Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every weekday.
Today’s show: “Lauren McKeon: Let go or be dragged” is on view at Interface in Oakland, California, through May 19. The solo exhibition, the title of which is a mantra, is the artist’s second with the gallery and presents a series of new work. As part of the show, artist Ross Simonini, who also collaborated on the below text with McKeon, will stage a performance on May 12 billed as an epilogue; Simonini will present “a new iteration of his Quartering performances, in which participating bodies map themselves using all four limbs,” per a release.
Below, a text that McKeon and Simonini collaborated on for the exhibition:
Use your entire body All limbs Arms, legs, fingers, toes Spaces, pits, and crevices Your spleen Your momentum Your center of gravity Your vestibular system Your favorite body part The primary location of your identity The spot of your first major injury The place where illness most often begins The organs you refuse to consider The nook where you feel distrust The hair you wish you had The sound of your nervous system The physical weight of your thoughts The flesh which has been surgically excised from you The invisible cord that links you to the other bodies The shape of the curses inside of you The vertebrae along your throat The negative space around you The light that makes you visible The net clinging to you The cells you’ve shed Use all of it (Preliminary Notes for Quartering Performance, by Lauren McKeon and Ross Simonini)
Installation view of “Lauren McKeon: Let go or be dragged,” 2019, at Interface, Oakland.