Keith J. Varadi
Death Becomes Him
09.09. – 07.10.2017
Galerie
Tobias Naehring
Tobias Naehring
Lützner Str. 98
04177 Leipzig
Images courtesy the artist and Gallery Tobias Naehring
A note anonymously left on Keith J.
Varadi’s car outside a gallery in Los Angeles begins: “Every man is based on
the amalgamation of his life’s actions.”
Varadi’s car outside a gallery in Los Angeles begins: “Every man is based on
the amalgamation of his life’s actions.”
Varadi’s practice is essentially a
literary one – evident in the poetry of his titles, the press releases (until
now exclusively written himself), as well as a general sensibility while
constructing a narrative over time. Exhibitions, artworks, and titles function as
components of a story, as lexicon, syntax, grammar, and footnotes that unfold
by degrees. They become an aggregation that comes together as a portrait of
negative space wherein all the things around a form reveal the form itself.
literary one – evident in the poetry of his titles, the press releases (until
now exclusively written himself), as well as a general sensibility while
constructing a narrative over time. Exhibitions, artworks, and titles function as
components of a story, as lexicon, syntax, grammar, and footnotes that unfold
by degrees. They become an aggregation that comes together as a portrait of
negative space wherein all the things around a form reveal the form itself.
The aforementioned note goes on to
berate him for some unnamed misdeed but ends with the promise that acts of
kindness can begin to cancel out the bad. The entirety of this three-line note
can be read in the exhibition, here framed amongst other formative moments.
Traumas, tenderness, pain both physical and emotional, become sculptural poems,
visual signifiers of sentimental value. The sentimentality here is not mawkish
or self-indulgent, but rather serves as recognition of the lodestars in a life
or a country’s history. Subjectivity teases out universality, with myriad
references and anecdotes locating us in a moment and in a mood. The personal is
revealing of the culture at large and within the art world especially, the
inevitable grease that keeps our wheels turning.
berate him for some unnamed misdeed but ends with the promise that acts of
kindness can begin to cancel out the bad. The entirety of this three-line note
can be read in the exhibition, here framed amongst other formative moments.
Traumas, tenderness, pain both physical and emotional, become sculptural poems,
visual signifiers of sentimental value. The sentimentality here is not mawkish
or self-indulgent, but rather serves as recognition of the lodestars in a life
or a country’s history. Subjectivity teases out universality, with myriad
references and anecdotes locating us in a moment and in a mood. The personal is
revealing of the culture at large and within the art world especially, the
inevitable grease that keeps our wheels turning.
Rites
of Spring (2016) refers to a suite of three solo exhibitions of Varadi’s
held in 2016: A trilogy becomes serialized narrative gradually revealing a
portrait of a character at once incrementally more personal and expansive.
These exhibitions and the work in them play off of each other, with certain
elements returning and riffng to become something else. If anything could be
described as Varadi’s modus operandi
and raison d’être, it would be this:
the desire to recognize disparate elements, forces, people, viewpoints,
backgrounds, and their larger collective potential. Rites of Spring (2016) is memorialized here as one of the artist’s
book paintings, debossed with gold leaf – a tombstone for 2016, a fateful year,
a year during which things died.
of Spring (2016) refers to a suite of three solo exhibitions of Varadi’s
held in 2016: A trilogy becomes serialized narrative gradually revealing a
portrait of a character at once incrementally more personal and expansive.
These exhibitions and the work in them play off of each other, with certain
elements returning and riffng to become something else. If anything could be
described as Varadi’s modus operandi
and raison d’être, it would be this:
the desire to recognize disparate elements, forces, people, viewpoints,
backgrounds, and their larger collective potential. Rites of Spring (2016) is memorialized here as one of the artist’s
book paintings, debossed with gold leaf – a tombstone for 2016, a fateful year,
a year during which things died.
In the tarot cosmology, the Death card
is understood to be not one of impending doom, but a signifier of change, an
opportunity to purify oneself of the past in order to be reborn. If tarot and
its understanding of death is mentioned here, it is of course as a tool – a vehicle
for reflection. It’s a useful shortcut in illustrating the show’s impetus. It
is also, however, just another element in the frenetic constellation of
references that make up Varadi’s context, if not quite his worldview, in which
a renewed millennial interest in the occult might co-exist with a campy 90’s B
movie. He’s an aggregator of references, of the things that make up our world,
with enough specificity to have character and enough universality to be useful.
This collection of references aims for breadth. The video Living (2017) on first viewing may appear to have a mocking tone,
as a distant coastal city gaze of how the other half lives. But while
representations of class are at play here, they are not brought into the
gallery as fodder for our condescension, but to implore us to transgress social
boundaries of our own making to enter into an exchange.
is understood to be not one of impending doom, but a signifier of change, an
opportunity to purify oneself of the past in order to be reborn. If tarot and
its understanding of death is mentioned here, it is of course as a tool – a vehicle
for reflection. It’s a useful shortcut in illustrating the show’s impetus. It
is also, however, just another element in the frenetic constellation of
references that make up Varadi’s context, if not quite his worldview, in which
a renewed millennial interest in the occult might co-exist with a campy 90’s B
movie. He’s an aggregator of references, of the things that make up our world,
with enough specificity to have character and enough universality to be useful.
This collection of references aims for breadth. The video Living (2017) on first viewing may appear to have a mocking tone,
as a distant coastal city gaze of how the other half lives. But while
representations of class are at play here, they are not brought into the
gallery as fodder for our condescension, but to implore us to transgress social
boundaries of our own making to enter into an exchange.
A ritual for a moment between death and
life, poised for the new that will take the place of the deceased, Death Becomes Him makes the case for coexistence
and for discourse, for the blurring of boundaries and of divisions. We don’t
need to remain in our ivory tower. An aggregation is a collection of
particulars combined as a whole. People, even artists, can contain multitudes.
life, poised for the new that will take the place of the deceased, Death Becomes Him makes the case for coexistence
and for discourse, for the blurring of boundaries and of divisions. We don’t
need to remain in our ivory tower. An aggregation is a collection of
particulars combined as a whole. People, even artists, can contain multitudes.
-Ana Iwataki, August 2017