Pope.L. Desert; installation view, Steve Turner, 2015. Courtesy of the Artist. © Pope.L.

History, trapped, bubbles up in each site and in the space and time between them. Do you know how forests became deserts? The driving tour answers, but only after a voice warns that while there aren’t any tricks in the physical artwork, the audio portion of this exhibition might have some. Continuing on S. Cochran Ave, the guide finally divulges, “Forest is just oil in another lifetime … a forest will become a desert and.” The audio stops mid-clause.

Pope.L twists gaps and opens up fissures. Sentences stop mid-meaning. Logographic texts, such as “& – ,, +,” line the walls of Desert at Steve Turner as isolated interpolators of written language. Words are pushed in and out of near-identity—destiny becomes “dustiny” becomes destiny—simultaneously signaling a boundary and a connection. There is total removal: an erasure haunted by another erasure, a package never opened. Desert is populated by Pope.L’s pristine sculptures of eraser heads, pink and propped up on stands or tilted on the floor, punctured with holes. Nigger Eraser (1998–2002), a deodorant container, modified with marker, chocolate, and cellophane tape, is the oldest piece of Pope.L’s work shown in Desert.

Pope.L photo-bombs history, interjecting his likeness into 19th-century photographs of black caretakers in Servants, a series of manipulated photos. Pope.L’s likeness peers out of a window, merges with a donkey’s face, replaces a white child’s face, and multiplies as donkey droppings among other transformative infiltrations.

Pope.L. Desert; installation view, Steve Turner, 2015. Courtesy of the Artist. © Pope.L.

Obi Sunt (2015) is a 35-minute film that weaves images from a rare photo album of the 1906 Gans–Nelson fight, recent footage from Goldfield, Nevada, and poetic text. Screen-gazing in an air-conditioned gallery, the viewer sees Pope.L walking through the desert alongside a road. He is walking with a single-socked foot dragging along the blacktop, one shoe on his left foot, one shoe in hand, a backpack over his shoulder, and a boxer’s towel on his temple, shrouding his face from the sun. RVs and automobiles careen around the artist and his stilted gait. In the dry heat of Goldfield, Nevada on September 3, 1906, Joe Gans fights 42 rounds against Battling Nelson, and in that desert, in these United States, there is an unseen ceiling—a ceiling that was felt by Joe Gans that came down and crushed him in a cycle of opportunities with regressive gains. Our Icarus never gets to fly up off the dusty ground, but he remains the greatest lightweight boxer of all time. The film is framed by painted bleachers, and lies behind a velvet-curtained stage-like apparatus, making viewers a spectator in this blood sport. The title Obi Sunt is a play on ubi-sunt (where are they?)—a Latin phrase meaning “those who came before us.” “Forest is just oil in another lifetime.”

Peanut-butter-covered stuffed animals are mounted on wood like sticky trophies in Forest at Susanne Vielmetter. They hang above lush green curtains that divide space and act as passageways. One curtain opens, not to another room, but to a large, seated portrait of a 19th-century African American woman. The portrait is a mash-up of cultural signifiers: A ceramic pot shaped as a head holds a giant sunflower sitting on an intricate rug. The sitter leans her head on her hands, holding a chain that leads to a horseshoe on her lap.

Pope.L. Forest; installation view, Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, 2015. Courtesy of the Artist. © Pope.L.

The clean, stage-like theatricality of Desert at Steve Turner is balanced by the breadth of perishable, body-related materials presented at Susanne Vielmetter: racist cartoons drawn on aging Pop-Tarts, teddy bears covered in peanut butter, O.J. Simpson’s floss. Pope.L’s monochromatic Favorite Painting series twists the logic of racial stereotypes. One of his Skin Set paintings reads, “Gold People Are Black Children.”

Throughout all of these works, Pope.L gathers the everyday material signs of race to turn them on their head, conjuring a subversion of an intangible ideology. In his GPS guide, Pope.L’s narrator thinks, from afar, that the trees of the forest are people, only to bicycle closer and find that they are, in fact, trees. This may be one of those aforementioned tricks: a theatrical misdirection. The trees are people, and the inscrutable forest is the racist ideological structure in between and all around us.

Pope.L: Desert and Pope.L: Forest are on view through December 5, 2015, at Steve Turner and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects respectively.

Nicola Dale. Model for Ideology VI, 2015; durational performance. Courtesy of Mark Devereux Projects.

Dale often works on one subject or idea for an extended period, in distinctive bodies that incorporate various forms and approaches. Her ongoing series Models for Ideology is one such examination. Model for Ideology VI (2015) was a durational performance in which the artist—clad in black pants, shirt, and ballet socks—stood for an extended period with long, thin wooden dowels stuck under her foot, chin, arms, and hips, simultaneously forcing her into and supporting her in a contrapposto stance. The Models for Ideology create a series of support systems that constrain movement and make it precarious; ideologies work in the same way by creating a set of principles and expectations in which to operate but also struggle to extend beyond, systems which are durable and somehow always in flux.

Nicola Dale. Model for Ideology I, 2014; wood, foam board, paper; 98 ½ x 12 x 12 in. Courtesy of Mark Devereux Projects.

Dale’s sculptures, such as Model for Ideology I (2014), embody this play between sturdiness and instability. Made of wood, foam board, and paper, Model for Ideology I also presents like a contemporary architectural model for a steel and glass tower of Babel, the ultimate conflation of ideologies expressed in a profusion of languages, which, when brought to bear upon one another all at once, creates utter meaninglessness.

Nicola Dale. Model for Ideology III, 2014; wood, leatherette, waxed thread, pencils; dimensions variable. Courtesy of Mark Devereux Projects.

Dale describes Model for Ideology I and Model for Ideology III as addressing “the ebb and flow of ideologies as they encircle and overlap us. Models I–III take the traditional sizes of books as their starting point and explore the slow demise of a certain kind of knowledge.” From one book-shaped red rectangle to the next, like dominoes of increasing scale, Model for Ideology III is a series of dowels that seem to push apart and connect to each other at various angles that imply the transfer of ideas or codes—signs from one generation to the next; there are subtle variations as it shifts and changes over time.

Nicola Dale. Not So Firm As Faded Ink Record Part II, 2014; pencil stubs, reconstituted pencil shavings; 7 x 1/3 x 1/3 in each. Courtesy of Mark Devereux Projects.

Dale’s series Not So Firm As Faded Ink (2014) addresses similar ideas of language and the transmission of information. After two residencies—in Shanghai, China, and Yorkshire, England—Dale started to explore the Chinese proverb, “The best memory is not so firm as faded ink.” In her sculpture Not So Firm as Faded Ink Record Part II (2014), Dale constructed thirteen tree-like miniature totems from shaved pencils, recombining the ends and the shavings into delicately organic forms that reach upward. The vertical shapes are assembled in a ring as if to suggest a meeting place or a transfer of ideas. At play also is the nature of the material, which acts as a symbol for language and the transfer of ideas and knowledge over time.

Nicola Dale. Not So Firm As Faded Ink Kexy, 2014; paper, wooden lectern; 14 ½ x 12 x 10 ¼ in. Courtesy of Mark Devereux Projects.

Not So Firm As Faded Ink Kexy (2014) takes the form of a wooden lectern—the platform at which lectures are transmitted or given—and turns it into an abstract and fertile ground for the growth of ideas. This work commits to the transference of ideas as a permanent and permeable condition in which time is frozen and interrogated, both opened and closed by the act of speaking or writing.

Whether through installation, sculpture, or performance, Nicola Dale entreats her viewer to think more deeply about the nature and construction of language, ideas, history, and the forms these tropes might take. Her practice is consistent and focused, yet mindfully elliptical.

Nicola Dale lives and works in Manchester, England. She earned an MA in Visual Culture from MIRIAD in Manchester, England, and a BA in Interactive Arts from Manchester Metropolitan University. Her work has been exhibited internationally in solo and group presentations including: London, UK; Manchester, UK; Shanghai, CN; Zürich, CH; Buenos Aires, AR; and Alameda, California. Dale has participated in residencies at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK; Shanghai College of Fine Arts, CN; and Wolstenholme Projects, Liverpool, UK.