ASPEN ART MUSEUM
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an acapella group, led by a young girl, who recites a Chinese version (written by Li) of the eponymous song by My Chemical Romance. The lm—a saccharine ode to the band and its inuence on the artist’s life—is hard to parse through the matrix of detritus and screens that make up the installa- tion. As Legacy Russell makes clear in her manifesto Glitch Feminism (2021), real life can nd itself in digital skins, leaving the acronym IRL dreadfully obsolete—AFK (Away From the Key- board) taking its rightful place. I’m Not oers an insular, oneiric vision of Li’s doting obsession, while at the same time Li embodies the role of celebrity, attening the dichotomy between that of the entertainer and the entertained. When the German-Korean artist Heji Shin exhibited her photographs of Ye at the Kunsthalle Zurich in 2018, the rapper’s psychobabble and contro- versial views had reached new heights and were met with public frenzy. Show- ing the fresh-faced, younger rapper, sporting a hoodie and neon pink hair, and looking stalwart and intimidating, Shin’s images contrasted with the public image; looking back at them, I experience a sense of innocence: a pop star whose bipolar disorder weighed heavily on his conscience and whose vulnerability pierced through his stoic gaze with fury. Alongside the suite of Ye portraits, the artist also presented X-rays of her own body (with her pet dog), uncovering what lies literally beneath her skin. What feels perhaps performative or like an emblematic gesture for a certain kind of vulner- ability in Shin’s X-rays, is laid bare in the images of the music impresario; his inner demons are visible across his face—there’s a glint in the eye of pure mischief. Seeking to unsheathe the sharp contours of our psyche, the underbelly of the self, what’s at the core—whether of a celebrity or even herself, the magic of Shin’s images is that as print media—advertisements, fashion editorial—they are often both straightforwardly legible and simulta- neously revealing of what lies behind culture’s forward-facing, glossy veneer. Whether it’s her Eckhaus Latta 2017 Spring campaign showing real couples fucking or her 2016 “Baby” series of newborns bloodily emerging from birth canals, there is an obsession of (graphi- cally) presenting what lies beneath the shallow facade of a world covered in lies. A simple gaze inward that has tremendous eect. The works in Shin’s forthcoming Aspen Art Museum show are being made outside the studio, further complicating the relationship between reality and artice, subject and artist. Like Li and Shin, the Los Angeles- born artist Jasper Marsalis endeavors to unearth the realities of what lies behind the construction of a public gure—something he investigates as both as a visual artist and a musical performer. He also goes by his hip-hop moniker Slauson Malone, and was formerly a member of the avant-garde musical troupe Standing on the Corner; as a visual artist Marsalis makes work that meditates on the relationship between audience and performer, viewer and creator, with a rhapsodic interest in collapsing those distinctions while also musing on their inherent dierences. In his solo show at Kristina Kite in Los Angeles last year, Marsalis forced visitors to enter the gallery through the back entrance, lifting the
“My favorite music begins and ends with this tortured erotic ambiva- lence,” writes Holiday in her 2023 essay, reecting that: “the most eective art is greedy about it, righteous and wicked at the same time, humble and opulent, minimal and spectacular, optimistic and despairing, unrepentant and begging for mercy.” Ye may have leaned too heavily into tortured ambivalence, but I nd myself still listening to his music. Maybe it’s a quality that all good artists share. Certainly Li, Marsalis
and Shin match Holiday’s description in being unrepentant when it comes to their craft, unapologetic when it comes to their own artistic visions, while showing reverence to their audience, paying them back with kindness and thrills. Exhibitions by Shuang Li (a co-commission with the Swiss Institute, New York) and Heji Shin will be on view from November 20–March 3. Jasper Marsalis’s exhibition runs from March 20–June 16, 2025.
curtain, so to speak, on what lies “back- stage.” Upon entering, the audience encounters a laptop ( Face 1 ), a behind- the-scenes look at what’s feeding and programming both Face 2 , a large LED screen capturing pixelated images of visitors, and Instrument 4 , four stacks of speakers amplifying the minutiae of sounds that permeate the gallery (all works 2023). The result is a feed- back loop of the visitors’ input that in turn becomes the immediate output of the work.
Above, top Shuang Li, Lord of the
Flies , 2022, performance documentation. Courtesy: the artist and Peres Projects Above, bottom Jasper Marsalis, Jacket and Shadow and Jacket and Shadow and Jacket and Shadow , 2023, installation view, Kristina Kite Gallery, Los Angeles. Courtesy: the artist and Kristina Kite Gallery, Los Angeles; photograph: Paul Salveson
Terence Trouillot is senior editor of frieze . He lives in New York.
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