Hole-ly Moly: The Work of William Pope.

L
Author(s): Nato Thompson
Source: Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context, and Enquiry, Issue 18 (Summer 2008), pp. 28-35
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Central Saint Martins College of Art and
Design, University of the Arts London
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20711693 .
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'ArtAfterWhite Hole-ly Moly:
People:Time, Trees TheWork ofWilliam Pope.L
-
& Celluloid...', 2007, Nato Thompson
Santa Monica Museum

ofModern Art,
installation view

William Pope.L performs. He writes. He paints. He produces socially engaged road

shows. He teaches. All of itand everything else comes falling offa counter top intohis
milieu. He is robust. At times he trails off into a world one can't come togrips with,
and at other times he swerves back into themost topical of details. His work leaves no
doubt that,as an artist,he can't help but do what he does. Or maybe, more appropriately,
he can't do itany otherway. It resonates as the result of a deeply unstrategic modus
operandi. In a world where artists, reasonably so, are cautious in the steps they take,
his oeuvre is aggressive, clumsy, tangible and human. He is one of the few true 'artists' I
know. I have a sceptical view of thismythological figure: the artist, a person so hypnotised
by themadness of linguistic and culturalmeaning thathe or she takes itall on at once
and runs the danger of either narcissistic career-riddled resentment or
obscurity, hyper

futility.It clearly is risky tograb hold of one's dreams and take them for reality. Such
a free-marketnotion of artistic creation is both convenient for collectors and thedeath
knell for any reasonable person. Follow your dreams and, unless you are rich, wind

up in thepoorhouse. With all that said, I thinkWilliam Pope.L actually does follow his
dreams despite the fact thathis dreams are terrifying,paradoxical and saturated with
a wet
emptiness.
Whenhe crushes up language with his saws, grinders, paintbrushes, spray-paint
ormouth, where does itgo? Look over his work of the last twentyyears and youwill
find a Swiss cheese ofmeaning. Holes, piled up on holes. A hole dances with a hole.
A manhole meets a black hole. Both galactic and horrifyingly viscous, this is a trajectory
launched against language and objecthood. Not afraid to coverhimself in everyfluid,
tohurl himself into themateriality of daily life (constituted ofmayonnaise, milk,
asphalt, peanut butter or ketchup), Pope.L does not sit on the couch with his theory,
but thrustsboth feetforward and digs inwith heels firmly planted in the clumsymud
of what itmeans tomake art.

There is littledistance. Hardly removed from his practice, Pope.L agonises at the
centre ofhis work, happily doling out biographic and obscure details. For example,
inATM Piece (1997), he stood on a corner in a skirtmade out of dollar bills, with an
two-and-a-half-metre lead of linked sausages attaching him toa Chase Manhattan bank
branch, handing out dollar bills to entering customers. He was performing an art piece,
but also, more on a corner conversation. He put himself out
literally, standing making
there. In thispiece, as in others, he feeds on theLacanian notion of the lack, propelling
theviewer into a hodge-podge relationship with grime, theoryand ovei^helming
biography. The grade-school picture of a smilingWilliam Pope.L thatappears inhis
monographic catalogue William Pope.L: TheFriendliest Black Artist inAmerica (2002)
?
comes tomind we are aware of the proximity between the work and the man.
always
InWhite Room #4/Wittgenstein& My Brother Frank (2005), a performance
atKenny Schachter's ROVE Gallery in London, Pope.L donned a brilliant orange yeti
costume, his eyes closed and for two hours a over a
duct-taped day three-day period,
tried to rewrite frommemory LudwigWittgenstein's T^emarks on Colour (1977) as well
as his own brother Frank's ideas on power and To see in that
representation. Pope.L
insane suitwriting about his brother bringsme, as a viewer, closer tohim. This yeti-man
has a brother.His name is Frank. Frank clearly thoughtabout authority and power.

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Who is he?What did Frank think ofhis yeti brother? I love family art. I love thepersonal.
In a way, hearing about Pope.L's brother softens the abstract blow ofWittgenstein's
theory.They are both present,Wittgenstein and Frank, and theyare coming to life in
thememory of thisperformance artist dressed in childlike fuzzy attire.
Wittgenstein and Frank are diametrically opposed, butmore that
It is not that
Pope.L understands that theyare distinct from one another. They are, using a term
Wittgenstein liked to apply tomost phenomena, different language games. Their
positions in theworld dictate not only individual perspectives on itand how it is formed,
but theyare also formidable components ofWilliam Pope.L's subjectmatter. Pope.L's
project is tomake a theoretical alchemical combination, as he did inhis recent Semen
Pictures (2005?06), a series of collages depicting celebrities using semen, hair, boloney,
nail clippings and coffeegrounds. The two-dimensional spectacle of the rich and famous
comes chillingly to life in a collage of soiled residue. Taking inhand thatwhich fascinates
the common viewer, he forces thehyper-reality to confront thematerial detritus of lived
existence, and in doing so the celebritybecomes altogether different.

In an essay from 2002 titled 'Hole Theory', Pope.L plumbs thedepths of thehole, 'ArtAfterWhite
and retrieves he calls the 'voodoo of nothingness'.1 By this he means the People: Time, Trees
something
practice of taking the abstract at its word and then transforming it. I imagine that a & Celluloid...', 2007,
voodoo of nothingness is a religion of objects, residue, unlikely combinations and plenty SantaMonica Museum
ofholes. He takes theblackness, thewhiteness, the redness, thegreenness from theworld ofModern Art,
you live in, and mutates it.Constantly diving into thepit of existentialism, he claims installation views
thathe can see a nothingness and, in classic artful paradox, a nothing that is plentiful.
As he writes in 'Hole Theory', 'the successful negotiation/Of holes (or should I say hole?)
(no,holes is good)/ls dependent onmamtaining/A healthy respect/Forwhat cannot be

1 William Pope.L, 'Hole Theory', inMark H.C. Bessire (ed.), William Pope.L: The Friendliest Black Artist
inAmerica, Cambridge and London: The MIT Press, 2002, p.79.
2 Ibid.

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'Art After White seen\2 A nothingness that is full to thebrim. Is there a religion of disaster so promising
People: Time, Trees as this one? I imagine a religion of forensics thatprops itselfup on thepotential for
& Celluloid...', 2007, renewal throughnothing. It could be, ifwe listen carefully, thatwe can joinWilliam
Santa Monica Museum Pope.L inhearing the sound of one hand clapping.
ofModern Art, Iworked with Pope.L on his Black Factory project in 2004 atMASS MoCA in
installation views Massachusetts: a roving utility truck that contained a store, a portable destruction unit
and an inflatable ice-cream unit archive.3His early thoughts on theproject indicated
that,more than anything, theBlack Factory produced 'opportunity'. Theword rang so
close to theAmerican dream that I couldn't help but hear a sardonic tone.Opportunity.
Yes, maybe itsgoal was to reclaim thisReagan-era 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps'
concept. Justas Pope.L often says, 'blackness' is a lackworth having. He isn't specifically
talking about race, butmore broadly about the opportunity to confront thegap where
ambiguity resides.We must embrace this place. I suspect in thisproject Pope.L was after
a vehicle thatdefied expectations to such an extent that itredefinedwhat an opportunity
could be. Visitors to theBlack Factory could donate items of 'blackness' to the archive
housed in the inflatable igloo, as well as explore various forms of physical 'blackness',
such as record albums, high-school photographs, Diet Coke (Zizek would be proud)
or dominoes.4 The Black Factory would thenpulverise these items ofblackness with
a range of tools thatmight well be the envy ofmost home-improvement specialists.
Mortar and pestle, grinder, Sawzall, scissors, knives and amultitude of othermetallic
destructionmachines give birth toa new lack, a new opportunity from theheartof the
material world.

While William Pope.L is clearly interested in theposition of 'blackness' inworld

culture, his approach to it ishardly declarative. For asmuch as he hopes todeconstruct
actual difference (and thepolitical entanglements thatproduce it),he is clearly spurred
by theunderstanding thatrace, as a category, exists. Like Soren Kierkegaard's thought
thatdeath makes a wonderful dancing partner, race would beWilliam Pope.L's charmed
dancing partner. One cannot help but consider such claims during an election year
between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. Is therea Pope.L game we can
play between the two?When Clinton said 'Dr King's dream began tobe realised when
President Lyndon Johnson passed theCivil Rights Act of 1964. It took a president to
get itdone,' she could have benefited from Pope.L's understanding of thepower of black
iconography.5 The election was at that timebracing itself to enter thebattles of race and,
sure enough, her statementwas enough toget the tabloids running. Such a sacred subject
asMartin Luther King Jr might be fuel for thefire forpolitical sport, but it is also terrific
material for excavating not-so-hidden terrains of meaning. When Pope.L produced
his 2001 piece Distributingmartin, a series of flyersdistributed inNew York that
proclaim inwhite texton a black background, 'This Is a Painting ofMartin Luther
King's Penis From Inside My Father's Vagina', he clearlywas toyingwith these values
of the 'sacred' - unpacking a loaded signifier in order tobring a handful of cultural
motives to the forefront.

To ask how a country can learn about race by deploying it in an absurd and
aggressively punk-rock manner forms part of a project to collapse meaning altogether.
Surely, punk rock does come tomind. When the Sex Pistols took all thatwas sacred
and pissed on it,an act considered nihilist bymany, themotive was essentially Dadaist.
In his book Lipstick Traces (1989), Greil Marcus convincingly and poetically links punk,
Dada and Situationist strategies toan aggressive overhaul of language itself. 'Punkwas
not amusic genre; itwas amoment in time that took shape as a language anticipating its
own destruction, and thus sometimes seeking it, seeking the statement ofwhat could
be said in neither words nor chords.'6More voodoo than nihilist, punk's stratagemwas
theproduction of a new world via contradiction and refusal. I suppose this iswhy Pope.L
doesn't consider his work in terms of race, because, in fact, such an approach only

3 For more information on Black Factory, see http://www.theblackfactory.com (last accessed on

3 April 2008).
4 Slavoj Zizek has often used Coca-Cola and Diet Coke as a tangible example of how capitalism survives
on lack. His lecture at the European Graduate School in 1999 was based on this idea. See http://
www.egs.edu/faculty/zizek/zizek-superego-and-the-act-1999.html (last accessed on 19 March 2008).
5 Adam Nagourney and Patrick Heal, 'Clinton Accuses Obama Camp of Distorting Her Words',
TheNew York Times, 13 January 2008.
6 Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century, Cambridge and London:
Harvard University Press, 1989, p.82.

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closes down the possibilities. It can easily be its opposite as well; anti-race, anti
?
natural, or anti-matter, for that matter. It is a refusal, which is to say,
anti-family
it is an opportunity.

If you say a word long enough, itbegins to lose itsmeaning. Over and over theword
comes out of yourmouth until, estranged, itreveals itsparticular qualities. Like
clothes in awashing machine, the sounds tumble over themselves until theyshed their
references and come out feeling different,fresh.When Pope.L multiplies the character
of Condoleezza Rice, in his project Condoleezza Rice Day (2006), with several people
a latex mask of the African-American of State, he sets her in motion
donning Secretary
to lose her symbolicmeaning, that is, toprevent her from simply being an 'African

American Republican woman from theBush inner circle'. Beyond those official
who is Condaleezza Rice? It is an as we must confront a
qualities, interesting question,
series of culturally loaded expectations and thenhave them fall away. The performance
becomes a ritual ofunravelling her identityand making her appear strange, unfamiliar.
Who, or what, is Condoleezza Rice?

For thatmatter, what is a plant?What is a palm tree in Los Angeles? Pope.L's

questioning techniques can easily be applied to all categories, not just thehuman.
When he paints the leaves of plants over and over again, until thepaint becomes
encrusted and cracks, one feels like photosynthesis may not be a plant's only purpose.
The field of the 'natural' is often considered separate from that of thehuman. In the
most simple of terms, all things un-natural are things touched by a human hand.
But this arbitrary distinction is clearly antiquated, as all things thatare interpreted are
-
done so this includes outer and on and
by humans humans, plants, minerals, space
on. There isn't anything outside us, and the strategies Pope.L applies to social categories

34 Afterall
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 are easily exacted on things that lie outside of the strictlyhuman. The plant empties
out from thenatural and becomes contaminated, dirtied, hollowed out. Itbecomes
liberated. Let's call it a reverse machine that sullies and transforms. Estranged
washing
from its natural the plant now faces us as yet another agent of cultural meaning.
position,
Ifwe squint,we can see Pope.L revealing the abundant fruit,ripewith thedelicious
taste of opportunity,hanging from itsbranches. Justlike his series of 'colour' drawings
- where theBlack
Drawings (2001-02) declare 'BLACK PEOPLE ARE THE DIAMOND
CHITTLIN' and theWhite Drawings (1997) 'WHITE PEOPLE ARE THE COINS
-
BENEATH THE CUSHIONS' these drenched sculptures ofplants spin out of a basic
colour-field logic. They toss and turn in theirnarrative of colour to thepoint of absurdity.
White palm fronds could be a statement about colonialism in the exotic landscape of
Southern California. The plants could be disappearing from the corrosion ofhuman
environmental degradation. They could be white painted plants. But what they stop

White Room #4/

being (as they easily take onmultiple meanings) are innocent, clean and, frankly,
Wittgenstein & My natural. The category of the unnatural opens up as a complex arrangement of

Brother Frank, 2005, social codes.

performance and
Ultimately,William Pope.L truelyis an artist of opportunity,but not an opportunist.
yeti labyrinth. As we follow his growing body ofwork, we find an artistwhose personal quest tackles
Photographs: questions at the centre of our daily existence.With passionate dedication, he confronts
Andy Keate his viewers with an urgency reserved only for the sincere. Frank,Wittgenstein, plants,
Condi, celebrities, chittlins and diamonds are not just symbols tobe emptied out, but
symbols that control andmotivate the liveswe lead.While crushing, bending, melding
? ?
and multiplying their meaning lends a certain renewal to us an
opportunity there

is no doubt that the experience can produce anxiety.William Pope.L's destabilising of

what is given in theworld can produce a vertigo thatwhirls themind. Probably because
he aggressively pokes holes in the surfaceswe walk on until the surface is gone altogether.
For the surface is a hole and, as Pope.L shows, an emptiness that is plentiful.

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