David J. Haskins, Sabotaged Sheets, 1979. Collage on paper, 8-1/2 x 11 inches. Wall of Sound exhibition, Steven Wolf Fine Arts.

This summer San Francisco has not one but two gallery exhibitions that explore the legacy of punk and post-punk. Wall of Sound, at Steven Wolf Fine Arts, presents artworks by seminal figures of the late-1970s music scene (including Monte Cazazza, V. Vale, and Exene Cervenka), and I’m So Goth – I’m Dead! at Queen’s Nails Projects features mostly contemporary pieces that deal with the “Gothic sensibility” in one way or another.

The two shows are linked by the work of David J. Haskins, best known as the bass player for Bauhaus and Love and Rockets. His intricately crafted collages dominate the Steven Wolf exhibition; Queen’s Nails has only one piece of his, but it is given pride of place by the entrance. Haskins’s works are among the few pieces that make Wall of Sound more than a nostalgic trip or a celebration of the trashy, no-budget aesthetic that punk did so much to promote.

Even though Haskins is the man who wrote the lyrics to the ur-Goth song, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” his collages on view at both galleries (all made in 1979) feature little stereotypically Gothic imagery. He seemed more preoccupied with the workings of the consumer society, and his outlook was pessimistic. Recurrent in his pieces is the juxtaposition of advertisement or propaganda images of “picture-perfect” people (athletes, models, etc.) with photographs of consumer products and various machines with bare insides. Symbolically equating people with those inanimate objects, the artist seemed to imply that within the capitalist society people are lowered to the level of automatons (easily manipulated with the help of mass media) or commodities. Haskins’s collages channel the mood of dread and paranoia, since they do not presuppose a position outside of the capitalist consumer society. His pieces were very much in tune with the emerging postmodernist art, preoccupied as it was with its own complicity in the deplorable state of affairs.

Claire Fontaine, La société du spectacle brickbat, 2006. Brick and archival print on archival paper. 7”x 4 ½” x 2 ½”. I’m So Goth – I’m Dead exhibition, Queen’s Nails Projects.

The mood of dread and paranoia is foundational for the I’m So Goth… exhibition, which claims to tackle, among other things, “the collapse of the economy and the decline of the spirit.” The curators Bob Linder and Julio César Morales seem to imply that now, like in the late 1970s, Gothic pessimism is an appropriate reaction to what the world has turned into. I’m So Goth… is not your typical “dark arts” exhibition filled with images of vampires , roses, and skulls–instead the show features unobvious pieces that make it haunted by the specter of political action. Works such as Claire Fontaine’s brick wrapped in the cover of La Societé du Spectacle by Guy Debord (La société du spectacle brickbat, 2006) and Enrique Chagoya’s print that depicts Obama tormented by demons (The Head Ache, 2010) indicate that the curators are interested in the intersection of Goth and politics. Why is Goth important now, they seem to ask.

The Goth aesthetic is famous for its attention to the absurd, the irrational, the uncanny, and the tragic–the things that mainstream left-liberalism disregards. It is to the credit of the Queen’s Nails curators that they chose works that do not “beautify” or trivialize those concepts. The most potent works in the show are those that present something slightly unsettling, something that hints at violence and does not fit into a rosy, rational picture of the world, without offering the viewer any explanation or possibility for redemption. Such are the paintings of intense masklike faces by Desiree Holman (Untitled, 2012) and Eamon Ore-Giron (Grace Mask, 2010), as well as the concrete sculptures by Andrea Bacigalupo (Cleave, 2012) that resemble giant excised ribs. Such is the video by Anne McGuire that shows the artist after an injury, naked and awkward, with a metal device attached to her forearm (When I Was a Monster, 1996). The curators also explored how Goth (or, in this case, proto-Goth) aesthetic can be used to express grief and indignation by including a 1967 antiwar painting by Beat artist Wally Hedrick (Vietnam Series III). For this work Hedrick used only black paint, applying it to the canvas in a very messy fashion. The result is ugly and thrilling at the same time.

3. Wally Hedrick, Vietnam Series III, 1967. Oil on canvas, 48” x 48”. I’m So Goth – I’m Dead exhibition, Queen’s Nails Projects.

The pinnacle of I’m So Goth… is the 12.5-hour video that documents an endurance performance by Bessma Khalaf (The Long Goodbye, 2012). In it the artist pours down candlewax to create a wall. The absurd feat is soundtracked by drone music. Khalaf might have been commenting on the illusory and pathetic nature of all escapism–the walls we surround ourselves with ultimately turn out to be fragile–but the whole fact that she did it for 12.5 hours serves as an example of people’s indestructible will towards paradoxical, irrational actions. The work can also be seen as a Goth-tinged riff on Santiago Sierra’s meditations on punishing labor.

Both I’m So Goth… and Wall of Sound can be commended for bringing to light works by many “under the radar” artists. While the Steven Wolf show seems to be a timely postscript to last year’s Under the Big Black Sun exhibition at the LA MOCA (which explored, among other things, California’s 1970s punk culture), I’m So Goth… feels like a teaser for a more vast exploration of a fruitful topic. Ultimately, what I feel behind this counterculture nostalgia and interest in Goth is a plea for the American left to grow big fangs.

Wall of Sound runs at Steven Wolf Fine Arts until September 8^th. I’m So Goth – I’m Dead runs at Queen’s Nails Projects until September 15^th. 

Whitney Lynn, Death Parties (2011) Plastic, glass, alcohol, chrome-laminated birch shelf, 21 x 36 x 6 in.

Bean Gilsdorf: How did this new body of work begin?

Whitney Lynn: It started with Southern Exposure in 2009, they had a show called “Bellwether” and they were asking artists to predict or envision the future. I was looking at the way in which do-it-yourself and sustainability movements overlap with survivalism. I started picking up these images about how to trap your own food, skin your own squirrels, eat your own rats, and those sorts of things. Then when I was doing a later project I was also thinking about containment, and I started thinking about trapping systems. I was not quite sure what I was going to do with all of it, and then there was the realization, oh, there’s a project here.

BG: Do you think of your work as post-apocalyptic? Has anyone ever framed your work that way?

WL: Maybe a little, with the survivalist stuff. I think there’s something kind of sinister about a lot of the pieces, but I think they’re funny.

BG: What are the general trends of your interests?

WL: The earlier works that were dealing with military were very autobiographical, and I was navigating my own personal history. Then things shifted, and I was thinking about how these intersections of politics or military are really interconnected into all kinds of aspects of life. That changed my focus, to see where those messy intersections or boundaries existed. For this particular show I was thinking about metaphors of traps and their relationship to sculpture.

Whitney Lynn, Prepared Position with Disturbance Ventilation and Luminous Signal (2010) Mixed media (furniture, cement, tv, fan) 7 x 8 x 4 feet

BG: Do you feel like that’s freeing, to get away from making autobiographical work?

WL: Well, it’s always connected. For me, it’s impossible to get away from some sort of personal thread. It’s extending from a different kind of autobiography. These traps are placed in a setting where there’s the possibility of a different kind of question: what’s the prey and what’s the bait, the lure? Part of the work is about futility—nothing’s ever going to be trapped with these. And that’s where I see some of the humor, too. It relates back to some of my earlier work…I made a bug-out location that would never actually survive anything. It was made for one person and had food supplies, but they were capers, so it was this empty gesture of preparation. And there were all these weapons that would never actually hurt you. It was all pretty pathetic. It was part of the question, “How can you prepare for the ultimate disaster when you don’t know what that is?”

Whitney Lynn, BOL (Bug-Out-Location) (2009) Mixed media installation with performance elements

BG: What’s next for you?

WL: One project that I’ve been doing on the side and that will probably come to the fore is street performance. I think that’s really a place of intersections and boundaries. My interest is in that area where street performance is performance art. I’ve been really obsessed with the Bush Man in Fisherman’s Wharf for along time, so I shot a video with him recently. I’m sure there will be a development that leads me back to the traps project.

BG: I can see the borders and boundaries that you’re flirting with in your work…some are more literal and explicit, like with the sculptures, and some are more subtle, just the feeling is there, but on the whole it creates a thread through the work.

WL: There’s something exciting about allowing that thread through the work, but to let it play itself out naturally. There can be these connections, but they don’t have to be calculated. For years I was like, “I make work that’s about intersections with military and political cultures,” and it was almost like I had written an artist statement and I didn’t want to write it again, and I’d better make things that fit into that. There was pressure to define myself, to say okay so I this is what I do, but I got tired of making fifteen different kinds of bunkers, that’s not all I think about. I was eliminating possibilities because I was stuck in the idea that my work needed to be concise.

Whitney Lynn, Trap no. 001 (2011) Acrylic, polished tree branch, 21 x 17 x 16 in.

BG: When you’re making the work, you’re so close to it. What feels like an enormous left-hand turn to you is, in reality, a slight detour to others. But you wonder how you’ll explain your decisions to the world.

WL: Right, yeah, and I think there’s something important about separating the making from the talking about it. I feel sometimes I have to justify what I’m doing before I even finish making and that can be disruptive. I try not to worry in advance how to articulate the work…it’s a matter of knowing that there’s a difference between the process and its final articulation.

BG: Sometimes you can frame the work loosely by saying that, for example, it’s about control: attempting to control the situation of a disaster, or the actions of another person or animal, or even the definition of an action on the street, where you decide if it’s performance art or not. And then in each new iteration of your work, you decide how it fits in—or not—to that broad category.

WL: I think a lot of the work is this attempt at control that is usurped, the rug gets pulled, in the face of all these systems, these attempts to corral, contain, or understand something. Where I find it interesting is where that’s not possible.

Whitney Lynn, Silver Equivalent (2011) Clay bricks, silver-plated steel nail, 7 x 14.5 x 23 in.

BG: Why did you title the show Sculptures Involontaires?

WL: The legend goes that Brassaï was hanging out with Dali at a café, and Dali pulled a rolled-up ticket stub out of his pocket. A conversation ensued about how you could photograph anything and it becomes sculpture: ticket stubs, and chewing gum, and debris…photographed, they look like landscapes or unknown objects. Through the photograph anything can become unfamiliar and strange. I love that idea. I was looking at traps and seeing how traps are sculptures just by themselves. I started buying traps—someone tracking my Amazon purchases would be really scared of me!—I was getting them and seeing how they function, admiring the beautiful ingenuity of them, all this creative thought that is put into something so sinister. So there’s this involuntary way in which they are already sculptures. My work here functions as traps and as sculptures. I’m loosely pulling from that idea of context, that by changing the context you can re-look at the form.