The Whole Story: Green Lantern Programming 2007/2007
From September 2006 to July 2007, The Green Lantern hosted nine exhibitions that, in one way or another, addressed the postmodern condition. While each exhibition was independent from the rest, and while each artist was working on his or her own thematic basis, the umbrella under which those shows sat stemmed from a private interest in what it means to make authentic work when one is simultaneously plagued with self-awareness. That exhibition season was the beginning. It served as the necessary start to bigger questions. To some, postmodernism might seem a tired question to address. Probably those same complain that the world of art has not gotten beyond itself and broken new ground in several years. I would argue that in order to break new ground, one must first explore the dirty banalities that keep one tethered to the past. In other words, it is my hope that this linear, thematic progression will lead the audience out of the postmodern hall of mirrors and into new territories of artistic enterprise.
The journey was not previously divulged. In some sense the audience that had so far attended events probably did so unaware. I don’t expect that they know what they are in for. I expect most people are satisfied with the monthly exhibition and do not need an explanation for why one show might follow the next. That is appropriate. I don’t suppose I would ask such questions either. But, for those who do, and those who wish to participate in another kind of dialogue—perhaps most of all, for my own creative exploration of the world—I divulge this now. The postmodern condition, as I see it, is tightly wound around identity, the self (a thing inseparable from identity), and the self contextualized by what has been done before. As such a discreet thing it is small to itself, overcome with ironies and essentially sentimental: because it hopes for the miracle of greatness to rain down in a gesture of particular and private kindness. This self has a small shiv and with that shiv, flayed the king of the wood only to thereafter climb his tree to safety. That self is the star in its own movie. It is fashionable, soft spoken and endearingly unremarkable. Its strengths lie in the identity of stories, private experiences and jokes. Basically it has painted itself into a corner: into that hall of mirrors. That was, again, 2006/2007.
2007/2008 will be another kind of story at The Green Lantern. It is now another kind of therapy. Where before the awkwardness of effort was drawn out and pinned to the wall like any softly moving butterfly or moth, what will follow is an imposed death. I believe that inciting a progression towards “death” will enable The Green Lantern to thereafter show new works that come, not from a place of postmodernism, but from a place of post-postmodernism. With the permission of these artists, whose work again stand independently and is not contingent on the ulterior motive, that small shiv-self in the highest most vulnerable part of that tree will be shot, will fall down, suffer most brutally (the little child with mittens hanging on strings in a red winter coat, suffering alone in the snow: yes, this is the part of the journey that you were not informed about. It’s going to happen. It’s going to be O.K. You’ll freak out, have a seizure and cry like a baby because you’ll think that you’re never going to get up again. At a certain point you will just give up entirely, convince yourself that no one is coming to your rescue. You’ll stop crying, become resigned, forget that you’re cold and become, simply, mesmerized by the trees whose unleafy tops will be leaning to and fro with the barest creak in some wind that you can’t even hear. And that is when you’ll see I wasn’t lying. You will be O.K. You’re not actually going to die after all. It’s just that you had to stop being afraid of death, vulnerability, transparency and the dangerous hope for an inherent significance before you could ever really do anything you felt was dangerous or worthwhile).
I don’t expect you to believe me yet. For instance, death must first be defined. Clearly it is a metaphor. Also, it is the proto-typical hero’s journey: the hero is always admitted into the underworld and thereafter becomes a hero, having somehow gone beyond the boundaries of mortal life. If the underworld is not literal, what would it mean? What would it mean to die in life? In this case, death begins as a kind of disassociation. First the individual becomes isolated from his environment. First he divides himself, as anyone, in terms of subject/object, through which he believes he has created order, and therefore makes himself powerful. Yet upon the realization of this, and upon the realization of his flawed imposition of order, he discovers loneliness. This is clear in Daniel Anhorn’s exhibition, “Over the Map.”
Thereafter that individual becomes alienated from her environment. She loses a sense of place or ownership. Her life is led under the surface and outside of society. She does not belong to the greater web of human order, the order that once she created, but feels distinct from that and clings to a smaller group of similarly disenfranchised people. “At Six O’clock We Eat” is a show of Chicago’s Lower Wacker inhabitants. It includes visual experiments made after a free meal at The Dignity Diner, a video and oral histories of those same homeless.
The following show, “Pascua” by Nicholas Kashian, will showcase a number of works that demonstrate more isolation. Here the individual is isolated from the family—images of which were first found in the trash and then appropriated for larger deconstructed paintings, where two different families of different race are layered, one on top of the other. In this exhibition the shiv-self draws inward, indulging the private self that seems a bastion of security compared to the arduous task of relating to discarded familial structures. This is the launch for fantasy and delirium: the fever that precedes the death.
It continues in the group show “If you were the last one on earth,” where disassociated objects stand as abstract objects in and of themselves, signifiers separated from what they signify. Reinforcing the fact that you, the audience, the individual, the he and the she, have lost touch with what the original sources meant. At first it is hilarious, fun, hysterical and eventually becomes lonely and mad.
Hiro Sakaguchi, a Philadelphia artist, is curating a show called “Useless Weapon,” featuring artists from both Pennsylvania and Chicago. This show will explore the futility of violence as one who looks back, already so disassociated from its reality, and as though dumb-drunk, puzzles over its meaning. Here the self will steer away once more from the brutal reality, again pulling inward, re-devising the mystery of violence, recreating a medieval pastiche through expert hands and childish eyes. “The Safest Place in the World” is a show about shivs and friendships. It is the beginning of the turn around. It is the beginning of rebirth. It is about cartoon gore, where violence is no longer as frightening as it first seemed.
In rebirth there is a restlessness, and restlessness lends a pinch. Knowledge that one has survived and the relief of survival. The simultaneous fret of what responsibilities ensue after Odysseus comes back from the underworld, or Aenead or even Pinocchio. And then there is another sense, a sense of readiness, a sense of spring. Here Amanda Browder’s soft sculptural installation, “CYCLONE” will burst from the room, it’s own catastrophe, full of it’s chaotic promise—yet here it is made as a promise, not a destruction, it is the cartoon comic taking shape and being realized in three dimensions, filling the space with color and bringing to the audience a loud proclamation of the so far quiet whispers of fantasy.
What is to follow after this? One cannot be sure. Stay posted for 2008/2009…at the very least I can tell you the process of curation will change. It will no longer be the endeavor of myself having conversations with myself about what is possible. Instead there is a new Selection Committee afoot. A committee of three: myself, Daniel Anhorn and Elizabeth Chodos. Together, we will meet and examine the various possible directions that can come from a death such as this. We will discuss collectives, non-art objects, and whimsy with serious stakes. It should be great. And as always, we are indebted to your interest. Send any and all feedback to lantern.g@gmail.com.
All the best,
Caroline Picard
Founding Director
