Clarion – serie

Williams draws on her background in dramaturgy to envision a space that accommodates the biopolitical economies that inform how movement might be read. Looking at the interconnections between popular culture and myth, she relates in her work anatomy, regions of Black diaspora, and communication and obfuscation. Williams’s body of work shapes an alternative language that examines how Black moving bodies are regarded. Williams continues to make visible the inexpressible violence Black bodies have been subjected to in dance and beyond.Featuring contributions by the curator of 52 Walker—a David Zwirner gallery space—Ebony L. Haynes and the artist and writer Hannah Black, and a stirring conversation between Williams and the choreographer Okwui Okpokwasili, the book serves as an extension of the exhibition. Included are high-quality illustrations of the artworks alongside rich archival materials.—About Clarion SeriesThe Clarion series of illustrated publications is positioned as an extension of each exhibition at the groundbreaking gallery space 52 Walker, curated by Ebony L. Haynes. The program focuses on showcasing conceptual and research-based artists from a range of backgrounds and at various stages in their careers. The series title is derived from the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop, the oldest of its kind, at the University of California, San Diego. Octavia Butler attended this workshop in the 1970s. Both she and her work have been extremely influential in many cadres of Black culture and subculture. With a sleek design influenced by encyclopedias, each publication will feature color reproductions of the works on view, alongside an introduction by Haynes, commissioned essays, artist texts, archival material, and more.

Immersing the audience in sound and light Nikita Gale’s END OF SUBJECT subverts understandings of viewership by prompting spectators to question their subjecthood within 52 Walker’s site-specific installation. Creating an aurally and visually rich environment, Gale engages with the architecture of the surrounding space, stimulating all senses through site-specific installation and muses on the boundaries of performance art. Considering and fracturing the physical space of the installation, the artist employs abolitionist ideology and institutional critique to simultaneously rupture and rebuild facets of the art institution. With an introduction by Ebony L. Haynes and a suite of poems by Harmony Holiday, this publication considers Gale’s multidisciplinary approach to address historical hierarchies of visibility. A text by the esteemed artist Andrea Fraser offers reflections on the various interventions at play during a gathering held in the exhibition.

The third title in the Clarion series features Amsterdam-based artist Nora Turato and her vibrant enamel panels that magnify the omnipresence of text, design, and speech in our contemporary culture. ---------- “Meticulous as Helen and tricky as Odysseus, the artist invites us first to misread the slick surfaces and humor of her works as effortless, then forces us to attend to the laborious practices they belie, the histories and possibilities of that effort.” — Art in America ---------- Originally trained as a graphic designer, Nora Turato adapts text to subvert and create messages. Although many of Turato’s performances and works appear to be drafted by free association, she meticulously and thoughtfully edits them to evoke a sense of alluring confusion. In three signature murals with a bespoke typeface, Turato addresses the inundation of language, typography, and graphic design in our contemporary culture, whether in the news, on social media, or in advertisements. Published on the occasion of Turato’s widely popular exhibition govern me harder at 52 Walker, this publication features texts by Ebony L. Haynes and Anna Kats. Serving as an extension of the exhibition, performance scripts by the artist are also included in this publication. As described in The Brooklyn Rail, “In the slick sea of graphic smoothness and language lost from meaning, something has still been irrefutably made.”

Tiona Nekkia McClodden considers the presence and absence of the Black figure and aesthetic tropes of representation through work traversing film, installation, sculpture, painting, and writing. ---------- “An artist who may be America’s most essential today.” — Siddhartha Mitter, The New York Times ---------- Known for her poignant examinations of biomythography and identity, McClodden uses a research-based approach in her practice as an artist and self-described “historian and cultural custodian.” MASK / CONCEAL / CARRY dissects the many meanings of “masking,” “concealing,” “carrying,” and their opposites, revealing the constant contradiction and harmony between these actions. In this body of work, McClodden creates sculptural meditations on guns—a gold and silver chainmail helmet and a leather molded magazine of an AR15 assault rifle. Through custom lighting, the artist carefully choreographs a performance between the work, space, and viewer. Adding to McClodden’s narrative and psychological concepts, this publication includes a curator’s note from Ebony L. Haynes, a poem by the acclaimed writer and artist Rhea Dillon, and a conversation between the poet Simone White and the artist, as well as a statement penned by McClodden herself.

A joining of two artists, exploring their shared fixation on the problematics of architecture, language, institutions, scale, and value '[The exhibition is] powerful and unhinged and overbuilt—a monument to the entropy of the postindustrial city, and the tenuous dance of its inhabitants.' — The New York Times Gordon Matta-Clark and Pope.L are esteemed for their respective interdisciplinary practices that examine the value and paradoxes of urban life as well as the risk inherent in art making. Utilizing performance, film, drawing, and various multimedia projects, the two artists often open up interstitial spaces by realizing sweeping gestures that take into account shifting, decentralized zones. Grounded in the concept of failure, the sixth exhibition at 52 Walker and its accompanying catalogue reconsider societal, artistic, and structural failure—and in its expression a consideration of hope. With an introduction by the curator and director of 52 Walker Ebony L. Haynes, this publication also includes a conversation piece between Haynes, the artist Pope.L, and the director of LAXART, Hamza Walker, that discusses the visual, material, and conceptual similarities between Pope.L’s and Gordon Matta-Clark’s work and what it means to treat the possibilities of failure as an artistic medium. About ClarionThe Clarion series of illustrated publications is positioned as an extension of each exhibition at the groundbreaking gallery space 52 Walker, curated by Ebony L. Haynes. The program focuses on showcasing conceptual and research-based artists from a range of backgrounds and at various stages in their careers. The series title is derived from the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop, the oldest of its kind, at the University of California, San Diego. Octavia Butler attended this workshop in the 1970s. Butler’s writing has been influential in the conceptual framework of the program and the Clarion series. With a sleek design influenced by encyclopedias, each publication features color reproductions of the works on view, alongside an introduction by Haynes, commissioned essays, artist texts, archival materials, and more.

A colorful, fantastical, and musical body of work by the painter Bob Thompson 'Thompson, who finally seems to be on fame’s doorstep, invents in much the same way: he makes you feel how it might have felt to see a picture of an angel for the first time.' — The New Yorker Influenced by jazz music, Bob Thompson painted spirited, colorful compositions that feature an interplay of bodies, allegories, and natural landscapes while reconfiguring European masterworks. Though his career as a painter spanned only a brief period, from 1958 to his untimely death at age twenty-eight in 1966, Thompson left behind a singular and influential body of figurative work that remains vitally resonant. Looking at his particular consideration of color, line, and figuration—developed during a period when abstraction was the dominant trend in American art—this intimate exhibition catalogue, the seventh volume in the Clarion series, pays homage to the friction Thompson generated between his proximity to and deviation from canonical sources. The phrase 'So let us all be citizens,' taken from a speech the artist gave as a teenager, forecasted his passion for the tenets of freedom and expression, and encapsulates the power of Thompson’s work in widening the scope of what is imaginable in contemporary painting and for whom. With an introduction by Ebony L. Haynes, this publication expands upon Thompson’s dynamic practice and features works that spotlight his signature high-contrast palette. About Clarion The Clarion series of illustrated publications is positioned as an extension of each exhibition at the groundbreaking gallery space 52 Walker, curated by Ebony L. Haynes. The program focuses on showcasing conceptual and research-based artists from a range of backgrounds and at various stages in their careers. The series title is derived from the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop, the oldest of its kind, at the University of California, San Diego. Octavia Butler attended this workshop in the 1970s. Butler’s writing has been influential in the conceptual framework of the program and the Clarion series. With a sleek design influenced by encyclopedias, each publication features color reproductions of the works on view, alongside an introduction by Haynes, commissioned essays, artist texts, archival materials, and more.

Heji Shin’s photographic practice pushes boundaries and challenges societal ideals surrounding fashion, celebrity, and sexuality. “The German artist . . . is one of the wildest experimentalists working in photography today.” —Interview magazine Shin’s practice oscillates fluidly between the commercial and fine-art realms, and the work she exhibits in gallery and museum contexts is strongly influenced by the editorial work she produces. For THE BIG NUDES, a title that reappropriates Helmut Newton’s series of the same name, Shin photographed pigs at close range, employing the vernacular of fashion photography to transform the pigs into models who appear to flirt with and pose for the camera. The photographs are paired with MRI scans and a holographic model of Shin’s brain—an impression of the self that troubles and transforms our foundational ideas of what constitutes a portrait. Alongside a curator’s note from Ebony L. Haynes, this publication features a text by Benoît Lamy de La Chapelle that explores the interplay between Shin’s commercial and fine-art practices. This insightful analysis provides a deeper understanding of Shin’s work, shedding light on the nuances of her artistic choices.