Clorox/Envy

Andrew Wyeth Lew Welch Luke Barber-Smith Michael E. Smith Jeremy Sigler Jeffery Scudder Shellyne Rodriguez Jenna Pietrobon Wyatt Niehaus Richard Merkin Andy Meerow Rose Marcus Justin Lieberman David X. Levine Kate Levant Myeong soo Kim JPW3 Miles Huston Otis Houston Jr. (AKA Black Cherokee) Becky Howland Nate Heiges Curran Hatleberg Andrew Greene Adam Gordon Barbara Gallucci Marisol Escobar Dru Donovan Agnes Denes Kyla Cheverie Noel Anderson

Organized by Miles Huston

Dear Friends,

I am leaving NYC indefinitely. The destination, for now, is Detroit, Michigan. Before I go, I want to thank all Artists, and friends that have pushed me to make this leap. This exhibition is full of Artworks that have inspired me to the extent that I had to take something from them, ingest them, and let them not purify, but clarify the water. Francis Picabia once said, "If a man's work illustrates my dream, then his work is mine". So, thank you. But, as I take, I also battle with the idea of Art as accumulation. Mel Bockner said, "Artists don't make new images, they only combine them". This is usually true, when you add this thing to that thing, you get a new thing. You know how it happened, it's stacked, it's linear, and it's reaffirming in its process. This group of Artworks, I believe, all strive to confuse this type of traceable construction. There is a process of reduction amidst the accumulation. The processes in these works are almost reversed engineered, doubling back on our ability to track and apprehend them. The layers of content compress and distill into a complex reduction sauce. In the end, objects, materials, language, and images are what they are, and are what they are not. Unsettlingly, they are iconic to themselves, graphic. However, their meaning is estranged like a local resident lurking around an empty bus station. They point in an indeterminate direction, or maybe they point the finger back at themselves, admitting that they don't know what they are or what you thought they were. So with dignity, they may chant, "Hands up, Don't shoot". As a group, my intention was that these Artworks would form a varied landscape, a very American one at that. My hope is that many of you who will come to the show will scrutinize the works looking back at you as you peer down a sight-line. Maybe you will overlook something waiting around a corner. Like Grandma would say, "Sometimes it is it is and sometimes it is it ain't".

Below you will find the list of Artists in reverse alphabetical order. Note, this list is certainly not complete, as it should be. That means there can be another show someday. Finally, in this email you will find a link to an audio recitation of Lew Welch's Chicago Poem. It's part of the show, so please take a moment, read while you follow along.

Bon voyage, Miles Huston

https://soundcloud.com/sig-other/cloroxenvy-chicago-poem-by-lew-welch

Chicago Poem by Lew Welch

I lived here nearly 5 years before I could meet the middle western day with anything approaching Dignity. It's a place that lets you understand why the Bible is the way it is: Proud people cannot live here.

The land's too flat. Ugly sullen and big it pounds men down past humbleness. They Stoop at 35 possibly cringing from the heavy and terrible sky. In country like this there Can be no God but Jahweh.

In the mills and refineries of its south side Chicago passes its natural gas in flames Bouncing like bunsons from stacks a hundred feet high. The stench stabs at your eyeballs. The whole sky green and yellow backdrop for the skeleton steel of a bombed-out town.

Remember the movies in grammar school? The goggled men doing strong things in Showers of steel-spark? The dark screen cracking light and the furnace door opening with a Blast of orange like a sunset? Or an orange?

It was photographed by a fairy, thrilled as a girl, or a Nazi who wished there were people Behind that door (hence the remote beauty), but Sievers, whose old man spent most of his life in there, Remembers a "nigger in a red T-shirt pissing into the black sand."

It was 5 years until I could afford to recognize the ferocity. Friends helped me. Then I put some Love into my house. Finally I found some quiet lakes and a farm where they let me shoot pheasant.

Standing in the boat one night I watched the lake go absolutely flat. Smaller than raindrops, and only Here and there, the feeding rings of fish were visible a hundred yards away – and the Blue Gill caught that afternoon Lifted from its northern lake like a tropical! Jewel at its ear Belly gold so bright you'd swear he had a Light in there. His color faded with his life. A small green fish . . .

All things considered, it's a gentle and undemanding planet, even here. Far gentler Here than any of a dozen other places. The trouble is always and only with what we build on top of it.

There's nobody else to blame. You can't fix it and you can't make it go away. It does no good appealing To some ill-invented Thunderer Brooding above some unimaginable crag . . .

It's ours. Right down to the last small hinge it all depends for its existence Only and utterly upon our sufferance.

Driving back I saw Chicago rising in its gases and I knew again that never will the Man be made to stand against this pitiless, unparalleled monstrosity. It Snuffles on the beach of its Great Lake like a blind, red, rhinoceros. It's already running us down.

You can't fix it. You can't make it go away. I don't know what you're going to do about it, But I know what I'm going to do about it. I'm just going to walk away from it. Maybe A small part of it will die if I'm not around

feeding it anymore.