“With apologies to Claes Oldenburg (“I Am For An Art”) and thanks to all the artists whose work I saw over the last year and was able to include in this show:

I am for an art that sneaks in through the side door, an art that’s undercover, underhanded, underwater, an art that joins the underground resistance, an art that is understated and overbearing, overstated and undermining, aboveboard and double-dealing, an art that is spit-polish unfinished and junkyard clean. I am for an art that wears no hat in the winter, an art that won’t show its cards, an art with something up its sleeve, an art that stands up for itself while falling down. An art that doesn’t hold a job, carries a minor criminal record, picks up night shifts, argues with strangers, passes out at parties, disappears for days on end with no word, an art that bought a ticket for the circus but won’t go in, an art that secretly won the lottery and gave it all away. I am for an art that keeps its distance from language and contradicts its own taste. An art that is “wrenched and sweaty … calm and cool,” (Whitman), an art that provides “almost-clarity about not-quite confusion” (Richard Nonas), an art that has no time but just won’t leave, an art that closes the joint down.”

About Looking Back

White Columns is pleased to announce the 14^th edition of its Annual exhibition Looking Back, which has been selected by the New York-based writer and curator Randy Kennedy. The exhibition will be presented throughout all of White Columns’ galleries.

As with previous ‘Annuals’ an individual or a collaborative team (e.g. an artist, a curator, a writer, etc.) is invited to organize an exhibition based on their personal experiences and interactions with art in New York City during the previous year. In a very straightforward way, the ‘Annual’ exhibitions hope to reveal something of the complexities involved in trying to negotiate – and engage with – New York’s constantly shifting cultural landscapes. The format of the exhibition inevitably encourages highly subjective and personal responses to the realities of viewing art in New York City. The ‘Annual’ exhibition series hopes to illuminate aspects of the specific, yet highly idiosyncratic networks – historical, social, aesthetic, etc. – that individuals follow in an increasingly expansive and fragmented cultural environment.

Through the recontextualization of artworks encountered in other circumstances, the exhibition hopes to establish – albeit temporarily – a new ‘narrative,’ a conversation of sorts, amongst both artists and artworks that seeks to illuminate and/or explore certain underlying tendencies or connections that might otherwise have remained elusive or obscured. In rethinking aspects of the (fairly) recent past the exhibition hopes to provoke something akin to a sense of déjà vu, establishing a scenario that is at once both reflective and forward-thinking.

There are no restrictions as to what type of work can be included. The ‘Annual’ exhibitions seek to eliminate any categorical or hierarchical distinctions we might place upon artworks (e.g. based upon the circumstances in which they were originally seen, or the seniority of an individual artist, etc.). The works included in the exhibition might have originally been encountered in a variety of contexts such as exhibitions at galleries, not-for-profit spaces, art fairs, or during visits to artists’ studios, etc.

Looking Back Artists

Bill Adams
Liz Ainslie
Ever Baldwin
Yevgeniya Baras
Jennifer Bolande
Will Boone
Beverly Buchanan
Tom Burckhardt
William Christenberry
Martha Diamond
Tom Fairs
Hadi Falapishi
Harold Granucci
Tyree Guyton
Robert Hawkins
Oliver Lee Jackson
Jim Joe
Ken Johnson
Manal Kara
Rhoda Kellogg
Larry Krone
Ohad Meromi
Ralph Middleton
Marlon Mullen
Betty Parsons
Noah Purifoy
Sarah Rapson
Evelyn Reyes
David Schoerner
Dave Schubert
Ross Tibbles
Mose Tolliver
Richard E. Treubel
Kevin Umaña
Jean-Luc Verna