Artist: Pope.L

Artworks

A photo of Pope.L in his studio, dated 2022

Articles & Reviews

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Art Spiel Picks: Manhattan Art Fair Week

HIGHLIGHTS

An energetic jaunt through the various art fairs over the past week revealed curious findings and trends: Relational aesthetics, atmospheric landscapes, the human psyche, and acts of care are on view in the forms of plants, animals, & organisms. Rendered in splashy colors, text-based media and kitschy coolness, the various moods are quirky and earnestly expressed through painting, sculpture/ceramics, textiles and installations. Here is a roundup of some booths that hit the mark and kept it refreshing.

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Impossible Failures at Zwirner

Opinion

When I heard about Impossible Failures it promised to be an exciting exhibition, in that it was to bring together Gordon Matta-Clark (1943–1978), a White post-Minimalist artist best known for his site-specific works of cutting through buildings and homes, and Pope.L (b.1955), a Black artist who used to describe himself as the friendliest Black man in America, and is known for his public performances and installations, which address Black racial stereotyping and other such hypocrisies. In a not un-interesting way, the resulting exhibition is a curatorial mash-up in which the works in it are overwhelmed. As such, this is not an exhibition where the works of each artist supply a context for the other, nor does it explore Matta-Clark’s legacy by focusing on Pope.L’s overlapping strategies. Instead it might be thought of as a collaborative installation authored by the curator Ebony L. Haynes.