If the strength of an object-based practice is measured upon the focus of the artist's thrust in producing objects, then the aesthetic experiment is measured upon the artist's interest in furthering a discourse even when that discourse does not generate anything physical and long lasting in nature. This sort of strategy is certainly reminiscent of 1970's methods of art production (Lucy Lippard's seminal Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972 comes to mind), and a strategy ESL embraces especially given the state of art exhibition currently existing in Los Angeles which seems quite occupied with, and describes itself as celebrating, a 'thing-ness of things''. Unfortunately it's debatable whether this sort language, recently used in promoting LA object-based practices, really contains any sort of Heidegarian logic or is merely being used to generate intellectual style points.
Matt Lucero, in Historical Fiction, presented an open narrative through crudely but efficiently produced photographs and textual documentation describing a journey into the Pasadena Foot Hills which was then followed poetry a reading. To be clear Historical Fiction is an aesthetic experiment, a nexus of themes which underscore the failure of modernism as its promises lay buried in its own manipulated landscape. Historical Fiction pointed to the remnants of a potential future that has come and gone- a tug and pull between nature and culture where modernism does't quite deliver its much anticipated utopias.
For documentation of Matt Lucero's reading click here.
