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Adrian Piper The Mythic Being, 1973

Adrian Piper
The Mythic Being, 1973
performance based video
0:08:00

Adrian Piper The Mythic Being, 1973

Adrian Piper
The Mythic Being, 1973
performance based video
0:08:00

Slavs and Tatars Tatars

Slavs and Tatars Tatars
Mystical Protest, 2011
paint on silk-screened fabric, fluorescent lights
94.49 x 244.09 inches
(240 x 620 cm)

Slavs and Tatars Tatars

Slavs and Tatars Tatars
Mystical Protest, 2011
paint on silk-screened fabric, fluorescent lights
94.49 x 244.09 inches
​(240 x 620 cm)

Cathy Wilkes Untitled, 2012

Cathy Wilkes
Untitled, 2012
oil on canvas
10.04 x 7.28 x .59 inches
(25.5 x 18.5 x 1.5 cm)

Cathy Wilkes Untitled, 2008

Cathy Wilkes
Untitled, 2008
fish tank, bowls, food packets, toys
51.18 x 27.56 x 22.05 inches
(130 x 70 x 56 cm)

Cathy Wilkes Untitled, 2008

Cathy Wilkes
Untitled, 2008
fish tank, bowls, food packets, toys
51.18 x 27.56 x 22.05 inches
(130 x 70 x 56 cm)

Mierle Landerman Ukeles

Mierle Landerman Ukeles
Washing/Tracks/Maintenance: Inside, July 22, 1973, 1973
nine black-and-white photographs, two text pages
(3) 16 x 20 inches (40.6 x 50.8 cm) black and white photographs
(6) 20 x 16 inches (50.8 x 40.6 cm) black and white photographs
overall: 66 x 66.5 inches
(167.6 x 168.9 cm)

Mierle Landerman Ukeles

Mierle Landerman Ukeles
Washing/Tracks/Maintenance: Inside, July 22, 1973, 1973
nine black-and-white photographs, two text pages
(3) 16 x 20 inches (40.6 x 50.8 cm) black and white photographs
(6) 20 x 16 inches (50.8 x 40.6 cm) black and white photographs
overall: 66 x 66.5 inches
(167.6 x 168.9 cm)

Mierle Landerman Ukeles

Mierle Landerman Ukeles
Washing/Tracks/Maintenance: Inside, July 22, 1973, 1973
nine black-and-white photographs, two text pages
(3) 16 x 20 inches (40.6 x 50.8 cm) black and white photographs
(6) 20 x 16 inches (50.8 x 40.6 cm) black and white photographs
overall: 66 x 66.5 inches
(167.6 x 168.9 cm)

Matthew Brannon Contents of his wallet., 2011

Matthew Brannon
Contents of his wallet., 2011
linen, paper, acrylic, enamel and ink collage
24 x 18 inches
(61 x 45.7 cm)

Andrea Büttner Tent, (marquee), 2012

Andrea Büttner
Tent, (marquee), 2012
woodcut
diptych, each: 76.77 x 48.43 inches
(195 x 123 cm)

Andrea Büttner Tent, (marquee), 2012

Andrea Büttner
Tent, (marquee), 2012
woodcut
diptych, each: 76.77 x 48.43 inches
(195 x 123 cm)

Dieter Roth / Björn Roth

Dieter Roth / Björn Roth
Table Hegenheimerstrasse, 1980-2010
acrylic paint, pencil, felt tip pen, marker, ball pen and collage (plastic adhesive tape, transparent foil) on chipboard; 2 sawhorses, chair, lamp, ceramic jar, glass jars, brushes, markers, pens, scissors, utility knife, paint cans, spray paint can, paper towel, cardboard tray of oil color paint
48.03 x 64.76 inches
(122 x 164.5 cm)

Dieter Roth / Björn Roth

Dieter Roth / Björn Roth
Table Hegenheimerstrasse, 1980-2010
acrylic paint, pencil, felt tip pen, marker, ball pen and collage (plastic adhesive tape, transparent foil) on chipboard; 2 sawhorses, chair, lamp, ceramic jar, glass jars, brushes, markers, pens, scissors, utility knife, paint cans, spray paint can, paper towel, cardboard tray of oil color paint
48.03 x 64.76 inches
(122 x 164.5 cm)

Uri Aran Dear Tenants (B), 2012

Uri Aran
Dear Tenants (B), 2012
mixed media
wall piece: 48 x 96 inches
(121.9 x 243.8 cm)
framed drawing: 18 1/2 x 23 1/2 inches
(47 x 59.7 cm)

Uri Aran Dear Tenants (B), 2012

Uri Aran
Dear Tenants (B), 2012
mixed media
wall piece: 48 x 96 inches
(121.9 x 243.8 cm)
framed drawing: 18 1/2 x 23 1/2 inches
(47 x 59.7 cm)

Nairy Baghramian The Broo, 2009-2012

Nairy Baghramian
The Broo, 2009-2012
mash wire, silicon, glass, label, light fixture, painted metal, epoxy resin
dimensions variable

Nairy Baghramian The Broo, 2009-2012

Nairy Baghramian
The Broo, 2009-2012
mash wire, silicon, glass, label, light fixture, painted metal, epoxy resin
dimensions variable

Nairy Baghramian The Broo, 2009-2012

Nairy Baghramian
The Broo, 2009-2012
mash wire, silicon, glass, label, light fixture, painted metal, epoxy resin
dimensions variable

Nairy Baghramian The Broo, 2009-2012

Nairy Baghramian
The Broo, 2009-2012
mash wire, silicon, glass, label, light fixture, painted metal, epoxy resin
dimensions variable

Nairy Baghramian The Broo, 2009-2012

Nairy Baghramian
The Broo, 2009-2012
mash wire, silicon, glass, label, light fixture, painted metal, epoxy resin
dimensions variable

Rosalind Nashashibi Carlo's Vision, 2011

Rosalind Nashashibi
Carlo's Vision, 2011
16mm color film with sound
11:14

Rosalind Nashashibi Carlo's Vision, 2011

Rosalind Nashashibi
Carlo's Vision, 2011
16mm color film with sound
11:14

Rosalind Nashashibi Carlo's Vision, 2011

Rosalind Nashashibi
Carlo's Vision, 2011
16mm color film with sound
11:14

Andrea Büttner Tent (two colours), 2012

Andrea Büttner
Tent (two colours), 2012
woodcut
54 3/4 x 89 3/4 inches
(139.1 x 228 cm)
framed:
59 3/4 x 94 3/4 x 1 1/2 inches
(151.8 x 240.7 x 3.8 cm)

Andrea Büttner Tent (two colours), 2012

Andrea Büttner
Tent (two colours), 2012
woodcut
54 3/4 x 89 3/4 inches
(139.1 x 228 cm)
framed:
59 3/4 x 94 3/4 x 1 1/2 inches
(151.8 x 240.7 x 3.8 cm)

Laure Prouvost Burrow Me, 2009

Laure Prouvost
Burrow Me, 2009
video
6 mins

Laure Prouvost Burrow Me, 2009

Laure Prouvost
Burrow Me, 2009
video
6 mins

Andrea Büttner Untitled (Three Kings), 2012

Andrea Büttner
Untitled (Three Kings), 2012
woodcut on paper
51.18 x 84.25 inches
(130 x 214 cm)

Andrea Büttner Untitled (Three Kings), 2012

Andrea Büttner
Untitled (Three Kings), 2012
woodcut on paper
51.18 x 84.25 inches
(130 x 214 cm)

Uri Aran Dear Tenants (A), 2012

Uri Aran
Dear Tenants (A), 2012
mixed media
30 x 48 x 24 inches
(76.2 x 121.9 x 61 cm)

Uri Aran Dear Tenants (A), 2012

Uri Aran
Dear Tenants (A), 2012
mixed media
30 x 48 x 24 inches
(76.2 x 121.9 x 61 cm)

新闻稿

The Assistants explores the transitive potential of art, including how artworks can take on attendant guises and play assisting roles, serving as custodians of memory while also producing resistant gestures and deviant substitutions. The exhibition features new works developed specifically for this context, including several by artists who will be seen in Los Angeles for the first time, as well as a number of postwar works of historical importance that help give contour to its field of inquiry.

The latter include Adrian Piper’s video The Mythic Being, 1975, and Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ maintenance art event, Washing/Tracks/Maintenance: Inside, July 22, 1973, in which the role-playing of gender and labor is destabilized and typology is upended, disrupting social narrative through acts of excess and attunement that unsettle empathic identification. Everyday acts become performative moments of crisis, fear, and seduction.

Throughout the show, memory becomes corporeal, a symptom in the continuity of events. Just as the bracing guardian-like figures and spectral painting of Cathy Wilkes’ work further elaborates artistic practice as a form of heightened attentiveness and strange company, Andrea Büttner’s prints bear out a reverent yet roughhewn approach to catharsis through an iconographic investigation of devotion, entreaty, and loss.

Alongside such seemingly self-effacing gestures, works by Uri Aran, Matthew Brannon, Dieter Roth, and Laure Prouvost open up the transitive to a secondary register of residual composition and wayward narrative. Delving further into material transference and linguistic re-tracing, an atmosphere of genre forms, caricature, and estranged typography is encountered wherein impoverished tableaux are populated with objects and words standing in for each other, outmaneuvering references and familiarity.

Existing between behavior and function, titles and characters morph into comic hybrids that become surrogate. Equally anxious and ecstatic, works repeatedly slip into a gap of metaphysical doubt, reaching out to trip the viewer further along the path of substitution, as in Slavs and Tatars’ Mystical Protest, 2011, whereby a welcoming gesture induces erasure and canny replacement.

Modes of arrival act as way stations for sentiment here, occupying a mode of transition and modification. A stand-in aesthetic of revision animates the restive, shape-shifting minimalism of Nairy Baghramian’s sculptural scenography even as Rosalind Nashashibi’s film Carlo’s Vision, 2011, guides the viewer into an uneasy allegory of revelation and economic critique, equal parts corruption and impatient epiphany. Repeatedly exploring how the message gives way to the role of the messenger, The Assistants looks to art as a mode of direct translation and narrated difference.

Resigned to respond and generate rather than fix meaning, The Assistants are inalienable and moving within and among us, writes Walter Benjamin, “None has a firm place in the world, or firm, inalienable outlines… There is not one that is not either rising or falling, none that is not trading qualities with its enemy or neighbor, none that has not completed its time and yet is unripe, none that is not deeply exhausted and yet is only at the beginning of a long existence.”¹

For it is in the act of setting out, the act of seeking, in taking on the direct translation, the digging from here to an unknown elsewhere, that transmission reveals its significance. The message is secondary to the role of messenger, the task of art remains always unfinished.

 

—Fionn Meade

 

The Assistants is accompanied by a publication featuring artist contributions, designed and distributed by Mousse Publishing.
¹ Walter Benjamin, “Franz Kafka” in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 2: 1927-1934 (Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 799