Latham Zearfoss: Intents & Purposes
ANDREW RAFACZ begins the year with INTENTS & PURPOSES, a solo exhibition of sculpture, installation and video by Latham Zearfoss. The exhibition continues through Saturday, March 4, 2017.
Referencing the design and logic of a department store setting, the sculptural and time-based works in INTENTS & PURPOSES aim to playfully converse between tropes of market culture and political interventions, each with their own method of display.
The viewer is initially confronted in Gallery One with a series of artist made kiosk-like pedestals supporting both sculptural and functioning screens. These self-standing entertainment centers ascend in size, along with the objects they support, with the initial one holding a flat screen television looping a new video work by Zearfoss. The Butlers Did It features two central characters modeled after science fiction author Octavia Butler and philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler. Built from stock footage of a black woman and a white woman, the video contains a series of vignettes in a hospital setting, with the two figures activating a discourse through their written texts across divergent scenarios of healing. Their quotes, pulled from each authors鈥� oeuvres, are presented through voice over via two Chicago-based artists playing the respective roles.
Zearfoss also presents DYNAMITE, an installation of 18 bundled unlit birthday candles standing upright on a narrow opaque plinth. An homage to Laquan McDonald, this subtly political work celebrates his life and memory and reminds the viewer of this awful tragedy and its continued reverberations.
A third installation will be comprised of individual handmade bricks of bergamot and lavender soap and mimic the architecture of a cell. The interior space, initially closed off to viewers, will be revealed throughout the exhibition as the bricks are acquired by the gallery鈥檚 patrons and removed.
Finally, the artist presents a new video projection and installation in Gallery Two. Dirge is comprised of a single shot of an ascending escalator in disrepair at Chicago鈥檚 Fullerton Avenue CTA station. Although functioning normally, the escalator makes a tonally dynamic and haunting song as it runs without passengers. Zearfoss transcribed the footage鈥檚 field recording into musical notation and produced a new partially improvised choral soundtrack that mimics the original source. He has paired this recital, in three voices, with the original audio, creating a richly textured sonic landscape, partnered with the low-grade video. While the imagery suggests an infinite escalation, the soundtrack undercuts this mechanized optimism with a somber, wordless lyricism.
Employing a faux-funhouse setting, these installations will create a kind of truce between disparate discourses. In doing so, Zearfoss asks us how marginal publics might harness the language and effects of consumer culture. The artist investigates the limits and possibilities of the pursuit of political and spiritual liberation within our current culture, by remixing historical and mythologized sources in an effort to highlight the hidden subtexts of radical potential.
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ANDREW RAFACZ begins the year with INTENTS & PURPOSES, a solo exhibition of sculpture, installation and video by Latham Zearfoss. The exhibition continues through Saturday, March 4, 2017.
Referencing the design and logic of a department store setting, the sculptural and time-based works in INTENTS & PURPOSES aim to playfully converse between tropes of market culture and political interventions, each with their own method of display.
The viewer is initially confronted in Gallery One with a series of artist made kiosk-like pedestals supporting both sculptural and functioning screens. These self-standing entertainment centers ascend in size, along with the objects they support, with the initial one holding a flat screen television looping a new video work by Zearfoss. The Butlers Did It features two central characters modeled after science fiction author Octavia Butler and philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler. Built from stock footage of a black woman and a white woman, the video contains a series of vignettes in a hospital setting, with the two figures activating a discourse through their written texts across divergent scenarios of healing. Their quotes, pulled from each authors鈥� oeuvres, are presented through voice over via two Chicago-based artists playing the respective roles.
Zearfoss also presents DYNAMITE, an installation of 18 bundled unlit birthday candles standing upright on a narrow opaque plinth. An homage to Laquan McDonald, this subtly political work celebrates his life and memory and reminds the viewer of this awful tragedy and its continued reverberations.
A third installation will be comprised of individual handmade bricks of bergamot and lavender soap and mimic the architecture of a cell. The interior space, initially closed off to viewers, will be revealed throughout the exhibition as the bricks are acquired by the gallery鈥檚 patrons and removed.
Finally, the artist presents a new video projection and installation in Gallery Two. Dirge is comprised of a single shot of an ascending escalator in disrepair at Chicago鈥檚 Fullerton Avenue CTA station. Although functioning normally, the escalator makes a tonally dynamic and haunting song as it runs without passengers. Zearfoss transcribed the footage鈥檚 field recording into musical notation and produced a new partially improvised choral soundtrack that mimics the original source. He has paired this recital, in three voices, with the original audio, creating a richly textured sonic landscape, partnered with the low-grade video. While the imagery suggests an infinite escalation, the soundtrack undercuts this mechanized optimism with a somber, wordless lyricism.
Employing a faux-funhouse setting, these installations will create a kind of truce between disparate discourses. In doing so, Zearfoss asks us how marginal publics might harness the language and effects of consumer culture. The artist investigates the limits and possibilities of the pursuit of political and spiritual liberation within our current culture, by remixing historical and mythologized sources in an effort to highlight the hidden subtexts of radical potential.
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