Jennifer Moon. JLS (Jennifer Laub Smasher), 2015; K’NEX, Habitrail tubes, Popsicle sticks, foam sheets, ceramic 3D print figurines, electrical wire, electrical tape, dental floss, hemp, duct tape, wood, inkjet prints, cardboard, construction paper, foamcore, fabric, folding table; 2 parts: approx. 68 ½ x 156 x 152 in.; 77 x 48 x 24 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Commonwealth & Council, Los Angeles.

As contemporary art seems to be increasingly the province of the 1%, with continual record-breaking auctions, it may be difficult to appreciate the revolutionary origins of modernism. Early 20th-century art movements like Constructivism, Futurism, and Dada sought an aesthetic, social, and political break with the past, often with utopian goals for the future. A trio of solo shows at Commonwealth & Council aim to reinvigorate contemporary art with this revolutionary zeal.

With her Phoenix Rising series, Jennifer Moon explores the revolutionary potential of love, with ample doses of candor and humor. One particularly memorable image from Phoenix Rising, Part 2 features Moon seated in a “Black Panther”-style wicker chair, with her Pomeranian at her feet, both of them wearing matching red berets. For Moon, the personal is indeed political. A far cry from Kazimir Malevich’s severe, stark black square, Moon’s work is idiosyncratic and playful, though her aims are no less radical. Phoenix Rising, Part 3: Laub, Me, and The Revolution (The Theory of Everything) resembles a junior-high-school science fair exhibit that provides a blueprint for revolution on both a macro and micro scale. The centerpiece is JLS (Jennifer Laub Smasher) (2015), a model made of Popsicle sticks and construction toys that snakes through the gallery. It resembles a DIY version of the Large Hadron Collider, only instead of smashing protons together, it will send Moon and her partner Laub hurtling toward one another at the speed of light. Instead of the Higgs boson particle, they are searching for a new form of love free from “hierarchies, binaries, and capital,” as an explanatory panel states. 3D-printed figures of the pair stand at the entry point, ready to embark on their experiment. It is a charming and whimsical riff on quantum theory.

Jennifer Moon. 3CE: A Relational Love Odyssey, 2015; HD Video; 11:15; edition of 3 + 1 AP. Courtesy of the Artist and Commonwealth & Council, Los Angeles.

The two have also produced a video, 3CE: A Relational Love Odyssey (2015), modeled on the reboot of the popular science series Cosmos. Adopting the wide-eyed wonder of Neil deGrasse Tyson, Moon and Laub appear in front of the green-screened cosmos, or idyllic nature scenes, as they narrate our journey toward a new society. The work has a lighthearted tone, but there is no irony as they implore us to “surf the empathic waves of relational love.” The sincerity of their welcoming and expansive revolutionary vision is compelling.

Jennifer Moon. GFT (Gut Fairies Transplant), 2015; mouth blown glass, wood, vinyl tubing, fecal matter, condom, ass-wipe, rocks, sand, charcoal, filtered water, corks, Prehnite with Epidote crystal, Blue Calcite crystal, Smoky Quartz crystal, refrigerator, inkjet prints, cardboard, construction paper, foamcore, fabric, folding table; 2 parts: approx. 64 x 275 x 21 in.; 77 x 48 x 24 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Commonwealth & Council, Los Angeles.

Moon turns from the abstract concept of love to the very concrete trillions of microbes that make up our gut biome with GFT (Gut Fairies Transplant) (2015). It resembles a mad scientist’s lab, with curiously shaped glass vessels—hand-blown by Laub—flanking a fridge full of corked jars of, well, shit, discreetly labeled with “LAUB” or “JENNIFER.” The piece sets the stage for a symbiotic fecal transplant merging their “second brains,” as the gut biome is often referred to. What kind of empathy would be engendered if we were united not by beliefs, but by the trillions of microscopic organisms that literally make us up? Moon’s revolution is not characterized by a joyless severity often associated with radicals. On the contrary, she makes the complete overthrow of society seem fun and altogether possible.

Jemima Wyman. Conjuring Radical Openness, 2015 (center); bronze; 20 x 19 x 9 in.; unique edition of 3 + 1 A.P. Conjuring Power, 2015; DIY fabric-prints on cotton poplin, painted steel rods; site-specific installation; dimensions variable. Courtesy of the Artist and Commonwealth & Council, Los Angeles.

In her exhibition Conjuring Radical Openness, Jemima Wyman looks back to the historical use of design in service of revolution. Influenced by Soviet propaganda textiles of the ’20s and ’30s, Wyman’s fabric swaths feature hypnotic patterns that incorporate the masked faces of various contemporary protesters. She throws together disparate groups of the disgruntled, with little concern for shared geography or ideology. Michael Brown, Scientology, Free Gaza, anti-war, and pro-LGBTIQ all blend together in flowing fabrics of outrage. The ideas driving them are not Wyman’s; it is their methods she is interested in. From anonymity comes power and freedom. At the center of the hanging bolts of fabric, Wyman has placed a bronze bust made from a T-shirt wrapped around a head. There is only an empty void where the eyes should be, a monument to the communal protester that takes on a sinister tone. Contrasted with the breezy, cheerful prints, we are reminded of the divide between the hope of progress and the too-often disappointing post-revolution reality.

Robby Herbst. Body Surfing, 2015; colored pencil, gouache on watercolor paper; 22 ½ x 30 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Commonwealth & Council, Los Angeles.

Robby Herbst’s work also reflects a disconnect between idealism and how it is manifested. His series of colored pencil and gouache drawings depict scenes from the New Games movement of the early ’70s. Conceived as a non-competitive, community-based alternative to traditional sports, the first New Games Tournament was held in 1973 in Marin, California, ground zero for post-hippie New Age humanism. Herbst has rendered activities, like Hug Tag or Parachute Games, in luminous cyan, red, and yellow, with an illustration style reminiscent of progressive books of the time, such as The Joy of Sex. The colors don’t line up, giving the impression of an off-register printing press. The sensation of something being amiss is echoed by the intrusion of technological symbols in these bucolic images of teamwork. Some are a bit heavy-handed, like an iPhone hovering over a shaggy-haired group engaged in an amoeba race. In other pieces, Herbst nails the manner in which the inclusive, nontraditional culture of the Bay Area gave rise to an entrepreneurial tech industry that has co-opted the very values that made it possible. (How else to explain a company whose motto “Don’t Be Evil” seems sharply at odds with its decision to support the NSA’s far-reaching surveillance plan?) Across an image of people bodysurfing, Herbst has overlaid a corporate graphic that charts various stewards of the new economy, such as Airbnb and Uber, against an axis labeled “Increased Rate of Disruption.” Ironically, the chart bears some similarity to Moon’s explanatory panels, though containing vastly different notions of disruption.

Jennifer Moon: Phoenix Rising, Part 3: Laub, Me, and the Revolution (The Theory of Everything); Jemima Wyman: Conjuring Radical Openness; and Robby Herbst: New Games were on view at Commonwealth & Council in Los Angeles through December 19, 2015.

Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen. Can These Antiques Ever Prove Dangerous Again?, 2012.

In honor of Labor Day, today we want to thank the publications that made our Summer Reading series a success. We were honored to host articles from Artforum, Art Papers, Art Practical, the Brooklyn Rail, East of Borneo, Frieze d/e, Hyperallergic, MN Artists, MN Original, MOMUS, Rhizome, SFMOMA’s Open Space, Temporary Art Review, and un Magazine. And we credit the labors of the artists and writers, without whom this series would not be possible: Juana Berrío, Timothy P.A. Cooper, Steven Cottingham, Jarrett Earnest, Matthew Fluharty, Orit Gat, Claudia La Rocco, Patricia Maloney, Pippa Milne, Ceci Moss, Mohamud Mumin, Matt Stromberg, Matt Sussman, Ana Teixeira Pinto, Catherine Wagley, Caroline Woolard, Ben Valentine, and RM Vaughan. We are truly proud to share this space with you! 

on May 15, 2015.

Citing “the University’s unethical treatment of its students,” the entire class of first year MFA students at USC’s Roski School of Art has decided to leave the school, according to a statement they released today. The seven students list a number of grievances leading to their decision, beginning with a significant decrease to the generous tuition subsidization that they had expected before their acceptance to the program. They also criticize the school’s administration that “did not value the Program’s faculty structure, pedagogy, or standing in the arts community.” As a result, they say, the Program Director left in December 2014, followed by the resignation of tenured professor Frances Stark.

After numerous meeting with the administration, they write:

[W]e have no idea what MFA faculty we’d be working with for the coming year; we have no idea what the curriculum would be, other than that it will be different from what it was when we enrolled and is currently being implemented by administrators outside of our field of study; and finally, we have no idea whether we’d graduate with twice the amount of debt we thought we would graduate with.

In the midst of this upheaval, the university was eagerly celebrating the arrival of the Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy, which came with a $70 million gift from the music industry giants. Focused on art, technology, and entrepreneurship, the undergraduate program is also headed by Erica Muhl, the newly appointed Dean of Roski. The Academy’s tagline, “The Degree is in Disruption,” employs a favorite techie term, which the student statement addresses:

[F]aculty voices are silenced and adjunct faculty expands, affecting their overall ability to advocate for students. We seven students lost time, money, and trust in a classic bait-­and-­switch, and the larger community lost an exemplary funding model that attempted to rectify at least some of these economic disparities. What we experienced is the true ‘disruption’ of this accelerating trend.

Read the full article here.

Jeff Koons. One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (Spalding Dr. J 241 Series), 1985; glass, steel, sodium chloride reagent, distilled water, basketball; 64 3/4 x 30 3/4 x 13 1/4 in. (164.5 x 78.1 x 33.7 cm.). Collection of B. Z. and Michael Schwartz. © Jeff Koons.

At the press preview for Jeff Koons: A Retrospective, more than one member of the Whitney Museum’s curatorial staff urged visitors to dispense with “preconceived notions” about Koons and embrace the exhibition as an opportunity to view the artist’s perhaps too-well-known oeuvre with fresh eyes. One of the largest retrospectives the Whitney has ever mounted, Jeff Koons sprawls across three floors in ascending chronological order, lucidly mapping the artist’s career as he progressed from wunderkind art-school grad, to cultural provocateur, to the Mylar man we have known and either loved or hated for past twenty-odd years.

Those who revile Koons often do so on the basis of his later works, like Balloon Dog (or, more recently, Balloon Venus of Willendorf), the production and sale values of which have soared while their meaning has seemingly become ever more surface-deep. Admirers, meanwhile, employ a modernist-inflected rhetoric of materiality and monumentality to elevate this work on much of the same bases. Wall text at the Whitney describes how Cat in a Cradle required Koons to push the limits of a worldwide network of specialist plastic fabricators, suggesting that the work owes the “sense of wonder” it supposedly inspires to this insistence on medium and scale. On similar grounds, New York Times reviewer Roberta Smith hails Play-Doh (1994–2014), a towering mound of brightly colored globs that uncannily resemble the matte tackiness of the titular children’s putty, as an “almost certain masterpiece.” Those who agree with such a statement will be delighted by the playground of huge, shiny, pneumatic-looking things that is the Whitney’s top floor. Those inclined to see Play-Doh as little more than a colossal waste of time and money may find a surprising protagonist two floors down: Koons circa 1985. Believe it or not, Koons’ artistic practice was once pointedly critical and anything but insular. Jeff Koons: A Retrospective is most interesting (and encouraging) when it reminds us of this.

Of Koons’ earlier works, One Ball Equilibrium Tank, a basketball miraculously suspended in a tank of water, has certainly become the most iconic in the modern sense: The image has circulated so widely, little of its original meaning remains intact. Abstracted from its original context, the work may read as a prefiguration of the artist’s later obsessions with curvaceous form and the pursuit of perfection. (He reportedly recruited a Nobel Prize-winning scientist to determine the water salinity necessary to suspend the ball at the tank’s exact midpoint without it rising or sinking.) Such a reading would be accurate but woefully incomplete, for the work’s meaning is in fact inextricable from the other pieces that Koons exhibited along with it, many of which are assembled in the retrospective.

Jeff Koons. Board Room, 1985; framed Nike poster; 31 1/2 x 45 1/2 in. (80 x 115.6 cm.). JPMorgan Chase Art Collection. © Jeff Koons.

For one, the Equilibrium exhibition of 1985—Koons’ first solo show—included a series of unaltered Nike posters that humorously present famous basketball players in the garb of more conventionally respectable professions: Darrell Griffith becomes “Dr. Dunkenstein” by donning a white lab coat; a team dressed in dark suits gathers at a long courtside table dubbed “The Board Room.” Picking up on the predatory nature of the ads, Koons intelligently identified these figures as “sirens” promising an alternative form of social mobility to a mostly African American consumer base whose actual mobility was far from buoyant. Giving macabre form to this inference is a series of painstakingly detailed sculptures of floatation devices, such as a lifeboat and a scuba vest, ironically cast in bronze. Though they seem to offer salvation, they would in fact sink the user like a stone. The iconic Equilibrium Tank thus reveals itself as integral to a concerted critique of racially driven aspirational marketing. As such, it resonates as poignantly in today’s milieu of data mining and social-media-fueled ad targeting as it did in the Reagan era.

Social critique was more than a passing interest for Koons. In his Luxury and Degradation series, next on display at the Whitney, high-end liquor advertisements printed on canvas accompany sets of barware alluringly cast in stainless steel—what Koons referred to as “proletarian platinum”—to lay bare the class-based manipulations in alcohol advertising. Even Koons’ increasingly extravagant work of the late 1980s, by which point the artist had seemed to embrace a startling relativism (“…everybody’s cultural history is perfect, it can’t be anything other than what it is—absolute perfection”), can be seen as a continuation of this interrogative strain. One could even argue that Koons’ culture criticism reached its apex with his landmark Banality series, which presented kitsch, knickknack-style objects like Michael Jackson and Bubbles at an anthropomorphic scale, and his notorious Made in Heaven series, which frankly depicted the artist having sex with then-girlfriend Ilona Staller (aka La Cicciolina) at her pornography studio. Just as Equilibrium Tank was not merely a transcendental meditation on the embryonic, so these series may not be merely an “affirmation” of low culture. By boldly leveraging his art-world celebrity status to transform the kitsch and the pornographic into coveted art objects—a risky move that nearly ruined his career—Koons forced bourgeois viewers and buyers to reckon with their own “taste,” exposing the construct as a fundamentally oppressive instrument designed to induce shame and reinforce social divisions.

Jeff Koons. Michael Jackson and Bubbles, 1988; porcelain; 42 x 70 1⁄2 x 32 1⁄2 in. (106.7 x 179.1 x 82.6 cm.). Private collection. © Jeff Koons.

None of Koons’ work from 1994 onward has presented anything remotely as challenging. It is a pity that the Whitney stacks its cards the way it does, allocating an entire floor—its largest one—to this slick, repetitive lot and presenting it within a plainly valorizing, less-than-enlightening discourse about Koons’ meticulous attention to form, materials, and surface. It is clear enough how the mystique of the levitating basketball evolved throughout this artist’s career into the mountain of Play-Doh we now see before us. It is less evident what happened to the critical posture in which Equilibrium Tank was embedded. That is the question for anyone looking to jostle their “preconceived notions” about this peculiarly American artist. Whatever the cause of this loss, it arrived all too soon.

Jeff Koons: A Retrospective runs through October 19 at the Whitney Museum of American Art.