Image Notes: Paul Laffoley, The Kitsch Barrier and Abnormcore

Preview:

This summer, I was invited by Fall River Museum of Contemporary Art to create an installation responding to the work of Paul Laffoley (1935-2015). The exhibition, titled Another Dimension, presented two rare artworks of hand-drawn ink and press type by the late visionary artist. These intricately dense designs, The Heironymous Box - Flat Tesseract Modality (1982) and Anthe Heironymous Box Two (1991), were my introduction to his work. FR MoCA directors Harry Gould Harvey IV and Brittni Ann Harvey chose to present these works as a way to open up a dialogue about higher dimensional thinking in art. I was intrigued. The corner of the internet where I reside has seen a steady flourishing of everything neo-gothic, nu-spiritality and cyber-angelic. My hope was that by spelunking into the work of one of the originators of modern esoteric art in the 80s and 90s, I could bring back a richer understanding of the current aesthetic moment. The resulting rabbit hole that I dove down completely changed my views on art in the contemporary moment.

Note: I took inspiration from design element in Anthe Heironymous Box Two for my tesseract explainer extruded wall text installation that started just around the pin-stripe wall that displayed Laffoley's two rare artworks at FRMoCA. Specifically, the square with inset circle circuits above the "HOMAGE TO:" I was always thinking about the simple black line as part of a circuit that can activated when making the strata-cut line that bisects the entire installation and cuts through walls.

Note: In the essay I describe interacting with the psychotronic device. This passage was originally in first person, but I changed it to third to give it more distance. It really does work even though it was behind glass (so I couldn't really rub the detector plate.)

Note: After I shared install shots of the FR MoCA show, I was contacted by William Alderwick, who had penned a profile of Paul Laffoley in 2008. My writing was heavily influenced (cribbed) from his very lucid & illuminating account of such an enigmatic and elusive figure. Read his piece on his substack, [/] INFINITE THOUGHT.

Note: Alderwick's essay also influenced the book "The Essential Paul Laffoley: Works from the Boston Visionary Cell" by Douglas Walla from 2016 which features thought-forms for the artist describing the work in his own words. The book was a great reference for me in trying to formulate a way to think through The Bauharoque in today's aesthetic landscape. Below are scans of two artworks from the book.

After the FR MoCA show closed in September, I attended the opening of an exhibition at PEM, Salem about the material history of the Spiritualist movement that featured a perpetual motion machine powered by spirits by Laffoley from 1975.

As mainstream aesthetic landscape becomes obsessed with the granularity of content production, Laffoley’s scope expanding work should be taken as a telos for artists.

The second half of the essay pivots from discussing Laffoley's work to doing some light analysis of contemporary fashion trends and aesthetics. Below are looks and moments that I was thinking about.

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It is no wonder then, that popular emerging brands are pushing against the grey-goo-ification of everything with anti-attentional aesthetics. Online Ceramics has carved an aesthetic outpost with tie-dye dark-hippy graphic tees. Each one is done by hand and can take up to 30 days to ship, nowhere near the precognition of the Amazon product allocation algorithm. The language of Online Ceramics is unwieldy and arcane, it refuses the slick ad-copy that turns nouns to adverbs by tacking a -y at the end of everything like Grammarly, Drizly and Oatly. The coolness of Online Ceramics is an anti-coolness of something that is slightly off, subtly resisting the streamlined flatness of Big Moodboard. It's post-poser, no-brow, abnormcore.

ABNORMCORE FOREVER

CIRCUMNAVIGATE →[ THE KITSCH BARRIER ]

I pulled out these three runway moments for some close reading, attempting to pull out the Bahauroque quality. The look on the left, Collina Strada, F23 serves as header image for the essay. I liked connecting the human-animal hybridization throughout the piece.

A lot of what I was driving at in this essay I think is summed up in this arresting video by Lalita. Something stirring under the surface.

In the conclusion of the essay, I describe my experience with the FR MoCA Summer Fashion Experience. I showed up on the last day and filmed a short video of the final presentation of the students work.

The video and one of the pieces made during the program made it all the way to Paris along with two of my vinyl pieces from Another Dimension.

That's all for now. Thank you to SQD.ZIP crew for publishing my essay. It was super sick to write about such an under-appreciated yet influential artist in the context of massively online fashion. Read the rest of the crazy shit they have published so far. My favorites right now: Interview with Daniel Keller, Ruba Al-Sweel on Rolblox Fashion, Filip Kostic ranks every Fortnite skin, Philip Pyle on American Football maxxing, and Alex Quicho sends out Aura Points. - Jak