5. 5
Significant Ordinaries
If artists since Marcel Duchamp
have affirmed selection and arrangement
as legitimate artistic strategies, was it not simply
a matter of time before curatorial practice—itself
defined by selection and arrangement—would
come to be seen as an art that operates on
the field of art itself?
Aaron Schuster¹
Significant Ordinaries explores diverse acts of presentation as
the means for making art. Each of the five artists of Significant
Ordinaries—David Horvitz, Louise Lawler, William Leavitt,
Mark Wyse, and Jeffrey Vallance—has a distinctly different take
on the act of presentation as a contemporary art form. For this
exhibition, we propose to reveal how their differing approaches
to curatorial selection and display disrupt the authority associated
with authorship by acknowledging the complex interplay of—
and the dynamic space between—object, creator, viewing context,
and audience. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, curating
is the act of selecting, organizing, and displaying.² With curatorial
processes deeply embedded in contemporary artistic production,
and co-opted to describe nearly any act of organization, most
basically “curating” is a vehicle for justifying an object’s presence
in the world. More specifically, and perhaps paradoxically, the
artist’s appropriation of the role of curator not only destabilizes
the value and meaning of objects but also activates the role of the
viewer by suggesting that they too are part of the artistic process.
In contrast to the physical engagement of viewers in a variety
of types of Conceptual Art, including the contemporary genre of
so-called “participatory art,”³ here the spectator is encouraged to
partake intellectually in the artist’s project of (re)interpretation.
6. 6
Significant Ordinaries
Building on, but also questioning, some assumptions basic to the
genres known as Conceptual Art and Institutional Critique, this
approach—which Jeffrey Vallance identifies with the neologism
“procurating”⁴ —reconfigures the relationship between the artist
and curator, privileging neither the act of original creation nor the
authority of ultimate presentation. Moreover, the intellectual
certainty, overt political agenda, and confrontational approach
of Institutional Critique is replaced by an attitude of curious
engagement as well as an ambiguous relationship with power
structures and politics. The deeply nuanced practices of the artists
in Significant Ordinaries can be understood in part by providing
a historical context that reveals their connections and ruptures with
previous generations of conceptually based artists.
Significant Ordinaries: Art Historical Context
As early as 1913, artist and patriarch of Conceptual Art, Marcel
Duchamp, questioned the nature of art making by shifting from
a material aesthetic experience, as described by the individual
artistic practice of making objects, to a practice rooted in language
and premised on context. In Fountain (1917), a porcelain urinal
which he famously signed with the pseudonym “R. Mutt,” and his
Bôite-en-Valise (1935-1941), comprised of a leather case containing
miniature replicas of his artworks, Duchamp foregrounds the
creative acts of selection, arrangement, and display as central to
the production of meaning.⁵ This “discovery” of the contingent
nature of art, based on the interpretative role of an assumed
audience, stands in stark opposition to theories that posit modern
art’s origin as self-contained and its meaning as determined by
the artist alone.⁶ This “activation” of the viewer repositions art
from a closed dialogue between artist and artwork about “what”
a given object means, to an open discourse on “how” meaning
may be created within shifting social systems.
In the 1960s, the privileging of discourse over materialist concerns
in the creation of an artwork was central to the development of
Conceptual Art, with artists such as Sol LeWitt and Lawrence
7. 7
Significant Ordinaries
Weiner relinquishing not only the role of artist as maker but even
the necessity of a physical art object. LeWitt created guidelines
for artworks that were executed by assistants and Weiner devised
statements displayed as typographic texts on gallery walls. In their
influential essays from 1967 and 1968, these artists underscored
their intent to create a condition where the viewer is needed to
“participate in the receiving of the artworks’ meaning.”⁷
A new type of Conceptual Art, with an overtly political agenda,
developed in the early 1970s. Proponents of this movement,
known as Institutional Critique, revealed how the inherent
structural qualities of art institutions imbue objects with both
monetary and cultural value.⁸ In New York and Europe, Hans
Haacke sought to expose the capitalist ideologies and operations
of the art establishment, often focusing on art museums and their
donors. On the west coast, Michael Asher moved away from creating
objects by instead altering the space of galleries or repositioning
objects in order to de-center the power of the institution and to
shift how art is perceived.⁹ In the 1980s and 1990s, Institutional
Critique was extended and redefined by artists such as Andrea
Fraser and Fred Wilson through museological interventions and
installations, mimicking curatorial decisions of arrangement or
presentation in the museum to include interdisciplinary subjects,
such as psychoanalysis, as well as broader socio-political issues,
including gender and race.¹⁰
Artists within the genre of Institutional Critique aimed at making
visible the socially constructed boundaries of the museum estab-
lishment in order to question its claim of neutrality. However, in his
analysis of artists who exposed museum and gallery administrative
structures, art curator James Putnam suggests that these artists
never intended to subvert institutions in their entirety.¹¹ Instead, he
proposes the museological method of curating attracts artists precisely
because of its link to the authority of museums. Thus, through adopting
the methods of curating, artists are able to simultaneously adopt the
power associated with museums and to question it.
8. 8
Significant Ordinaries
In the artworks of Significant Ordinaries, artists Lawler, Vallance,
Leavitt, Wyse, and Horvitz do not merely challenge cultural institu-
tions from a privileged position within the museum. Instead, they
blur the line between artistic production and curatorial practice.
This dual position is actively embraced in all its ambiguity. By
investigating the linked issues of archiving, appropriation, and
taste, these artists challenge viewers to question their habits of
understanding, and their assumptions about the creation of value
and, ultimately, meaning in artworks. By assuming the role of
curators as makers of cultural value, their own inevitable involvement
with dominant social systems of art production and consumption
is implied. The determining principle for the following discussion of
artists is in the movement towards a greater questioning of the role
and authority of the artist.
Louise Lawler: Revealing Context
Curatorial arrangement, both obvious and more covert, distinguishes
Louise Lawler’s artistic practice. Her photographs typically depict
other artists’ works in institutions and in private collectors’ homes,
evoking a nuanced exploration of collecting and display. In the essay,
“Louise Lawler: Pictures from the Exhibition,” art critic Eleanor
Heartney defines Lawler as the preeminent post-modernist.¹² For
Heartney, this status derives from Lawler’s practice of using photos
of single or multiple artworks in order to engage the complex and
contingent contexts of art. Dovetailing with several postmodern
critiques, Lawler’s “exposure of an artwork’s existence as an object
among other objects undermines the modernist fetishization of the
art object. . . reinforces art’s status as commodity . . . [and] evokes
postmodern debates over the myth of authenticity and individual-
ity.”¹³ By making other artists’ work an integral part of her own art,
Lawler shifts attention from the singular object, to the associations
created between different works of art and their diverse environ-
ments of display.
9. 9
Significant Ordinaries
Fig. 1. Louise Lawler, Freud’s Shirt, 2001/2003,
Cibachrome, 5 x 4.5 inches.
Many of Lawler’s photographs show multiple works on display in
a museum gallery, artworks being installed in those galleries, or
art viewed by museum visitors. In Freud’s Shirt, (2001/2003) (Fig. I)
Lawler presents art in a more private context, likely a boardroom or
home—domestic settings being one of her favorite environments.
A sociological reading of the photo might suggest how art often
10. 10
Significant Ordinaries
functions domestically both as interior decoration, coordinated with
furnishings, and as evidence of conspicuous consumption. In this
case, Lawler photographed a detail of a Frank Stella painting from
his Scramble series (begun in 1967), in conjunction with chairs and
a highly reflective table that refracts the painting—disseminating
and distorting the image. By photographing art in its “ordinary”
circumstances, Lawler challenges the viewer to interpret this
photograph as revealing the elite economic context for art.
However, such a reading is only one interpretation.
The formal elegance of Lawler’s photo, like Stella’s painting within
it, positions it too as a fine art commodity, to be sold, zealously
collected, and displayed in conjunction with other pieces—as in
this exhibition. In similar fashion, the way in which Lawler
composes and “frames” the photograph through her subjective
point of view, asserts her authority over this private setting. The
overt quality of this “framing” acknowledges Lawler’s artistic,
authorial hand. Given that Lawler’s strategy is opaque, it is tempting
to analyze the photograph as signaling the juxtaposition of material
versus intellectual, and inevitably the viewer is left to ponder the
ever-expanding rings of interpretation.
Jeffrey Vallance: Framing Collections
Whereas Lawler’s critiques often picture art in institutional
contexts, Jeffrey Vallance creates art by literally framing objects
in ways that suggest a religious context. Through his artwork,
Vallance extends the modes and implications of display in order
to reflect on collecting as a deeply engrained human activity
that tampers with, but not necessarily challenges, established
institutions. Often humorous, Vallance’s embellished presentations
of everyday objects, installations, and attendant writings direct
attention to both the social and personal significance of objects,
and the contexts that shape their meaning. A collector since
childhood, Vallance has amassed a wide range of objects. In his
artistic practice, Vallance displays these objects in ways that allow
the viewer to draw connections between the artwork and the
11. Fig. 2. Jeffrey Vallance, Juliet’s Balcony, Verona, 2006,
mixed media, 24.5 x 8.5 x 8.25 inches.
12. 12
Significant Ordinaries
original context from which the objects came—essentially to his life
experience. Frequently, Vallance displays these objects as “relics”
of our society in custom-made containers that resemble Christian
reliquaries. Vallance takes on the role of the curator by showcasing
the works—and invoking the lives—of others in an effort to reveal
cherished cultural values and belief systems.¹⁴
In his book Relics & Reliquaries (2008), Vallance relates a story that
contextualizes Juliet’s Balcony, Verona (2006) (Fig. 2). During a trip
to Europe he found himself sharing a hotel room with an ex-
girlfriend at a romantic tourist destination while his then girlfriend
waited “faithfully at home.” At the historic site of Juliet Capulet’s
balcony in Verona, Italy, Vallance describes a scene in which,
while rubbing the breast of a statue of Juliet for “luck,” a man selling
kitsch Romeo and Juliet souvenirs passes by him and amongst
the vendor’s goods is a tray of buttons promoting the punk band
the Dead Kennedys. Vallance found this detail so incongruous
that he deemed a pin to be the “perfect souvenir of my ‘romantic’
pilgrimage to Juliet’s Balcony.”¹⁵ The artwork he produced in
response to this experience includes as its centerpiece a 1936
Cambridge University Press edition of Romeo and Juliet in which
the editor’s name—George Sampson, a noted scholar of English
literature—is far more prominent than the name of the play’s
author, William Shakespeare. Vallance placed the worn book in
a reliquary-like housing, with a Dead Kennedys’ stylized “DK”
button serving as a herald, ringed in golden laurel above it, and
both surmounted by a figurine that could well be a saint.
Vallance’s anecdotes allow the viewer to experience the artist’s
reasoning for his collections and their display. They also suggest
the way a curator might theorize or contextualize an artwork on
a gallery wall label or in a catalogue essay. While Juliet’s Balcony,
Verona may be thought to satirize the “holy” contents of traditional
reliquaries, upon closer reflection, it mimes the form of the
reliquary—and thereby is transformed from a vehicle of worship to
one of self-reflection. The reliquary serves as a literal and conceptual
frame that signals the importance of curating objects and experiences
13. 13
Significant Ordinaries
as central to the artist’s writing of his own life. Through this
peculiar relationship, Vallance challenges the viewer to question
his or her own attachments to personal, material possessions and
the ways in which value is created through narrative. Through acts
of selection and display, Vallance’s own mundane life experience,
as a Lutheran raised in Los Angeles’ iconic San Fernando Valley
suburb, becomes the stuff of art.
William Leavitt: Theater Method
While Vallance introduces personal narrative through his art,
William Leavitt positions the viewer within scenes typical of
Fig. 3. William Leavitt, Cutaway View, 2008,
mixed media installation, dimensions variable.
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Significant Ordinaries
suburban interiors. As a painter, installation artist, and theater
director, California transplant Leavitt often recreates the banality
of suburban domestic settings as hybrid installations that he calls
“tableaux.”¹⁶ By deploying fragments of popular vernacular culture
within the frame of modernist residential architecture, Leavitt
evokes silent narratives in his “theater of the ordinary.” The culture
of Los Angeles plays a significant role in Leavitt’s art, as his themes
revolve around Hollywood’s use of illusion to suggest reality.¹⁷
A resonant example of Leavitt’s distinctive tableaux, Cutaway
View (2008) (Fig. 3) appears to be an extracted corner section
of a suburban dwelling that includes domestic accouterments
(a potted plant, framed painting of a horse, and lighting). The
illusion is completed by the presence of the viewer who activates
the faux domestic environment as a faux resident. The vernacular
of Cutaway View confronts the viewer with real portions of an
imagined domestic interior. In fact, Cutaway View operates as a
decontextualized “home;” its walls are theater flats propped-up
with exposed lumber. On the plain wooden reverse of the “wall,”
Leavitt presents a crafted “history” of the painted horse referencing
“Hollywood backstories.”¹⁸
Leavitt’s work evokes absurdity, while arguably his organization,
or curating, of suburban decor foregrounds selection and display as
the means or process of art making, implicating the aesthetics of
suburban culture and issues of taste. By placing such banal items on
display within an art institution, these “ordinary” objects become
objects of significance, as things worthy of viewing and interpreting.
Whereas Vallance’s reliquaries mix the mundane with the tran-
scendent and enliven them through anecdote, Leavitt’s tableaux
invest the everyday world with theatricality in search of a script. As
Leavitt states, “I’m trying to frame some story through an object or
a painting or a situation that would lend itself to further narrative.”¹⁹
It is up to each viewer, like an actor on a stage, to provide his or her
own version of the story. To a large extent, that script is premised on
how the spectator acts, or reacts, to Leavitt’s sparsely arranged sets.
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Significant Ordinaries
In the work of Lawler, Vallance, and Leavitt the increasingly overt
artistic acts of selection and display result in the activation of the
spectator. Viewers move from theorizing about the circumstance of
the work to imagining the commemoration of our lives in relics and
to wondering about how the decoration of our own environments
reveals our values and creates our meaning. The physical spaces of
art become the art itself, with Lawler drawing our attention to social
context, Vallance creating physical and narrative contexts, and
Leavitt making the context, the space, and the work. In contrast,
for Mark Wyse and David Horvitz the spectator is provoked to
reinterpret and reimagine the function of their artworks and thus to
conceive their “framing” while effacing the lines of authorship.
Mark Wyse: Blurring Authority
If the curatorial contexts of Vallance and Leavitt are architectural,
involved with extending and bounding objects in physical space,
Mark Wyse’s approach builds upon that of Lawler. He utilizes a
process of re-arranging and appropriating imagery both from his
own collection and from historical photographs and illustrations.
He then deploys the space of the gallery wall and the art catalogue
to imagine new relationships within what could be termed “art
historical space.” In Wyse’s project entitled Seizure (2009),²⁰ the
artist combines reproductions and illustrations of other artists’
works together with his own photographs in white frames of the
same size. Art critic Charlie Schultz notes that Wyse’s process
equalizes differences of scale, medium, and, of course, authorship—
only differentiating their relationships through space.²¹ Wyse thus
empties the given meanings and associations from these works by
placing them within new contextually specific relationships. Wyse’s
interventions through re-contextualization demand the viewer’s
re-interpretation. Schultz’s observations about the Seizure project
focus on four works: Boy (Fig. 4), a photographic detail of the
painting Vincent and Tony by Alex Katz (1969); Cartier (not pictured
here), an image of the Cartier luxury brand logo; La Jolla (Fig. 5),
a photograph of groundcover in the affluent city of La Jolla, CA; and
Father Figure (Fig. 6), a silhouette portrait of Marcel Duchamp.
16. Fig. 4. Mark Wyse, Boy, 2009,
archival inkjet print, 19 x 15.5 inches (framed).
Fig. 5. Mark Wyse, La Jolla, 2009,
archival inkjet print, 19 x 15.5 inches (framed).
17. Fig. 6. Mark Wyse, Father Figure, 2009,
archival inkjet print, 19 x 15.5 inches (framed).
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Significant Ordinaries
To Schultz, Father Figure looks downward with the gaze of dis-
approval at the two symbols of beauty and luxury—one (Cartier)
manufactured, and the other (La Jolla) natural. In contrast, the sad
looking Boy is placed across the symbols of beauty perhaps because
of an “unbridgeable gap”²² based on the different notions of beauty.
Yet even Schultz is the first to state the instability in his own
interpretation, when he confesses a concrete meaning is “impossible
to tell” because the subjects are presented with so much anonymity.²³
Within Seizure’s own arrangement there is an inescapable ambiguity.
For Wyse, the word “seizure” indicates less a physical response
and more a mental reaction. It correlates to his psychological state
while viewing a photograph. Wyse states that “my body projects
onto the photograph new attachments, new thoughts that have
nothing to do with and everything to do with the image I am
looking at.”²⁴ Wyse continues, “the photographic image is
intimate and defensive at the same time. The photograph is less a
representation of the world than a representation of a thought that
reflects a relationship to the world.”²⁵ In this way, works of art,
as with thoughts about them, are not limited to the authority who
creates or appropriates them. By reframing and re-presenting
diverse artworks through idiosyncratic arrangements, Wyse
performs as a curator but one who avoids, and thus defers, the
authority and logic associated with curating.
David Horvitz: Giving Up Control
If Wyse is drawn to the processes of selection and display but
ultimately abrogates the power dynamic associated with these
acts, David Horvitz takes a more positive view of curatorial
creativity. However, rather than delegating the curatorial role to
the artist exclusively, he extends it to the viewer, who becomes an
active participant in a process initiated by him. His provocatively
titled work, Drugstore Beetle (Sitodrepa Paniceum)²⁶ (2010) consists
of a four-flap folder that includes commissioned artworks from
twenty-seven different artists. Horvitz originally made thirty
editions of this work and his curatorial process involved making
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Significant Ordinaries
an exhibition-ready “book,” assigning it an International Standard
Book Number (ISBN), and gifting copies to various institutions
around the world. Similar to the destructive library bookworm
Sitodrepa Panicea, suggestively alluded to in the project’s title, the
editions are invasive in nature. Through its acceptance into a
library archive, each edition of Drugstore Beetle becomes part of
the cultural establishment.²⁷
By placing the project within the kind of folder commonly used by
libraries, Drugstore Beetle editions take on the guise of an archival
object that allows for simultaneous assimilation and infiltration.
Once embedded within the library, Drugstore Beetle can be checked
out by library patrons, allowing each user the opportunity to curate
the work by (re)organizing its constituent pieces according to his or
her own taste or interpretation. In this way, the contingent nature
of curating extends to the library staff and its patrons. Along with
interpreting the pieces through arranging them, the patron may
well question the ways in which this presentation has occurred. As
Horvitz points to the vexed relationship between the work of art
and its reproduction in books and exhibition catalogues, he also
problematizes authorship in various modes.
Some of these possibilities are suggested by the edition of Drugstore
Beetle housed in the Helen Topping Architecture and Fine Arts
Library collection at the University of Southern California. Upon
accepting the work for the collection, the art librarian chose to
include her correspondence with Horvitz in the four-flap folder.
The correspondence between the two has expanded the original
artwork and demonstrates how patrons can further transform the
work. Far from criticizing the role of the curator (or the institution
in which the work resides), Horvitz radically extends the privilege
of curating through this collaboration with the institution and its
patrons, thereby transferring curatorial authority from the artist
to the audience.
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Significant Ordinaries
Conclusion: Who Makes It Art?
I have always believed that it is the artist who creates
the work, but a society that turns it into a work of art
Johannes Cladders ²⁸
To varying degrees, in all the works of Significant Ordinaries, the
ambiguous authority of the artist-as-curator is extended to the
viewer. Thus, the most relevant questions may not be how and
why artists take on the guise of the curator, but how audiences
participate in contesting and authorizing meaning, and what so
doing means for artists and for viewers. Once valence is redirected
from the artist to the viewer—with meanings contingent upon
expanding contexts—then the circles of interpretation spread
out, as do the reflections in Louise Lawler’s photograph, Freud’s
Shirt. While this dynamic association between artist, artwork,
and audience is central in all manifestations of Conceptual Art,
the artists, here, imagine those relationships in different ways and
to different ends. Most importantly, perhaps, these artists, unlike
their predecessors within Institutional Critique, do not simply
reference curating as part of a critical dialogue with elite institutions.
Rather, through acts of selecting, arranging, and displaying, they
invest objects, even ordinary objects, with the significance
customarily attached to “art.” In the work of Lawler, Leavitt,
Vallance, Wyse, and Horvitz, we become aware of how the relics
of our lives, the mundane spaces of daily existence, the ways that
we access and use information, and the physical activation of the
audience are conditioned by—and imbued with—the processes of
artistic organization. This extension and releasing of space into
the ordinary world, where the viewer is included and the artist’s
relationship to the work is insignificant, creates a gesture where
the artist has the potential to disappear.
23. 23
Significant Ordinaries
Notes.
1. Aaron Schuster, “Harald Szeemann: 1933-2005, Visionary Belgium,”
Frieze Magazine, May 2005, http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/harald_
szeemann_1933_2005/ (accessed November 2012).
2. This definition also suggests that curating is done with “professional or
expert knowledge.” Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 20 vols. (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1989), s.v. “curating.” Also available at http://
www.oed.com/.
3. Other terms that have been used to describe “participatory art” include:
social practice, community-based art, littoral art, and contextual art.
Art historian Claire Bishop describes “participatory art” as a practice in
which “the artist is conceived less as an individual producer of discrete
objects than as a collaborator and producer of situation; the work of art as
a finite, portable commodifiable product is reconceived as an ongoing or
long term project with an unclear beginning and end while the audience,
previously conceived as a ‘viewer’ or ‘beholder’, is now repositioned as a
co-producer or participant.” Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art
and the Politics of Spectatorship (London: Verso, 2012), 1-2.
4. In an email from the artist to the curators of Significant Ordinaries,
Vallance suggests inventing the word “procurator (from professional +
curator)” to describe his organizational practice and development of
narrative discourse around seemingly ordinary objects. Vallance’s term
might also punningly suggest the verb “procure,” the acquisition of
goods and services, and signal the accumulation of objects and re-
purposing it in artwork. Jeffrey Vallance, e-mail to David DeBoer,
March 21, 2012.
5. Francis M. Naumann, “Duchamp, (Henri-Robert-) Marcel,” Grove Art
Online. Marcel Duchamp is associated with Dadaist and Surrealist art
during the early 20th century. Many of his works challenged conventional
traditions concerning the notions of art. His work has greatly influenced
the output of post-World War I Western art. http://www.oxfordartonline
.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T023894?q=marcel+duchampsearch
=quicksource=oao_gaopos=1_start=1size=25#firsthit (accessed
October 2, 2012).
24. 24
Significant Ordinaries
6. This approach is most frequently associated with Clement Greenberg,
the art critic and theorist who championed non-objective art and abstract
expressionism. In his essay, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” Greenberg
describes how the inception of non-objective art arises from an attempt
to imitate God by creating something of validity solely on its own terms.
Clement Greenberg, Collected Essays and Criticism: Perception and Judgments,
1939-1944, Vol. 1, edited by John O’Brian. (Chicago, University of Chicago
Press, 1955), 8.
7. Sol LeWitt, “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art,” Artforum, June 1967;
Lawrence Weiner, “Statement of Intent,” 1968. First published in
January 5–31, 1969, exh. cat. (New York: Seth Siegelaub, 1969), unpaginated.
8. Nizan Shaked, “Institutional Critique,” Grove Art Online, Oxford
University Press. http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/
grove/art/T2086985?type=articlegoto=I_start=201pos=214size=25
(accessed November 2012).
9. Michael Asher’s work also asserts a hyper-critical approach toward
“authorship,” often associated with theorists Roland Barthes and
Michel Foucault. For a broader discussion of the issue, see Benjamin
Buchloh, “Conceptual Art 1962-1969: From the Aesthetic of Administration
to the Critique of Institutions,” October 55 (Winter 1990), 105-143.
10. Shaked, “Institutional Critique.”
11. To make the point, James Putnam quotes artist Ilya Kabakov “…the war
with the ‘museum’ continues to an ordinary strategy of artistic production
that has already become traditional for our century…and nevertheless,
the only place where all this ultimately winds up is the museum, that
same culture it is fighting against and which it repudiates. And as a result
this very ‘struggle’ itself, or more precisely, the history of this struggle,
comprises the very fabric, the very history of culture.” Kabakov’s status
as a Jewish exile from the Soviet Union both underscores the authority
of his critique, and suggests that his stake in the issue might differ from
that of artists raised in capitalist democracies. James Putnam, Art
and Artifact: The Museum as Medium (New York: Thames and Hudson,
2001), 92-93.
12. Eleanor Heartney, “Louise Lawler: Pictures from the Exhibition,” Art
Press, no. 301 (2004), 37.
13. Ibid, 39.
25. 25
Significant Ordinaries
14. Jeremy Hight, “Interview with Jeffrey Vallance,” Whitehot Magazine,
March 2011, http://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/2011-interview-with-
jeffrey-vallance/2226 (accessed August 2012).
15. Jeffrey Vallance, Relics Reliquaries (Santa Ana: Grand Central Press and
California State University Fullerton, 2008), 112-113.
16. In the Oxford English Dictionary, “tableau” is defined as being a
representation of the action at some stage in a play (esp. a critical one),
created by the actors suddenly holding their positions. Also as a stage
direction; hence drawing attention to a dramatic scene or situation.
Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 20 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1989), s.v. “tableau.” Also available at http://www.oed.com/.
17. William Leavitt, Anne Goldstein, and Bennett Simpson, William Leavitt:
Theatre Objects (Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2011), 9.
18. A fictional narrative attached to the backside of Cutaway View
describes the history of the horse painting and the horse’s ties to
racing, interpersonal melodrama, and the mafia. Leavitt describes
the text as “kind of a joke about Hollywood backstories” – a pun
since “it’s literally on the back of the set.” Lily Simonson, “Looking
at Los Angeles | Flat Affect,” Art: 21, April 28, 2011, http://blog.art
21.org/2011/04/28/looking-at-los-angeles-flat-affect/ (accessed
November 2012).
19. David Pagel, “William Leavitt: Multi-tasker at Heart,” Los Angeles Times,
March 6, 2011, http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/06/entertainment/
la-ca-spring-william-leavitt-20110306 (accessed November 2012).
20. Mark Wyse and Charlie White, Seizure (Bologna, Italy: Damiani
Editore, 2011).
21. Charlie Schultz, “Take Hold,” Artslant.com, http://www.artslant.com/ny/
articles/show/15866 (accessed November 2012).
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. Mark Wyse, “500 words,” Artforum.com, http://artforum.com/words/
id=28197 (accessed November 2012).
26. 26
Significant Ordinaries
25. Mark Wyse, “Seizure,” (press release), Wallspace.com, http://www.wall-
spacegallery.com/MEDIA/00971.pdf (accessed November 2012).
26. Sitodrepa Paniceum is the scientific name for the most notorious
bookworm, whose high reproduction rate sends larvae in the hundreds
of thousands each year burrowing into books and shelves, according to
David Horvitz. David Horvitz, “Drugstore Beetle (Sitodrepa Paniceum):
An Explanation,” http://drugstorebeetle.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/
an-explanation/ (accessed January 2012).
27. Ibid.
28. In an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist, Johannes Cladders, curator
and director of the Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach, Germany,
discusses how artists since Marcel Duchamp have relied on the audience
to complete a work of art. Hans Ulrich Obrist, A Brief History of Curating
(Zurich: JRP | Ringier Les Presses Du Reél, 2011), 57.
28. 28
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Artist Biographies
David Horvitz is an artist from Los Angeles currently based in
Brooklyn who works with the Internet to play with, and investigate
the public distribution of images. His work incorporates various
aspects in image circulation, often involving infiltration into institutions
such as Wikipedia. He received an MFA from the Milton Avery
Graduate School of Art at Bard College in 2010. Since then, Horvitz
has exhibited nationally and internationally for Tate Modern (London,
2010); CAA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts (San Francisco,
2010); Art Metropole (Toronto, 2008); Berkeley Art Museum
(Berkeley, 2011) and New Museum (New York, 2010). In 2011, Horvitz
was nominated for the LUMA Foundation Discovery Award (Arles,
France). He received the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Award in 2011.
Louise Lawler is a central figure in postmodern photography.
Her work encompasses highlighting other artists’ works in various
environments such as private collectors’ homes, museums, and
auction houses. Receiving a BFA from Cornell University in 1969,
the artist has exhibited extensively in the United States and Europe.
Lawler has had multiple solo exhibitions at Metro Pictures, New
York. She has also shown at Sprüth Magers (London, 2011); Wexner
Center for the Arts (Ohio, 2006); The Metropolitan Museum of Art
(New York, 2012), and Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles,
1988). Her work is also in the collections of the Kunsthalle Hamburg;
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Los Angeles County
Museum of Art, and Art Institute of Chicago. Louise Lawler lives
and works in New York.
William Leavitt is a Los Angeles based painter, installation artist,
and theater director whose work is influenced by the Los Angeles
landscape and culture. Leavitt holds an MFA from Claremont Graduate
School and a BFA from the University of Colorado. He has exhibited
at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, 2011); LAART
(Los Angeles, 2011); Santa Monica Museum of Art (Santa Monica,
1990); Orange County Museum of Art (Newport Beach, 2011) and
29. 29
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Kunstverein Braunschweig (Germany, 2006). Institutions such as
Hammer Museum, UCLA (Los Angeles); The Museum of Modern
Art (New York) and Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam) have his works
in their public and private collections. He currently teaches at
Marymount College in Rancho Palos Verdes.
Jeffrey Vallance is an artist who acts as a researcher whose work
deals with symbolic narratives taking on many forms such as painting,
installation, published texts, sculpture and video. He has exhibited
at such institutions as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los
Angeles, 2006); CSU Fullerton Grand Art Center (Santa Ana, 2007);
The Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh, 2011); Centre d’édition
contemporarine, Genève (Switzerland, 2009), and Jean P. Haydon
Museum of American Samoa (Samoa, 2009). Many of his works are
held in such public collections as the Los Angeles County Museum
of Art (Los Angeles), Hammer Museum, UCLA (Los Angeles), and
Moderna Museet (Sweden). He has received awards from the John
Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2004) and
the Foundation for the Culture of the Future (Sweden, 2001). Vallance
currently lives and works in Reseda, California.
Mark Wyse is an artist and writer whose work centers on re-
contextualizing and appropriating imagery while questioning
photographic meaning and intentionality. His recent essay, “Too
Drunk to Fuck (On the Anxiety of Photography),” was published
by Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art in Words Without
Pictures, edited by Charlotte Cotton and Alex Klein. Wyse holds a
BA from the University of Colorado and an MFA from Yale University
School of Art. Wyse has exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New York in addition to his seven solo shows at Wallspace
Gallery in New York. His works are in the public collections of
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Los Angeles County
Museum of Art, Los Angeles and the Museum of Contemporary Art,
Los Angeles. He currently resides in the Bay Area.
30. 30
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Acknowledgements
Significant Ordinaries was made possible with generous funding
provided by Associated Students Inc. at California State University,
Long Beach (CSULB) and the Instructional Related Activities fund,
CSULB. The curatorial team wishes to express our gratitude to Christopher
Miles, Interim Dean, College of the Arts and to the Fine Arts Roundtable
for their generosity. We extend a most grateful thank you to the University
Art Museum leadership, Christopher Scoates, Director, Kristina Newhouse,
Curator of Exhibitions, and their staff, Angela Barker, Shirley Brilliant,
John Ciulik, Amanda Fruta, Elizabeth Hanson, Ilee Kaplan, Pet Sourinthone,
and Brian Trimble for their helpful direction and insight. Much appreciation
is also due to Doris Taylor, and Cherlyn Comer for their invaluable assistance.
We would also like to acknowledge Matthew Cabrera, Coordinator of
CSULB Student Resource Center.
The curatorial team is thankful for the generous cooperation and
artwork contributed by artists David Horvitz, Louise Lawler, William
Leavitt, Jeffrey Vallance and Mark Wyse. For adding context to the
exhibition we would like to extend our gratitude to the CSULB Visiting
Artists committee, Finishing School, David Horvitz, William Leavitt,
Jeffrey Vallance, and Mark Wyse. Appreciation is extended to Margo Leavin
and Sarah Hymes of Margo Leavin Gallery; Nicholas Knapp, Michael
Plunkett, and Karine Haimo of Metro Pictures Gallery; Jackie Bekiaris
and Paul McDermott, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery; Luisa Aguilar, Museum of
Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Ruth Wallach, Head Librarian of Helen
Topping Architecture and Fine Arts Library, University of Southern
California; and Evan Walsh. We would also like to thank Khara Cloutier
for the design of this catalogue and Margaret Black for her advice.
We owe the utmost gratitude to our team of assistant curators Karen
Karyadi, Lauren Nochella, Kristy Odett, and Arianna Rizzo for their hard
work and dedication to this project. This exhibition would not have been
possible without the inspired efforts of our advisor Dr. Kendall Brown
and previous advisor Dr. Nizan Shaked. Their enthusiasm, expertise and
guidance throughout every stage of the process was invaluable.
Significant Ordinaries was curated and organized by David De Boer,
Eamonn Fox, and Mary Grace Sanchez.
562.985.576 | www.csulb.edu/uam
