Something Bit Me Bad!
Jake Fagundo, Hans-Jörg Mayer, Michael Williams
July 13 - August 15, 2024
2019 W Temple St
Los Angeles, CA
Temple Projects is proud to present Something Bit Me Bad, a three-person exhibition featuring works by Jake Fagundo, Hans-Jörg Mayer, and Michael Williams. Something Bit Me Bad opens this Saturday, July 13th, from 6 to 9pm and will be on view through August 15th.
The exhibition is curated by Taylor Harriett Payton of Grunts Rare Book Sellers (Chicago).
David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001) constitutes a large part of my virginal relation to Los Angeles. Mulholland Drive, named after the storied highway that winds through Santa Monica from Ventura Freeway to the Pacific ocean, is part-pilot and part-feature. Lynch shot the beginning scenes for a dropped television pitch to ABC before reconceptualizing the project as a ninety minute film. Most critics writing about Mulholland Drive center a bifold analysis focusing on either the film’s split production, the doubled identities of its leads, or the bifurcating of reality and fiction that takes place in its final half hour when Betty Elms — “I just came from Deep River, Ontario, and now I'm in this dream place,”—wakes up as Diane Selwyn, the former lover of Camilla Rhodes, who viewers know of until this point only as ‘Rita.’
Critics that follow the latter rope usually implore dream analysis, belaboring distinctions between real-time and fantasy, to determine which bits of the film’s narrative might have actually occurred between Betty/Diane and Rita/Camilla and which were only products of Diane’s subconscious. Such analyses separate form from content, excavating meaning and exacting plot at the expense of narration, i.e. what is actually on the screen.
In painting, the way an artist or a critic handles form and content is a long standing debate. By the Platonic ideal, artworks like painting or sculpture are mimetic representations— ‘imitations of imitations’. There is the idea of a tall flower, the tall flower, and a painting of the tall flower. However, as artists challenge representation in Modernism, interpretive theories force distinctions between content and form that privilege the first and eschew formal analysis. The Modernist project then becomes the elimination of illusion, one of the most famous examples of which being Rene Magritte’s The Treachery of Images (1929) hung in the Los Angeles County Art Museum: ceci n'est pas une pipe.
In one of Mulholland Drive’s final scenes, Rita wakes up sleeping Betty and insists they go to Club Silencio. The two hail a cab in matching blonde bobs and dismount in an empty parking lot. Inside, the master of ceremonies starts: ‘No hay banda! There is no band! … This is all a tape recording.’ He then calls for a muted trumpet, and a trumpeter parts the curtain playing his instrument. He assures the house the performance is only a recording: ‘Il n’y a pas d’orchestre! It is an illusion.” The maestro brings out tall, brunette Rebekah Del Rio wearing a red cocktail dress. She sings an a cappella Spanish rendition of Roy Orbison’s Crying (1961)— Llorando (1993)— the bravado and emotion of which bring Betty and Rita to tears. During the final bridge, Del Rio falls to the ground, but the song continues. Del Rio is dragged off the stage, looking nearly dead, but her voice continues: ‘todo mi corazón.’
The performance at Club Silencio, like Magritte’s La Trahison des Images, exposes the material limits of film by foregrounding its ultimate constructedness. Postmodern painting, in a similar fashion, eliminates illusion by acknowledging surface, i.e. the idea of a tall flower, the tall flower, a painting of the tall flower, and a painting of a painting of the tall flower. A super-representation. By addressing the schism between reality and fiction, contemporary painting succeeds as a broad formal project— a self-reflexive investigation— that dismantles distinctions in space-time critics may draw.
Jake Fagundo (b. 1997, Chicago, Illinois) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Imperial Gallery, Los Angeles (2023); Martha’s Contemporary, Austin (2021); Sulk Chicago, Chicago (2021); and Okay Gallery, Chicago (2019). Recent group exhibitions include SPREZZATURA, As It Stands, Los Angeles (2024); At Home In The Neon, Home of Eric Kim, Los Angeles (2024); and Heat Advisory, Make Room, Los Angeles (2023). Curatorial projects include Nice Work, Nice Work 2, and Nice Work Forever at Sulk Chicago, Chicago (2021-2023). Upcoming exhibitions include Our Is The Hand That Sews Time with Peter Fagundo, M. LeBlanc, Chicago (Fall 2024).
Hans-Jörg Mayer (b. 1955, Singen, Germany) lives and works in Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions of Mayer’s work include Samuelis Baumgarte Galerie, Bielefeld (2024); Martos Gallery, New York (2023); M. LeBlanc, Chicago (2023); Galerie Nagel Draxler, Berlin (2023); Galerie Christine Mayer, Müchen (with Kenneth Anger, 2022); and Galerie Nagel Draxler, Cologne (2021). Recent group exhibitions include Gabi Dziuba & Friends, Schmuckmuseum, Pforzheim (2024); Touch Me: Nudes from the Miettinen Collection, Kunstraum, Potsdam (2022); Beans&Berries, Laube, Karlsruhe (2021); and The 1st Meseberg International for Contemporary Art, Galerie Nagel Draxler, Gransee (2021). Mayer’s work has been included in many institutional exhibitions, including MuMoK in Vienna, Museum Brandhorst in Munich, Sammlung Falckenberg in Hamburg, The University of Washington in Seattle, Museum of Contemporary Art Miami, and Art Forum Berlin. In addition, Mayer’s practice has been the focus of multiple features in national and international periodicals, and is held in numerous public and private collections.
Michael Williams (b. 1978, Doylestown, Pennsylvania) has been the subject of solo and two-person exhibitions at the Gladstone Gallery, New York (2024); Power Station, Dallas (2022); LOK, the Kunstzone in the Lokremise, Kunstmuseum St.Gallen, Switzerland (2021); Le Consortium, Dijon, France (with Tobias Pils, 2017); Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2017); Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal (2015); and Gallery Met, New York (2015). Recent group shows include Day for Night: New American Realism, Palazzo Barberini, organized by the Aïshti Foundation, Rome (2024); .paint, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2020); Joe Bradley, Oscar Tuazon, Michael Williams, Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Greenwich, Connecticut (2018); The Trick Brain, Aïshti Foundation, Beirut (2017–2018); High Anxiety: New Acquisitions, Rubell Family Collection, Miami (2016); Artists and Poets, Secession, Vienna (2015); and The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2014). His work is in the permanent collections of institutions including the Dallas Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal. Williams lives and works in Los Angeles.