Raymond Pettibon: A Pen of All Work, 2017; installation view, New Museum, New York. Photo: Maris Hutchinson / EPW Studio.

Presenting approximately 800 drawings from the artist’s creative career since the 1970s, Raymond Pettibon: A Pen of All Work at New Museum demonstrates the artist’s obsessive relationship with language and literature in an ambivalent tone that is both darkly ironic and lovingly inspired. In his distinctive caricaturistic style, Pettibon juxtaposes figurative images with fragmented texts throughout all mediums and subject matters. The combination is consistent, despite his almost schizophrenic voices in different series, whether they are celebrating nature, mocking religions, or attacking political figures.

Pettibon’s surf drawings, the most visually captivating series in the exhibition, metaphorically embody his joyful literary fetish. The surfer, represented as a solitary hero exploring and challenging the natural sublime, evokes the Romantic ideal of a creative genius wrestling in the sea of inspiration. (Fittingly, the title of the show is a reference to a Byron poem.) Drawn in brilliant blue shades, the currents’ patterns have flowing, organic characteristics that suggest a visualization of one’s stream of consciousness, or even hints of the rhythms of poetic verse. The figures appear diminutive against the monumental waves engulfing them. The tides carry a sense of increasing velocity; the hero is nearly submerged into the swells and swirls of the blue water. The expansive images with texts allude to the artist’s cumulative, almost compulsive creative process. All of the 20,000 drawings Pettibon has made in his life are captioned; the sheer quantity and the variety of words seem to suggest a form of logorrhea.

On the flip side, the artist uses language satirically to disrupt the implied historical narratives of political propaganda, religion, and mass media in America. He subverts quotes and slogans into dark, humorous, sometimes non-sequitur captions that reveal the absurdity of their contexts. Donald Trump announces, “You’re hired!” Jesus Christ urges the viewer, “Pick up your pens, if you can” as he will “inform you of all that has befallen me from beginning to end.” Charles Manson declares that “I didn’t tell them anything they didn’t get from their fathers first.” As these texts combine with comically bizarre, yet skillfully drawn, grotesque renderings, the works manifest how religious, political, and cult leaders manipulate and misappropriate words to hypnotize the public on an everyday basis. In Pettibon’s art world, language is both earnestly embraced as an expression of creativity and critically analyzed as insidious means of seduction.

Raymond Pettibon: A Pen of All Work will be on view through April 9, 2017.

Lux Yuting Bai is an independent curator and writer. She is also a Curatorial Fellow at the School of Visual Arts in New York.

Dread Scott. A Man Was Lynched by Police Yesterday, 2015; embroidered nylon; 84 x 52.5 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Guerrero Gallery, San Francisco.

The most prominent work in Scott’s exhibition is A Man Was Lynched by Police Yesterday (2015). Scott invokes the flags that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) flew as part of their anti-lynching campaigns of the 1920–30s. Spurred by the murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, Scott updated the original flag—which simply stated, “A Man Was Lynched Yesterday”—by naming the perpetrators: the police. Scott’s black-and-white banner somberly reminds us of the institutional violence that was regularly committed under Jim Crow and continues today under different legal contexts and justifications.

During the summer of 2016, Scott’s banner received a great deal of media attention when the artist hung it outside Jack Shainman Gallery in New York City as part of the exhibition For Freedoms.^[1] Located outside the Chelsea gallery, the banner provoked the public and the police. Even with Shainman’s history of supporting politically oriented artists, the gallery—like many others—has a complicated relationship with critique and commerce. Shainman’s landlord threatened to sue the gallery if it did not remove the flag, per the lease agreement that indicates that the gallery cannot affix anything to the building’s exterior; the gallery moved the flag inside.^[2] With simple, truthful words, Scott’s flag speaks volumes about the conflicts that arise in the lived world.

At Guerrero Gallery, however, Scott’s flag hangs in an almost empty white-box gallery. In this context, the object seems rather neutered and formal. As its previous installation demonstrates, the poignancy of Scott’s work lies in the way that it inhabits and goads the lived world, in the form of circulated media images and objects on the streets of New York. These contexts have altered Scott’s work such that where he hangs the flag—inside or outside—adds to its meaning. At Guerrero Gallery, the artist’s rather traditional installation skirts its potential to expand dialogue beyond the rather insular art world.

Dread Scott. Imagine a World Without America, 2007; silkscreen on canvas; 75 x 75 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Guerrero Gallery, San Francisco.

Scott also presents Imagine a World Without America (2007), which features a map that shows most of the continents—Africa, Europe, Asia, South America, Australia, and Antartica—but the only part of North America present is Alaska. Bold black letters declare “IMAGINE A WORLD” while “WITHOUT AMERICA” blends into the map’s green oceans. Scott challenges notions of American exceptionalism by suggesting that the world may be better without the United States. While the piece creates a powerful speculation, its circulation as the cover of the November 2016 issue of Artforum had more impact and remains in my memory. As an object in a gallery, it does not hold my attention enough to justify occupying half of the main gallery.

Dread Scott and Jenny Polak. Welcome to America, 2004; SD video on DVD; 5:28. Courtesy of the Artists and Guerrero Gallery, San Francisco.

In the project space, Scott shows the video Welcome to America (2004), a collaboration with Jenny Polak. Accompanying highly pixelated imagery of the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, the audio background consists of schoolchildren reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, which in most states is a compulsory pedagogical exercise in patriotism. In the video, a voice recounts the brutal physical assaults and threats that detainees have experienced. The innocence of the children’s voices is jarring against the video’s imagery and content. While the work is more than thirteen years old, it resonates with Donald Trump’s recent executive orders regarding immigration. But in the gallery, this forceful work appears like an afterthought, with a rather unconsidered installation in the rough staircase.

“1465.01,” installation view, project room, Guerrero Gallery, San Francisco; including Andrew Wilson, Not My Sins, 2011; Chris P. Martin, Family Tree, 2016. Courtesy of the Artists and Guerrero Gallery, San Francisco.

In contrast to Scott’s meager exhibition in the main space, the gallery’s project space also presents a crowded auxiliary show of exciting works by five artists: Tosha Stimage, Woody Othello, Chris R. Martin, Carolyn Jean Martin, and Andrew Wilson. Martin’s black-and-white banners of nooses and Wilson’s cyanotype of a lynching resonate with Scott’s work, materially and conceptually. Here, Guerrero Gallery seizes its ability to make an impact by supporting promising, politically minded local artists; hopefully they will develop into lasting relationships. But the gallery could have made a stronger statement by presenting the works by these younger artists alongside those of Scott within the context of a group exhibition, rather than separating them according to the artists’ career status.

Given Scott’s frequent recontextualization of historic events and icons, the exhibition’s purview, suggested by the title Past, Present & Future, would comfortably accommodate many of the artist’s works, like his Slave Rebellion Reenactment and I Am Not a Man.^[3] Their addition could have contributed to developing the dialogue raised by his work. But the power of Scott’s work lies in the social context, whether by creating media attention or through discussions spurred by his work’s provocations; a traditional white-box presentation may not be the most appropriate approach. With the pressing political and social issues at hand, we must consider how we sustain our political and critical energy, on the national and local levels, and what we expect of artists and galleries in return.

Past, Present & Future will be on view at Guerrero Gallery in San Francisco through March 4, 2017.

^[1] “For Freedoms,” http://www.jackshainman.com/exhibitions/past/2016/forfreedoms/.

^[2] Angelica Rogers, “Does This Flag Make You Flinch?” New York Times, July 14, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/15/us/artist-flag-protests-lynching-by-police.html?_r=0. Similarly, in 1938, the NAACP’s landlord threatened to evict the group if it did not take down its flag.

^[3] “About,” Slave Rebellion Reenactment, http://www.slave-revolt.com/. “I Am Not a Man,” Dread Scott, http://www.dreadscott.net/works/i-am-not-a-man-2/.

Fanny Aishaa. Elsipogtog, 2003; print based on original oil painting; 36 x 48 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Galería de la Raza, San Francisco. Photo: Henry Pacheco.

At Galería de la Raza in the Mission District is F.T.P: For the People, inspired by civil rights activist Audre Lorde’s essay, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.”[1] The exhibition showcases the work of over a dozen visual artists from the Bay Area and beyond, including painting, photography, printmaking, and installation.

Lorde states that action leading to legitimate social change can never emerge out of the normativity that reinforces a status quo where social and racial inequality are rife—to promote social change, one must empower the colored female, transgender, and queer otherness that would otherwise be cast out and rejected. F.T.P. brilliantly aligns itself with Lorde’s central idea. Especially at stake right now is imagining a future where prejudice and police brutality will cease to be tolerable.

Together, the artworks act as an indictment of contemporary manifestations of institutionalized oppression and violence against minority communities. Each artist deploys sharp, targeted criticism towards recent affairs in North America, showing the pain and public defiance of communities that refuse to give in to fear and injustice.

An example is a work by Fanny Aishaa, Elsipogtog (2013), a painting done in response to the use of force by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police during an incident with environmentalists protesting fracking that year. The work was inspired by a photograph taken by journalist Ossie Michelin during a pacific manifestation that was violently descended-upon. According to Aishaa the work “symbolizes civil disobedience but also recognizes and shows respect to the Mi’kmaq people and their lands and waters.” In the painting we see activist Amanda Polshies praying holding a feather towards a bird flying overhead in the direction of an advancing militarized police phalanx, “to show they are not just protestors but protectors—defenders of the land,” Aishaa concludes. The painting addresses state-sanctioned brutality, communicating criticism on how industrial projects are forced on indigenous lands, all too often turning to abusive methods.

In his publication “Talking Contemporary Curating,” art historian Terry Smith states, “curators are being called upon to help, to join a worldwide effort to create a commons that will outlast the shocks of globalized capitalism, the resurgence of fundamentalism, and the impacts of climate change.”[2]Through this exhibition, Galería de la Raza and its leadership prove they are at the forefront of creating and sustaining such commons in San Francisco —and are calling for all constituents of the art system to mobilize for the fight for social justice.

F.T.P: For the People is on view through June 11, 2016 at Galería de la Raza, San Francisco.

Ángel Rafael Vázquez-Concepción (b. 1981, Puerto Rico) is an independent curator based in San Francisco, California. In 2015, he obtained a Master’s in Curatorial Practice from the California College of the Arts.

[1] Audre Lorde, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Berkeley: Crossing Press, 1984), 110- 114.

[2] Terry Smith,Talking Contemporary Curating (New York: Independent Curators International, 2015), 16.