Artist: Jennifer Bolande, Jessica Diamond, Tishan Hsu
Exhibition title: Hello America
Curated by: Gianni Jetzer
Venue: Karma International, Zurich, Switzerland
Date: March 27 – May 8, 2021
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Karma International, Zurich
When British writer J.G. Ballard published his novel Hello America in 1981 Ronald Reagan just had accomplished his first hundred days as President of the United States. The plot of the book develops around an ecological disaster in the year 2114. An expedition hoists the sails to investigate a presumably lost continent. In this subtle parody of American culture themes such as the threat of an ecological disaster provoked by the failure of liberalism anticipated the decline of a great nation. Today, after four years of a tumultuous presidency and the prevalent risk of a collapse on various levels the world is questioning America’s potential to pursue its role as a global leader.
Coinciding with the publishing of Ballard’s Hello America in the early 1980s a young generation of New York artists accepted the challenge to develop new art. Opposing figurative painting that had become the new big thing in Contemporary art, but considered by many as anachronistic, they were aiming to digest the mood fueled by cable TV and Reaganomics during a new rise of capitalism. Oscillating between the sheer brutal optimism of consumerism and fears of a Cold War resulting in an atomic attack, the early 1980s were of a similar fabric as Ballard’s dystopian Science Fiction. The AIDS crisis that followed shortly after further enhanced this state of mind.
Jennifer Bolande, Jessica Diamond, and Tishan Hsu were artists belonging to a new scene, that kicked off in East Village galleries and alternative spaces to be later propelled into international careers. Their visionary work manifests the elan of a generation that was at once future driven but also critical towards the luster of late capitalism.
Amongst the most iconic pieces by Jennifer Bolande are her sculptures made from speaker cabinets––a critic once remarked that they are analogous to Koons’ concurrent vacuum cleaners. Bolande undermines the heroism of stacked-up speakers by enabling them to perform in unexpected ways. The speaker pieces are simultaneously sites of projection, frames in a narrative, and models of entertainment itself. Speaker II conflates a cross-section of a speaker cabinet, a stage set with curtain and spotlights, and the gown of a disembodied performer. Bolande’s use of photography such as in the installation Cascade emphasized the material nature of pictorial representation that is aligned with artists of the Picture Generation.
The wall drawings of Jessica Diamond contain declarations that have been described as accusatory tragicomedy. Her gigantic I Hate Business is an equivocal statement but at once ambivalent by the context of the art gallery where it is shown. That being said, it is a critique that looks so good that it seduces the viewer in a heartbeat making him/her complicit by enjoying its visual superficiality. Personal, handwritten, the letters seem as if painted by a gigantic hand that makes comments on the failures of the material world from an artistic perspective.
Tishan Hsu has developed a vocabulary that connects technology with the human body in unprecedented ways. His surfaces made of ceramic tiles or iron mesh evoke a topology of a flat grid that is often merging with biological references, photographs of bodies, or shapes that refer to mammals. In Holey Cow Hsu explores a sculptural space of flatness that somehow simultaneously elicits the sense of something organic and “real”, like a cow, in contrast to the more analytic, abstract space of a flat, grid, or beyond that a void or a hole, thus exploring a paradoxical experience of two seemingly opposite sensibilities. This turning away from the image to properties and attributes has been a key driver in the evolution of his work.
Hello America, 2021, exhibition view, Karma International, Zurich, Courtesy of the artist and Karma International, photo: Annik Wetter
Hello America, 2021, exhibition view, Karma International, Zurich, Courtesy of the artist and Karma International, photo: Annik Wetter
Hello America, 2021, exhibition view, Karma International, Zurich, Courtesy of the artist and Karma International, photo: Annik Wetter
Hello America, 2021, exhibition view, Karma International, Zurich, Courtesy of the artist and Karma International, photo: Annik Wetter
Hello America, 2021, exhibition view, Karma International, Zurich, Courtesy of the artist and Karma International, photo: Annik Wetter
Hello America, 2021, exhibition view, Karma International, Zurich, Courtesy of the artist and Karma International, photo: Annik Wetter
Hello America, 2021, exhibition view, Karma International, Zurich, Courtesy of the artist and Karma International, photo: Annik Wetter
Hello America, 2021, exhibition view, Karma International, Zurich, Courtesy of the artist and Karma International, photo: Annik Wetter
Jessica Diamond, Elvis Alive, 1988/1989/2021, Flashe and acrylic paint on paper, 40.5 x 51 cm, 16 x 20 in
Jessica Diamond, T.V. Telepathy (Black And White Version), 1989/2021, Flashe and acrylic paint on paper, 40.5 x 51 cm, 16 x 20 in
Jessica Diamond, I Chart, 2017/2018/2021, Flashe and acrylic paint on paper, 40.5 x 51 cm, 16 x 20 in
Jessica Diamond, I Hate Business, 1989, Flashe paint on wall, Dimensions variable upon installation
Jennifer Bolande, Speaker II, 1986, Speaker cabinet, fabric, wire mesh, wood, 118.1 x 57.1 x 25.4, 46 1/2 x 22 1/2 x 10 in
Jennifer Bolande, Speaker I, 1986, Speaker cone, speaker cabinets, wood, paint, photographs, spotlight directed at speaker, 188 x 48.3 x 26 cm, 74 x 19 x 10 1/4 in
Jessica Diamond, Money Having Sex, 1989, Flashe paint on wall, Dimensions variable upon installation
Tishan Hsu, Pacemaker, 1989-90, Two “vehicles” – Steel, Rubber; Glass, Compound, Ink / Plastic, 100 x 48 x 64 cm, 39 3/8 x 18 7/8 x 25 1/4 in
Jennifer Bolande, Cusp, 1985-2007, Black and white pigment print, 162.6 x 68.6 cm, 64 x 27 in