EVENTS
Rick Moody & John O'Connor
Art-Generation Systems in a Time of Political Instability
NOVEMBER 12-24, 2024
Artist Talk: November 16th, 3-4pm
1040 MASS MoCA Way, North Adams, MA 01247
Free and open to the public
This exhibition is a collaboration of five years in duration and is one without rigidly defined roles. And in addition to the flexible roles of the principals the exhibit also employs frequent use of randomizing agents, both analogue and digital. The work presented is intended to be a refractory, expressive cry of tragicomic agony about contemporary politics. This is political art by other means – about dissent and resistance, yes, but in form as well as in content.
Almost everything in this exhibition uses the number seventeen as its ordering system or container. Seventeen (also known as the seventeenth letter in the English alphabet) is the number esteemed by adherents of the paranoid narrative aggregation known as QAnon. And so a seventeen-base generating system was purposed here to burlesque and de-sacrilize the Q mystique. “Q,” as the story goes, initially referred to a clearance level designated to a certain imaginary/refractory government official, who then composed the Q “drops,” the writings thereof, these in turn achieving a mystical ordering status and reifying power.
This exhibition is about surviving and overcoming the effects of a Q-flavored or extremist cultural (and family) dynamic by administering an improvised antidote to the rhetorical poisoning of the American political body—in word and image.
Rick Moody and John O’Connor approached Gary Lichtenstein in the Spring of 2023, both to present their ideas and to propose the idea of creating a think tank within his studio—an incubator—one that would enable exploration of the visual components required to illustrate this narrative. The three artists embarked upon an unusual journey, immersing themselves within the research compiled over five years. Historical perspective, together with discovery, encouraged the visual work that emerged on paper, originating as poetry and drawings which utilized a process of redaction, ultimately materializing in final form through silkscreen prints. Join us on November 16th for an immersive experience with the artists, the messages and the questions that remind us of our shared collective journey.
RSVP appreciated but not required: melissa@gleditions.com
Rick Moody’s first novel, Garden State, was the winner of the 1991 Editor's Choice Award from the Pushcart Press and was published in 1992. The Ice Storm was published in May 1994 by Little, Brown & Co. Foreign editions have been published in twenty countries. (A film version, directed by Ang Lee, was released by Fox Searchlight in 1997.) A collection of short fiction, The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven was also published by Little, Brown in August 1995. The title story was the winner of the 1994 Aga Khan Award from The Paris Review. Moody's third novel, Purple America, was published in April 1997. Foreign editions have appeared widely. 1998, Moody received the Addison Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2000, he received a Guggenheim fellowship. In 2001, he published a collection of short fiction, Demonology, also published in Spain, France, Brazil, Germany, Holland, Portugal, Italy, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere. In May of 2002, Little, Brown & Co issued The Black Veil: A Memoir with Digressions, which was a winner of the NAMI/Ken Book Award, and the PEN Martha Albrand prize for excellence in the memoir. Since 2005, he has published a collection of novellas, Right Livelihoods, a novel, The Four Fingers of Death, a collection of essays on listening entitled On Celestial Music, and a novel Hotels of North America. His most recent work is the memoir, The Long Accomplishment (Henry Holt, 2019). In May 2018 he received an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2019 he became an Officier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, as awarded by the Republic of France. Moody has taught at New York University, Yale University, Princeton University, Brown University, and currently teaches at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University.
John J. O'Connor was born in Westfield, MA, and holds an MFA in Painting and an MS in Art History and Criticism from Pratt Institute. He has been a resident at MacDowell and Skowhegan and has received multiple awards, including two New York Foundation for the Arts Grants in Painting and Drawing, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation Studio Residency. In 2023, he was named a Guggenheim Fellow. John’s works are included in the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Weatherspoon Museum, and the New Museum of Contemporary Art. A catalogue spanning ten years of his work features essays by Robert Storr, John Yau, and Rick Moody. John is also a member of the experimental art and technology collective NonCoreProjector.
Over the course of his remarkable 50-year career, Gary Lichtenstein has produced a wide range of silkscreen editions and multiples with artists including Cey Adams, Charlie Ahearn, Doug Argue, Janette Beckman, Roz Chast, Bill Blast, Michael De Feo, Al Diaz, Jane Dickson, Oasa DuVerney, Chris “DAZE” Ellis, Ron English, ENX, Danielle Frankenthal, Mako Fujimura, Carly Glovinski, Joanne Greenbaum, Bob Gruen, Gerard Hemsworth, Charles Hinman, Indie184, Andy Katz, Alfred Leslie, Jonathan Mannion, MARKA27, John “CRASH” Matos, John Miller, Rebecca Miller, Dave Navarro, John O’Connor, Eric Orr, Yigal Ozeri, Gary Panter, James Prosek, Rubem Robierb, Shelter Serra, Duane Slick, Jessica Stockholder, Frederic Tuten, Jonathan Villoch and Nola Zirin. He has printed for industry legends including Marina Abramovic, Karl Benjamin, Bisa Butler, Robert Cottingham, Shepard Fairey, FUTURA, Jeffrey Gibson, Robert Indiana, Sojourner Truth Parsons and Ken Price.
In 2010, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum unveiled Gary Lichtenstein: 35 Years of Screenprinting: a sweeping exhibition of works produced by Lichtenstein over the course of his career. During the spring and early summer of 2023, The Butler Museum of American Art presented, Gary Lichtenstein: Painter and Master Printer. The comprehensive exhibition was a fascinating showcase of the infinite possibilities inspired by the medium of silkscreen printing. Lichtenstein’s prints have been exhibited and collected by, among others, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian, the San Francisco Art Institute, the Chicago Art Institute and the Butler Institute of American Art.
