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This month in Artforum:
This past fall, three of New York’s most prominent institutions launched Pope.L: Instigation, Aspiration, Perspiration, a polycentric staging of the artist’s catalytic work. Artforum invited poet Simone White and writer Ciarán Finlayson to respond to the exhibitions’ remarkable twists and timely provocations.
“There is a terrible racial loneliness proposed by the solo performances of Pope.L, which speaks to me of the absolute banishment of black people from certain realms of sociosexual belonging.”
—Simone White
“It can seem like Pope.L is tarrying in the superstructure, asking viewers how it makes them feel when he does something scandalous.”
—Ciarán Finlayson
Let the Record Show: Kaelen Wilson-Goldie on the art of Rayyane Tabet
“Tabet’s work highlights the ways in which figures such as the Sacklers or Ambanis are only the latest in a long line of individuals who have made encyclopedic museums possible while doing considerable damage to the world.”
—Kaelen Wilson-Goldie
Laura Hoptman, Fanny Howe, Anne Waldman, Joan Jonas, and Ugo Rondinone on the art and life of John Giorno (1936–2019)
“In his literature, art, and lifestyle, John set an example of how to buck what Burroughs famously called ‘Control’—and of how to not die but thrive doing it.”
—Laura Hoptman
“He was disciplined, inscrutable, a unique performer—both powerful dharma seer and folksy prophet.”
—Anne Waldman
Never Too Late: Rachel Churner on the late style of Eileen Myles and Yvonne Rainer
“These queer feminist artists are creating a particular strand of late work that harnesses the temporal disjunction inherent in an awareness of mortality, intentionally mobilizing the very notion of late style as a way to refract questions of endings into questions of agency.”
—Rachel Churner
And: Malik Gaines introduces an artist’s project by Christine Sun Kim, Travis Jeppesen on Tianzhuo Chen, Daniel Marcus on Charlotte Perriand, and Julia Bryan-Wilson on Julie Mehretu.
Plus: James Quandt on Kantemir Balagov’s Beanpole, Jennifer Krasinski on the theatrical adaptation of Édouard Louis’s History of Violence, Mira Dayal on Michelle Stuart’s books, Meredith Martin on Jean-Jacques Lequeu, FT on Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Tausif Noor on “Theater of Operations: The Gulf Wars 1991–2011,” and Annie Dorsen shares her Top Ten.