Eliana Willis

“Rear Window” online at White CubeThrough January 19, 2021

What the gallery says: “In the 1954 thriller, a photojournalist is confined to his New York apartment after breaking his leg and succumbs to an obsession with watching his neighbors. The audience is made complicit in his voyeurism as, unable to tear himself away from his window, he witnesses dramatic scenes unfold within his field of vision.
Featuring paintings and photographs by Ellen Altfest, Jeff Burton, Gillian Carnegie, Julie Curtiss, Judith Eisler, Celia Hempton, Danica Lundy, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Laurie Simmons, Jeff Wall, and Carrie Mae Weems, this exhibition invites us to consider how artists construct scenes and suggest narratives, whilst exploring the idea of ‘the gaze’ which Hitchcock’s film was instrumental in formulating.”
Why it’s worth a look: White Cube’s newly launched online viewing room kicks off with an homage to Master of Suspense Alfred Hitchhock curated by director Susanna Greeves. It feels right for this era of life under lockdown, as the pandemic resurges and cold weather creeps in. So many of us are now are limited to only looking these days, as the fear of spreading germs relegates us to a life mediated by screens.
The artists included in this show have focused on the idea of the gaze, exploiting and manipulating it—but also finding new and deeper meaning through looking slow, and long, and with interest. Artists Jeff Wall and Laurie Simmons both construct tableaux that are similar to film directors, while Jeff Burton’s photography is drawn directly from his experience working in the porn industry. A treat all around.
What it looks like:

Jeff Wall, Summer Afternoons (2013). © Jeff Wall. Courtesy White Cube.

Jeff Wall, Summer Afternoons (2013). © Jeff Wall. Courtesy White Cube.

Carrie Mae Weems, Scenes & Takes (2016). © Carrie Mae Weems. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.

Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Darkroom Mirror (_2070021), (2017). © Paul Mpagi Sepuya. Courtesy of the artist and Vielmetter, Los Angeles.

Celia Hempton, Jay, Minnesota, United States, 31st August 2017 (2017). © Celia Hempton. Courtesy the artist and Southarn Reid.

Laurie Simmons, Long House (Pink Bedroom), (2004). © Laurie Simmons. Image courtesy the artist and Salon 94, NY.

Julie Curtiss, The whispers (2020). © the artist. Photo © Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd. Courtesy of White Cube.

Julie Curtiss, Le serpent qui danse (2020). © the artist. Photo © Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd. Courtesy of White Cube.

Danica Lundy, Captain (2020). © Danica Landy. Courtesy of the artist and Super Dakota, Brussels.

Carrie Mae Weems, Untitled (Playing harmonica) (1990-99). © Carrie Mae Weems. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.

Laurie Simmons, The Boxes (Ardis Vinklers) Ballroom, (2005). © Laurie Simmons. Image courtesy the artist and Salon 94, NY.

Laurie Simmons, Study for Long House (Red Shoes), (2003). © Laurie Simmons. Image courtesy the artist and Salon 94, NY.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has not only killed nearly 1.3 million people worldwide—it has also made rituals of collective bereavement dangerous and practically impossible. 
“It’s not natural,” says artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, whose native country of Mexico is home to a particularly festive form of honoring the departed. “People feel like they’ve been suspended.”
A new artwork by the Mexico City-born, Montreal-based artist proffers a poetic alternative tailor-made for this globalized, techno-mediated moment.
For the work, Lozano-Hemmer developed an AI-operated machine that transforms user-submitted photographs of the deceased into temporary portraits plotted out in grains of sand. 
On a live stream, viewers can watch as the images take shape in the artist’s studio across 30 minutes, as a robotic arm methodically deposits granules until a figure coalesces.
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, A Crack in the Hourglass (2020), detail. Courtesy of the artist.

But just as quickly, the board tilts forward, the sand slips, the image dissolves, and only a black backboard remains.
“That’s what helps you understand that this is over, and that you need to let go,” Lozano-Hemmer tells Artnet News. 
The title of the work, A Crack in the Hourglass, is a central metaphor about our broken sense of time in the pandemic.
“What happens if the hourglass has a fissure and sand starts to empty out?” Lozano-Hemmer told Artnet News. “More importantly, how can we move the hourglass to collect the sand that’s been lost [to put it] into something that’s meaningful?” 
The project was commissioned by the Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City and was originally intended to be installed on site. But the logistical realities of the pandemic soon made that impossible. (The museum is officially closed for the rest of the year.)

As an alternative, Lozano-Hemmer devised a digital platform that would allow users to submit photos of the dead accompanied by personalized dedications. 
The pivot makes sense: the online format has shifted the work from a local memorial in Mexico City, to a more widely accessible snapshot of the pandemic writ large.
On the project’s website, you can scroll through the archive of portraits already completed. As of November 12, around 50 portraits have been made. (The project launched on November 7.)
Critically, the sand is recycled for each portrait—a reminder, Lozano-Hemmer says, that in death we’re all equal. 
Perhaps more meaningful, though, is that the artwork brings people together, which is harder—and more crucial—than perhaps ever before.
Watch A Crack in the Hourglass live, or submit your photo, at www.acrackinthehourglass.net.
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Often when looking at photographs, we assume they are true, that they recorded an actual event in a particular moment in time, captured with the alchemy of light and sealed with a chemical reaction.
But photographs are just as often—and perhaps, more often than not—faked. They are staged, cropped, edited, amplified, quieted, and tied to very specific perspectives. Photographs are rarely, if ever, “true.”
The Vancouver-based photographer Jeff Wall, who investigates precisely this in his work, is dedicated to probing this boundary between reality and fantasy, and seamlessly blending fact and fiction.
In an exclusive interview with Art21 as part of the Extended Play series, Wall explains his 2014 work Changing Room, which shows a woman in the midst of trying on clothes inside what looks to be a department store’s fitting room.
Her bottom half is clad in a floral-patterned skirt, while she pulls a wildly printed frock over her head, obscuring her face. We can see that she’s standing opposite a mirror, flush against the changing room wall.

Production still from the Art21 “Extended Play” film, “Jeff Wall: An Impossible Photograph.” © Art21, Inc. 2017.

“It’s not a mirror image, because if you look at the hangers, they say ‘Barneys’ on them, not backwards,” Wall says in the video. “Therefore, the only thing that you can be seeing is what the mirror sees. So, that’s a picture that can’t be made.”
This slippage between fact and fiction is at the heart of Wall’s work.
“If you pay attention to that picture and enjoy it and look at it—get involved in it—it’ll come to you. And when it comes to you, it’ll be exciting” he says.
So the next time you scroll through Instagram or flip through the pages of a magazine—or take a look at one of Jeff Wall’s photographs—remember his words: “The most beautiful artistry is hidden.”
Watch the video, which originally appeared as part of Art21’s series Extended Play, below. The brand new 10th season of the show is available now at Art21.org. 
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This is an installment of “Art on Video,” a collaboration between Artnet News and Art21 that brings you clips of newsmaking artists. A new series of the nonprofit Art21’s flagship series Art in the Twenty-First Century is available now on PBS. Catch all episodes of other series like New York Close Up and Extended Play and learn about the organization’s educational programs at Art21.org.
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