works’ explosive energy, elegantly corralling it from the Ecole Nationale d’Administration Pub-
into an abstract narrative that reflects our geo- lique and The National Autonomous University
graphical and geo-political surroundings. of Mexico in 1997. He studied architecture at the
University of Montreal in 1991-92. Solo exhibi-
Bradford received his BFA (1995) and his MFA tions of Hernandez’s work include Postpreterito,
(1997) from the California Institute of the Arts. Sala de Arte Publico Siqueiros, Mexico City
Selected solo and two-person exhibitions (2006); Ven Vaiven, La Caja Negra, Madrid,
include Mark Bradford, Whitney Museum of Spain (2006); Trafago, kurimanzutto, Mexico City
American Art, New York (2007); LA><ART, (2004); Bon Voyage, Centro de Arte Contem-
Los Angeles (2006); Grace and Measure, poraneo de Malaga, Spain (2003); and Travelling
Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York (2005); Without Moving, Galeria del Aeropuerto de
Bounce: Mark Bradford and Glenn Kaino, Ciudad de México, México (2002).
REDCAT, Los Angeles (2004); and Very
Powerful Lords, Whitney Museum of American Selected group exhibitions include The Exotic
Art at Philip Morris, New York (2003). Journey Ends, Foksal Gallery Foundation,
Warsaw, Poland (2006); Metro of Pictures, The
Group exhibitions include Eden’s Edge: Fifteen Moore Space, Miami (2006); 9th Bienal de la
LA Artists, Hammer Museum at UCLA, Los Habana, Cuba (2006); En Algun lugar alguien
Angeles (2007); Street Level: Mark Bradford, esta viajando furiosamente hacia ti, La Casa
William Cordova, Robin Rhode, Nasher Museum, Encendida, Madrid, Spain (2005); and Farsities:
Duke University, Durham, North Carolina Urban Crisis and Domestic Symptoms in Recent
(2007); Meditations in an Emergency, Museum Contemporary Art, at the San Diego Museum of
of Contemporary Art, Detroit, Michigan (2006); Art, California (2005).
Day for Night: Whitney Biennial 2006, New York;
Sao Paolo Bienal (2006); African Queen, Studio [EL & Jenn Wirtz]

Museum in Harlem, New York (2005); Fade

(1990-2003), Luckman Gallery and University
Fine Arts Gallery, California State University,
Los Angeles, and Craft and Folk Art Museum,
Los Angeles; Snapshots: New Art from Los
Angeles, UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles;
(traveled to Museum of Contemporary Art, North
Miami Beach, 2001); and Fresh Cut Afros, Watts
Towers Gallery, Los Angeles (2000).

[Emily Liebert]

136
Thomas Hirschhorn Christian Holstad Kim Jones
Born 1957, Bern, Switzerland Born 1972, Anaheim, California Born 1944, San Bernardino, California
Lives and works in Paris Lives and works in Brooklyn, New York Lives and works in New York

Through his installations made of unheralded Holstad’s artistic practice consists of photogra- Since the 1970s, Kim Jones has been making
materials such as foil, plastic, cardboard, and phy, drawing, sculpture, installation, and collage. performance-based drawings, sculpture, and
packing tape, Thomas Hirschhorn’s work sum- A self-described “visual junkie,” the subject of installations. Upon his return to civilian life after
mons references to philosophy, popular culture, his work includes the ways in which appearance- two tours in Vietnam as a marine, Jones created
mass media, economics, and poetry. Layer- based stereotypes obscure individual sexual the persona “Mudman.” Caking his body in
ing information and imagery, trash and found identity. Referring both to the mainstream and mud, and outfitting himself with army boots and
objects, Hirschhorn creates environmental subculture, Holstad’s collages often depict a massive sculptural lattice of sticks, tape, and
experiences, challenging the viewer to read erotic couplings of gay men whose bodies are twine that resembled a tangled cross, Jones
and to participate as well as to look. Often, he composed of decorative patterns and textures marched through the streets of Los Angeles as
uses violent or gruesome imagery, which not extracted from magazines ranging from high-end a living reminder of war and suffering. Jones’s
only examines the current socio-cultural climate, fashion and lifestyle rags to small-press porn collages are accretions of marks that the artist
but reveals a strategy to short circuit mere publications. These intimate scenes are set in has slowly added over a period of two decades.
viewer consumption. unexpected or even contradictory surroundings Just as Mudman’s costume oppresses move-
such as immaculate, designer-home interiors, ment, the background images in Jones's col-
Hirschhorn studied at the Schule fur Gestaltung, monumental architectural settings, or surreal lages appear weighted down by overlaid webs,
Zirich, from 1978 to 1983. He has had numer- landscapes. This juxtaposition of at least two grids, and creatures that conjure the very world
ous one-person exhibitions, including most kinds of decadence and desire serves to both of fantasy that might be home to Mudman. The
recently Concretion Re, Galerie Chantal Crousel, charge conventional environments and cheerfully material grotesquerie and visceral baseness
Paris, France (2007); Ingeborg Bachmann Altar, normalize same-sex erotic activity. that Jones has consistently uncorked in his
Alexanderplatz Station, Berlin, Germany (2006); work evokes the ugliness of political travesties
United Nations Miniature, 2000, Museo de Arte Christian Holstad received his BFA from the and social injustice.
Contemporaneo de Castilla y, Leon, Spain (2006); Kansas City Art Institute (1994). His work has
Superficial Engagement, Gladstone Gallery, been exhibited in solo exhibitions, including Jones holds a BFA from the Chouinard Art
New York (2006); Concretion, le Creux de |’enfer Christian Holstad, “Containers on the Beach,” Institute (now the California Institute of Arts in
centre d’art contemporain, Thiers, France (2006); Art Basel Miami Beach: Art Positions (2006); Los Angeles) (1971) and an MFA from the Otis
24h Foucault, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2004); Cave- Leather Beach, Prince Deli (Daniel Reich Gal- Art Institute in Los Angeles (1973). A retrospec-
manman, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York lery), New York (2006); Christian Holstad, The tive of Jones’ work was organized by University
(2002); and Thomas Hirschhorn, The Renaissance Terms of Endearment, Museum of Contemporary at Buffalo Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, and
Society and the Art Institute of Chicago (2000). Art, Miami (2006); Beautiful Lies You Could Luckman Fine Arts Complex, California State
Live in, Victoria Miro Gallery, London (2005); University, Los Angeles (2006-08). His work
Group exhibitions that have featured Innocent Killers, Project Room, P.S. 1 Contem- has been exhibited in several solo shows includ-
Hirschhorn’s work include Sao Paolo Bienal porary Art Center, New York (2004); and Gentle ing exhibitions at ArtPace, San Antonio (2003);
(2006); Second International Biennial of Heights presents Christian Holstad’s Sand Day Pierogi Leipzig, Germany (2007 and 2006);
Contemporary Art of Seville, Spain (2006); Into (in Absentia): A Show of Artifacts, Absentia Art Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium (2006 and
Me/Out of Me, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Gallery, New York (2002). 2004); and Pierogi Brooklyn, New York (2005,
New York (2006); Heart of Darkness, Walker Art 2004, and 2002).
Center, Minneapolis (2006); Infinite Painting, Selected group shows include Lyon Biennial of

Contemporary Painting and Global Realism, Villa Contemporary Art (2007); BloodBath and Beyond, Jones has participated in group shows includ-
Manin Centre for Contemporary Art, Passariano, Hiromi Yoshii Gallery, Tokyo, Japan (2007); Thank ing the New York: State of Mind, The House
You for the Music, Spruth Magers Lee, London of World Cultures, Berlin (2007); 52nd Venice
Italy (2006); Notations: Energy Yes!, Philadelphia
Museum of Art (2006); The Green Coffin, Alfonso (2006); Greater New York, P.S. 1 Contemporary Biennial (2007); The Photograph as Canvas,
Artiaco, Napoli, Italy (2006); The Procession, Art Center, New York (2005); the Whitney Biennial, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield,
Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover, Germany
New York (2004); incantations, Metro Pictures, Connecticut (2007); Second International
New York (2004); Prague Biennial (2003); Now Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville, Spain
(2006); and Surprise, Surprise, Institute of Con-
Playing, D’Amelio Terras, New York (2003); Two (2006); Disparities & Deformations: Our
temporary Art, London, England (2006).
For the Road, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New Grotesque, SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico (2004);
[JW] York (2002); and Zeek Sheck Collaboration, The
Knitting Factory, New York (2001).

[EL]
Jones continued Wangechi Mutu Henrik Olesen

Born 1972, Nairobi, Kenya Born 1967, Esbjerg, Denmark

Lives and works in New York Lives and works in Berlin

Artists and Maps: Cartography As a Means of Wangechi Mutu’s wall paintings, collages, and Henrik Olesen uses collage, sculpture, and spa-

Knowing, The Ronna and Eric Hoffman Gallery installations make reference to race, politics, tial interventions to examine the socio-cultural
of Contemporary Art, Lewis & Clark College, fashion, and African identity. Mutu assembles impact of conventional ideas of gender identity
Portland, Oregon (2003); Actual Size, apexart, portraits that challenge media depictions of and the construction of history. Specifically,
New York (1999); Out of Actions: Between Per- fashion, pornography, and ethnography. Her Olesen is interested in the gay and lesbian
formance and the Object 1949-1979 (traveled idiosyncratic renderings of female sexuality experience and the history of repression, cen-
to Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan; catalyze multiple interpretations: each exquisite sure, and ostracism homosexuals have faced.
Museu d’Art Contemporani, Barcelona, Spain; portrait incorporates the contradictions, stereo- Using contemporary and historical sources from
MAK (Austrian Museum of Applied Arts), Vienna, types, and expectations of African women and architecture, the natural sciences, industry, and
Austria; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los the African diaspora. art, Olesen manipulates meanings and shifts
Angeles, 1998-99); and Mapping, The Museum contexts through layering and juxtaposition. By
of Modern Art, New York (1994). Mutu received her BFA in 1996 from The inserting images of twenty-first-century gay porn
Cooper Union, New York, and her MFA in into Max Ernst’s two classic collage series, La
[EL] sculpture from Yale University, New Haven, femme 100 tetes (The Hundred Headed Woman,
Connecticut. She has had numerous solo 1929) and Une semaine de bonté (A Week of
exhibitions including Sleeping Heads Lie, Kindness, 1934), Olesen makes Ernst’s uncanny,
Power House, Memphis, Tennessee (2006); faux, nineteenth-century visual tableaus even
An Alien Eye and Other Killah Anthems, more unsettling.
Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York (2006); The
Chief Lair’s A Holy Mess, The San Francisco Olesen attended The Royal Academy of Fine
Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco (2005); Arts, Copenhagen, Denmark, from 1989-1996,
Problematica, Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles and the Staatliche Hochschule fur Bildende
Projects, Los Angeles (2005); and ArtPace, Kunste, Stadelschule, Frankfurt, Germany,
San Antonio, Texas (2004). from 1995-1997. A selection of his one- and
two-person exhibitions includes Migros
Group exhibitions include Global Feminisms, Museum, Zurich (2007); Galerie Andreas Huber,
The Brooklyn Museum of Art (2007); New York, Vienna (2006); Galerie Daniel Buchholz, K6in,
Interrupted, PMK Gallery, Beijing (2006); 2nd Germany (2005, 2002); Secession, Galerie
Biennial Contemporary Art in Seville, Centro Grafisches Kabinett, Vienna (2004); 1935 1922,
Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo, Spain Sprengel Museum, Hanover, Germany (2003);
(2006); Still Points in the Turning World: SITE Galleria Franco Noero, Turin, Italy (2002);
Santa Fe’s Sixth Annual Biennial, Santa Fe Studiogalerie, Kunstverein Braunschweig,
(2006); African Queen, The Studio Museum in Germany (2001); and Anton Kern Gallery, New
Harlem, New York (2005); Greater New York York (2000).
2005, PS. 1 Contemporary Art Center, New
York (2005); Only Skin Deep Changing Visions Olesen’s work has also been included in
of the American Self, International Center of numerous group exhibitions, such as GNS:
Photography (traveled to San Diego Museum of Global Navigation System, Palais de Tokyo,
Art and Museum of Photographic Arts, Paris (2003); Utopia Station (collaboration with
San Diego, California, 2005); Pin-Up: Kirsten Pieroth), 50th Venice Biennial (2003);
Contemporary Collage and Drawing, Tate Rent-a-bench, Street Project, Los Angeles
Modern, London (2004); and Black President: (2002); Centre of Attraction, 8th Baltic Triennial
The Art and Legacy of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, of International Art, Contemporary Art Center,
The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New Vilnius, Litauen (2002); and Trans Sexual
York (traveled to Yerba Buena Center for the Express Barcelona, First Barcelona Triennial,
Arts, San Francisco, and Barbican Centre, Centre d’Art Santa Monica (2001).
London, 2003).
[JW]
[JW]
138
Martha Rosler Nancy Spero
Born 1943, Brooklyn, New York Born 1926, Cleveland, Ohio
Lives and works in Brooklyn, New York Lives and works in New York

Through her work in video, performance, (traveled to The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, Since the 1960s, Nancy Spero has been
installation, critical writing, photography, and the Austin Museum of Art, Texas, 2006); protesting social and political injustice and
collage, and photomontage, Martha Rosier Persistent Vestiges: Drawings from the American- championing human emancipation through
critiques the explicit and latent ideologies Vietnam War, The Drawing Center, New York her paintings, prints, drawings, and collages.
and institutions that govern contemporary (2005); Liverpool Biennial (2004); The Last Figurative representations of the human body
life. Rosler’s collages disturb the taxonomies Picture Show: Artists Using Photography, 1960- and recognizable characters from history,
through which we interpret our world; art, poli- 1982, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (traveled mythology, and pop culture float, dance, and
tics, desire, and economics collide on Rosler’s to UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, run through Spero’s collages. Spero culls her
surfaces. The elements that make up Rosler’s 2003-2004); The 50th Venice Biennale (2003); source material from books and media, which
collages are drawn primarily from published and Gloria: Another Look at Feminist Art in the she integrates with her own invented imagery—
printed matter, a technique that enables 1970s, White Columns, New York (2002). transformations that inspire us to re-imagine
Rosler to comment not only on the ubiquitous the world we inhabit. Her compositions—
contents of books, magazines, and newspa- [EL] sometime punctuated by text—draw on diverse
pers, but also on the modes of representation artistic traditions including modern posters,
through which those subjects are fed to us as illuminated manuscripts, Chinese scrolls, and
the consumers. ancient Greek, Etruscan, and Egyptian friezes.

Rosler received her MFA from the University Spero received her BFA from the University of
of California at San Diego (1974) and earned Chicago in 1949 and studied art at the Ecole
her BA from Brooklyn College (1965). She des Beaux Arts and Atelier André L’Hote in Paris
has had solo exhibitions at Galerie Christian from 1949-50. Her work has been featured in
Nagel, Berlin (2006 and 2004); Gorney Bravin the following retrospectives: Weighing the Heart
+ Lee, New York (2004); Moderna Museet, Against a Feather of Truth, Centro Galego de Arte
Stockholm (2002); and Maison Européenne de Contemporanea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
la Photographie, Paris (2002). Additional solo (2004) and Nancy Spero: Works Since 1950
exhibitions include Martha Rosler: London (traveled to numerous institutions including the
Garage Sale, Institute of Contemporary Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois;
London (2005); Martha Rosler: If not now, List Visual Arts Center, Massachusetts Institute
when?, Sprengel Museum, Hannover (2005); of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts; The
and Martha Rosler: Positions in the Life World, Power Plant, Toronto, Canada; The New Museum
Generali Foundation, Vienna (traveled to of Contemporary Art, New York, 1987-89). She
MACBA, Barcelona and was shared by the has had solo exhibitions at Galerie Lelong, Paris
International Center of Photography, New York, (2007, 2004); Overtones, Los Angeles (2005);
and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Germany (2002); Barbara
New York, 1999-2000). Gross Galerie, Munich, Germany (2001); and The
Print Center, Philadelphia (2001). Other Worlds:
Recent selected group exhibitions include The Art of Nancy Spero and Kiki Smith appeared
WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, at the Baltic Mill Centre for Contemporary Art,
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles Gateshead, England, in 2003.
(traveled to National Museum of Women in the
Arts, Washington, D.C.; Vancouver Art Gallery, Her work has been shown in many group

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; PS.1 shows most recently in WACK! Art and the
Contemporary Art Center, New York, 2007-08); Feminist Revolution, Museum of Contemporary

Skulptur Projekte Munster (2007); The Downtown Art, Los Angeles (traveled to National Museum

Show: The New York Art Scene 1974-1984, of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.;
Grey Art Gallery, New York University, New York Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, British
Spero continued John Stezaker Kelley Walker

Born 1949, Worcester, UK Born 1969, Columbus, Georgia

Lives and works in London Lives and works in New York

Columbia, Canada; P.S.1 Contemporary Art Driven by an interest in the iconic image, John Kelley Walker treats public media both as a
Center, New York, 2007-08); 52nd Venice Stezaker reinvents, through reassemblage, reflection and agent of contemporary social
Biennale (2007); Persistent Vestiges: Drawings photographs of people and landscapes. anxieties related to race, politics, gender, and

from the American-Vietnam War, Drawing Recently, his explorations of the cut-up collage consumerism. In his collages, these social
Center, New York (2005); Looking at Words: technique brought him to a closer exploration issues are described in a formally vibrant
The Formal Presence of Text in Modern and of the portrait. Stezaker starts with a classic language made of fragments of popular iconic
Contemporary Works on Paper, Andrea Rosen head shot from the Golden Age of Hollywood, imagery coupled with vivid shapes and pat-
Gallery, New York (2005); Gloria: Another Look then modifies it by merging it with a second terns. The ironic juxtapositions that ensue
at Feminist Art of the 1970s, White Columns, movie star portrait from the same decade. emphasize supposed distinctions between fact
New York (2003); Sanctuary: Contemporary The result is a surrealistically morphed, and fiction and call into question the value of
Art and Human Rights, Gallery of Modern often sexually ambiguous, and thoroughly authenticity.
Art, Glasgow, Scotland (2003); Open Ends: unrecognizable being. Memorable features
Contemporary Art from 1960-2001, Museum of that epitomize stardom are completely lost, Walker holds a BFA from the University of
Modern Art, New York (2001); and the Kwangju replaced by a grosteque version of glamour. Tennessee, Knoxville (1995). He has been fea-
Biennale, Korea (2000). Often both horrifying and amusing, Stezaker’s tured in solo exhibitions including Andy Warhol
photo-collages reveal the deep peculiarity of and Sonny Liston fly on Braniff. (When you
{EL] (im) perfect beauty. got it—flaunt it), Paula Cooper Gallery, New
York (2006); Empire Strikes Back (with Wade
Stezaker graduated from The Slade School of Guyton), The Carpenter Center for the Visual
Art in London in 1973. His recent solo shows Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge (2006);
include John Stezaker, Richard Telles Fine Galerie Catherine Bastide, Brussels (2006);
Art, Los Angeles (2006); John Stezaker New The Failever of Judgement Part III (with Wade
Work, Galerie Dennis Kimmerich, Dusseldorf Guyton), Greene Naftali Gallery, New York
(2006); Bridges and Other Metaphors, Norwich (2005); The Failever of Judgement (with Wade
Gallery, Norwich, UK (2006); Archiv & Erzahlung, Guyton), Rheinschau Cologne Art Projects,
Munich Kunstverein (2006); John Stezaker, Cologne (2004); and Paula Cooper Gallery,
White Columns, New York (2006); and The Third New York (2003).
Person Archive and Other Works, The Approach,
London (2004). Walker has participated in group shows,
including Imagination Becomes Reality, ZKM,
Recent group shows include Dereconstruction, Karlsruhe (2007); Day for Night: Whitney
Gladstone Gallery, New York (2006); Tate Biennial 2006, New York; The Gold Standard,
Triennial 2006, Tate Britain, London (2006); P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, New York
Time Lines, Kunstverein Dussledorf (2005); (2006); Infinite Painting: Contemporary Painting
and Cut, The Approach, London (2005). and Global Realism, Villa Manin Center for
Contemporary Art, Passariano, Italy (2006);
[JW] Uncertain States of America, Serpentine Gallery,
London (2006); Make It Now: New Sculptures
in New York, (with Wade Guyton), Sculpture
Center, New York (2005); Post No Bills,
White Columns, New York (2005); The Age of
Optimism, Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich
(2004); Le Rayon Noir, Circuit, Lausanne,
Switzerland (2003); Painting as Paradox, Artists
Space, New York (2002); and Exposition W,
Musee des Beaux Arts, Dole, France (2001).

[EL]
Acknowledgments
Richard Flood, Laura Hoptman, Massimiliano Gioni

In this publication of the new New Museum, which accompanies the second installment
of the exhibition Unmonumental, we would like, above all, to thank the participating artists;
Mark Bradford, Jonathan Hernandez, Thomas Hirschhorn, Christian Holstad, Kim Jones,
Wangechi Mutu, Henrik Olesen, Martha Rosler, Nancy Spero, John Stezaker, and Kelley
Walker. Their work served as an inspiration for this exhibition that aspires to become a
collage in itself.

Many artists in the show have realized site-specific projects: we are extremely thankful for
their generosity and for allowing us to premiere entirely new series and bodies of work. The
artists have also contributed to the publication with writings, texts, and interviews, trans-
forming this book into a unique introduction to their practices, giving readers the opportu-
nity to enter in their studios, listen to their voices, and observe their creative processes up
close. In other words, this book is truly the result of the artists’ vision, a fact made evident
by the close participation of Conny Purtill, its designer.

Over the past year we have worked closely with many talented individuals who have con-
tributed to realizing this exhibition, with all its different installments and its many practical
and financial challenges. Firstly, we would like to thank Lisa Phillips, the Toby Devan Lewis
Director of the New Museum, for believing in and supporting our vision. Lisa Roumell,
Chief Operating Officer and John Hatfield, Associate Director, played crucial and irreplace-
able roles in helping make an idea become a reality and pushing the boundaries of what
museums can do.

This publication was overseen with great competence and even greater patience by Melanie
Franklin Cohn, Publications Manager, under the direction of Karen Wong, Director of External
Affairs. We are thankful to both for their help.

We are pleased to have been able to collaborate with the publishing house Electa and wish
to thank, particularly, Martina Mondadori and Valentina Lindon for their enthusiasm and
expertise in the creation of this book.

Eva Diaz, Joanne Leonhardt Cassullo Curatorial Fellow, helped coordinate the research of
artists’ materials and texts, while New Museum interns Jenn Wirtz and Emily Liebert helped
us in realizing this publication through their research and written contributions. Pomona
College Museum of Art, Aleksandra Mir, Steven Durland, Linda Burnham, and Norwich Gallery
generously gave permissions for the reprints of the artists’ texts and interviews.
The entire staff of the New Museum helped shepherd this exhibition to its opening, but we
must gratefully acknowledge Alice Arias, Director of Finance and Administration; Maria
Dimitriou, Associate Development Director for Grants; Betsy Ely, Administrative Assistant;
Kellie Feltman, Registrar; Hendrik Gerrits, Installation Coordinator; Regan L. Grusy, Director
of Development; Jennifer Heslin, Director of Retail and Institutional Sales; and Valentina
Spalten, Curatorial Intern, all of whom lent their expertise to the project.

Benjamin Godsill, Curatorial Assistant, worked on both the research and the organiza-
tion of the exhibition, and, as always, his help has been crucial for keeping things running
smoothly and coming out successfully.

Outside the museum, the following individuals lent their support during the research and
organization of the exhibition and catalog: Jake Miller, The Approach; Daniel Buchholz
and Christopher Muller, Daniel Buchholz Gallery; Paula Cooper and Steve Henry, Paula
Cooper Gallery; Barbara Gladstone and Max Falkenstein, Gladstone Gallery; Romain Lopes
and Sophie Pulicani, Thomas Hirschhorn Studio; Jose Kuri, Monica Manzutto and Amelia
Hinojosa, kurimanzutto; Mary Sabbatino, Galerie Lelong; Jay Gorney, Mitchell-Innes and
Nash; Joe Amrhein, Susan Swenson and Summer Guthery, Pierogi 2000; Daniel Reich, Laura
Higgins and Jeff Tranchell, Daniel Reich Gallery; Brent Sikkema, Michael Jenkins and Ellie
Bronson, Sikkema Jenkins & Co.; Meredyth Sparks, Kelley Walker Studio; Matthew Higgs,
White Columns; Sandra Q. Firmin, University of Buffalo; and Frank Demaegd, Zeno X Gallery.

Finally, we would like to thank the lenders who generously parted with works for this show.
The exhibition would not be possible without their kind cooperation.

142
Photo Credits New Museum New Museum
Board of Trustees Staff

Alfonso Artiaco Gallery, Napoli: 36-43 Saul Dennison, President Alice Arias, Director of Finance and Administration
The Approach, London: 108-115 Tom Brumley, Director of Operations
Arndt & Partner Gallery, Berlin: 36=43 Shelley Fox Aarons, M.D. Andrea Cirelli, Development Assistant
Juan Carlos Avendano, photographer: 20-23 Dieter Bogner Melanie Franklin Cohn, Publications Manager
Daniel Reich Gallery, New York: 46-53 James-Keith Brown Rya Conrad-Bradshaw, Education Center and
FXP Photography, London: 108-115 Henry Buhl Web Coordinator
Gladstone Gallery, New York: 36-43 Jon Diamond Lauren Cornell, Director, Rhizome
Jonathan Hernandez and kurimanzutto, Mitzi Eisenberg Maria Dimitriou, Associate Development
Mexico City: 26-33 Susan Feinstein Director, Grants
Kim Jones and Pierogi, New York: 56-63 William E. Ford Brian Dore, Staff Accountant
Henrik Olesen and Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Stephanie French Betsy Ely, Reception/Administrative Assistant
Cologne: 76-83 John Friedman Gabriel Einsohn, Communications Director
©Martha Rosler, courtesy Mitchell-Innes & Nash, Sunny Y. Goldberg Kellie Feltman, Registrar
New York: 88-95 Lola Goldring Richard Flood, Chief Curator
Jason Frank Rothenberg, photographer: 47 Manuel E. Gonzalez Perry Garvin, Webmaster Plus
Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York: 16-23, 66-73 Ellie Gordon Hendrik Gerrits, Exhibition and Installation Coordinator
© Nancy Spero, courtesy Galerie Lelong, Dave Heller Massimiliano Gioni, Director of Special Exhibitions
New York: 98-105 Maja Hoffmann Benjamin Godsill, Curatorial Assistant
Stephen Friedman Gallery, London: 36-43 Ruth Horowitz Regan Grusy, Director of Development
© Kelley Walker, courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, Dakis Joannou Ellen Guan, Accounting Manager
New York: 120-127 Michele Gerber Klein John Hatfield, Associate Director
© Kelley Walker, courtesy Musée de Beaux Arts, Jill Kraus Jennifer Heslin, Director of Retail and Institutional Sales
Nancy: 126, 127 Joan Lazarus Laura Hoptman, Senior Curator
Toby Devan Lewis Amanda Jacobs, Executive Assistant
Eugenio Lopez Eungie Joo, Director and Curator of Education and
James C.A. McClennen, Vice President and Treasurer Public Programs

lris Marden Elon Joseph, Security

Tim Nye Anya Lewis, Campaign Director
William A. Palmer Regan Lynn, Associate Development Director,
Steven M. Pesner Membership

Nancy Delman Portnoy Patrick May, Director of Technology, Rhizome

Aby Rosen Marc Mayer, Associate Educator
Ron Rosenzweig Cybele Maylone, Associate Development Director,
Paul T. Schnell, Vice President and Secretary Councils and Corporate Membership

Laura Skoler, Vice President Nesta Mayo, Special Sales Coordinator

Jerome L. Stern Joanna Merrill, Membership Assistant
Dianne Wallace Angela Nevarez, Special Events Director
John S. Wotowicz Marisa Olson, Rhizome Editor and Curator
Herbert Pfostl, Assistant Book Buyer
Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis Director, ex-officio Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis Director

Lisa Roumell, Chief Operating Officer, ex-officio David Rager, Senior Designer and Production Manager
Peter Robinson, Information Systems Manager
Lisa Roumell, Chief Operating Officer
Cris Scorza, Exhibition Tours Coordinator
Hakan Topal, New Media Projects Manager
Eugenie Tung, Database Manager
Ann Wachnicki, Marketing and Communications
Assistant
Karen Wong, Director of External Affairs
Collage: The Unmonumental Picture is published
on the occasion of the exhibition Unmonumental
presented at the New Museum, New York.

Unmonumental is curated by Richard Flood,

Laura Hoptman, and Massimiliano Gioni

The Collage: The Unmonumental Picture catalog

has been made possible by the J. McSweeney
and G. Mills Publications Fund at the New
Museum. The Unmonumental exhibition has
been made possible by lead corporate support
from BNP Paribas. Additional support for the
exhibition has been provided by The Andy
Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Horace
W. Goldsmith Foundation, and the Toby Devan
Lewis Emerging Artists Exhibitions Fund.

© 2007 New Museum of Contemporary Art

All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems,
or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,
or otherwise, without the prior permission of the
copyright holder.

© 2007 T. Hirschhorn by SIAE 2007

© 2007 Mondadori Electa S.p.A., Milano

All rights reserved.

Managing editor: Melanie Franklin Cohn

Designer: Purtill Family Business
This volume was printed by Mondadori Electa S.p.A.
at Verona Mondadori Printing S.p.A. in 2007

Distributed by Mondadori Electa; distributed

in the US and UK by Merrell Publishers

ISBN: 9-781858-944470
COLLAGE: lonumental
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MARK BRADFORD
JONATHAN HERNANDEZ
or Seer THOMAS HIRSCHHORN
Aa CHRISTIAN HOLSTAD

JUNI ii) = tM ones

JelitaddecleShae hemes WANGECHI MUTU
MERRELL HENRIK OLESEN
Beas eee MARTHA ROSLER
NEW NANCY SPERO
JOHN STEZAKER
MUSEUM KELLEY WALKER