Staff Picks: Bobby, Janelle, and Romeo
Like most people who live in New York, I’m always threatening to move to Los Angeles, and like most people who live in New York, I likely never will. This winter, however, I almost made a visit. The impetus was an exhibit of Ellen Gallagher’s at Hauser & Wirth. The deterrent was the thought of taking the A train from Harlem to JFK. Luckily for me, and for people everywhere thwarted by inertia and a lack of cheap flights, Hauser & Wirth published , a catalogue of paintings, photographs, collages, and texts meant to accompany the show. In it, Gallagher patches together a series of strange seascapes populated by ruled lines, whale fins, and teeny, tiny spores. The images appear unpeopled but evoke a population that’s been willfully forgotten. In the liner notes to their 1997 album , the Detroit-based electronic duo Drexciya writes, “During the greatest holocaust the world has ever known, pregnant America-bound African slaves were thrown overboard by the thousands during labour for being sick and disruptive cargo. Is it possible that they, she creates the imagery for a world in which these mothers and sea babies, dead or unborn, were able to survive. —
