Pope.L,
Hasn’t your work always been about illness?
Am I wrong?
Today, it is snowing again. I am locked up. Everyone is.
We are confined by a virus.
I am thinking about the title of your exhibition: My Kingdom for a Title…
And I started to ask myself: What is Pope.L’s kingdom? And why would he trade it for a title? And what is a title anyways? A title for an exhibition? A title for a car? A new job?
Pope.L, “PLusher”, Ballpoint and acrylic on gridded canvas in plexiglass box in mirrored medicine cabinet with LED light, hardware, and bumpers, 2020. Photo by Robert Heishman, courtesy of the artist.
King Richard the Third famously exclaimed, “My Kingdom for a horse!” It has been a while since I have read Shakespeare’s play, but if I recall correctly this was in the midst of a battle he was losing and would lose. No kingdom or horse could save him (or us).
My Kingdom for a Title— Thanks to my dyslexia (my sick words) I keep switching the “g” and the “b” as I write this…
Kind-gum
A Kind-dumb of the sick. A sick kingdom.
Pope.L, how sick is your kingdom?
Very. Very. Very Sick.
… he has been telling us this for decades…. DECADES.
Crawl-ing, Pull-ing and Escape-ing from/in this kingdom for decades.
Pope.L, “Beached”, Ballpoint and acrylic on gridded canvas in plexi glass box in mirrored medicine cabinet with LED light, hardware, and bumpers, 2020. Photo by Robert Heishman, courtesy of the artist.
There is something different maybe about this show with its errant title… maybe…but perhaps in being different it is more the same than it ever was.
same as it ever was
But if it is different, it is because this exhibition is even more clinical, more institutional–more hospital-like= glass, mirrors, medical masks, oscillating fans, latex gloves, directional arrows on the floor, medicine cabinets, paintings inside the medicine cabinets= art.
Hospital art
It is the most bemoaned and put-down genres of art-making and display…people often remark to me: “Oh, if they only had REAL ART in hospitals people would be so much better off than having to be subjected to these cheesy landscapes and bad abstraction.”
Really???
What art is going to function optimally in those fly-by hallways, where medical professionals are tending to the sick and dying? (That “cheesy art” is probably there for a reason…)
And you know, I would add:
Careful what you wish for.
REAL ART in hospitals might be like introducing a novel virus into the situation…A new type of illness, a mutation….Am I saying that Art is sick? Maybe I am…
Maybe I am saying Pope.L’s Art is Sick… and if you don’t know with what after all these decades, then I am not going to be the first one to break it to you… I am no doctor.
I am only going to suggest that if you want REAL ART
…really real REAL ART
then Pope.L is offering you a vaccine.
Zachary Cahill is an interdisciplinary artist based in Chicago. His work examines the nature of propaganda, politics, nation-building, religion, and society. Cahill’s practice focuses primarily on a fictional nation, the USSA, as a metaphorical tool for investigating real political narratives. Through boldly colorful, fantastical, and nearly abstract projects in a variety of media, the artist plays with the objects, places, and rituals that make up a society. Since 2010, the USSA has incorporated installations, paintings, sculptures, séance performances, and artistic writings, which have focused on several zones of ideological indoctrination including an orphanage, a gift shop, a wellness center, the state farm, a state church/assembly, and a postal service. His work has been exhibited in numerous venues in the United States and Europe, including the Berlin Biennale; Regina Rex, New York; Threewalls, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, among others. He has been included in ArtReview’s annual special issue The Future Greats (selected by Dieter Roelstraete, 2017) and the Thames and Hudson’s 2018 international contemporary art survey The Artists Who Will Change the World by Omar Kholeif. His writings have appeared in Afterall, Artforum, Frieze, Journal of Visual Culture, Mousse Magazine, and Critical Inquiry. The Black Flame of Paradise his first novel with a preface by philosopher Catherine Malabou, was published by Mousse in 2018. Zachary Cahill is the Founding Editor-In-Chief of the arts and ideas journal Portable Gray, published twice annually by the University of Chicago Press for the University of Chicago’s Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry where he is Director of Fellowships and Programs.
View all articles by Zachary Cahill
Pope.L,
Hasn’t your work always been about illness?
Am I wrong?
Today, it is snowing again. I am locked up. Everyone is.
We are confined by a virus.
I am thinking about the title of your exhibition: My Kingdom for a Title…
And I started to ask myself: What is Pope.L’s kingdom? And why would he trade it for a title? And what is a title anyways? A title for an exhibition? A title for a car? A new job?
Pope.L, “PLusher”, Ballpoint and acrylic on gridded canvas in plexiglass box in mirrored medicine cabinet with LED light, hardware, and bumpers, 2020. Photo by Robert Heishman, courtesy of the artist.
King Richard the Third famously exclaimed, “My Kingdom for a horse!” It has been a while since I have read Shakespeare’s play, but if I recall correctly this was in the midst of a battle he was losing and would lose. No kingdom or horse could save him (or us).
My Kingdom for a Title— Thanks to my dyslexia (my sick words) I keep switching the “g” and the “b” as I write this…
Kind-gum
A Kind-dumb of the sick. A sick kingdom.
Pope.L, how sick is your kingdom?
Very. Very. Very Sick.
… he has been telling us this for decades…. DECADES.
Crawl-ing, Pull-ing and Escape-ing from/in this kingdom for decades.
Pope.L, “Beached”, Ballpoint and acrylic on gridded canvas in plexi glass box in mirrored medicine cabinet with LED light, hardware, and bumpers, 2020. Photo by Robert Heishman, courtesy of the artist.
There is something different maybe about this show with its errant title… maybe…but perhaps in being different it is more the same than it ever was.
same as it ever was
But if it is different, it is because this exhibition is even more clinical, more institutional–more hospital-like= glass, mirrors, medical masks, oscillating fans, latex gloves, directional arrows on the floor, medicine cabinets, paintings inside the medicine cabinets= art.
Hospital art
It is the most bemoaned and put-down genres of art-making and display…people often remark to me: “Oh, if they only had REAL ART in hospitals people would be so much better off than having to be subjected to these cheesy landscapes and bad abstraction.”
Really???
What art is going to function optimally in those fly-by hallways, where medical professionals are tending to the sick and dying? (That “cheesy art” is probably there for a reason…)
And you know, I would add:
Careful what you wish for.
REAL ART in hospitals might be like introducing a novel virus into the situation…A new type of illness, a mutation….Am I saying that Art is sick? Maybe I am…
Maybe I am saying Pope.L’s Art is Sick… and if you don’t know with what after all these decades, then I am not going to be the first one to break it to you… I am no doctor.
I am only going to suggest that if you want REAL ART
…really real REAL ART
then Pope.L is offering you a vaccine.