A Pattern Withdrawn

N. Dash

Lauren Gault

Norman Leto

Lucky Dragons

Park McArthur

Curated by Rebecca Friedman

American Medium is pleased to present A Pattern Withdrawn.

A pattern is at once a spatial con guration, a recurrence, and an emergent relationship among component parts. As a cognitive event, pattern recognition taps into the virtual, a causative realm in which sequence and form arise out of uncertainty and chaos. The understanding of virtuality as a generative wellspring is ancient, and “far from being tied to digitality, its lineage long antedates its current technological matrix.” [1]

This is how Fernand Deligny, a lmmaker and forerunner of the anti-psychiatry movement, describes wander lines (lignes d’erre) in his study of drawings by neurodivergent children. The drawings can be understood as subjective cartographies which express latent energy through the accumulation of hand drawn marks and linear traces. Wanderlining, then, refers to a mediation at the point where virtualization and actualization interchange. [2] This process tracks a latent pattern and translates it into a formal output. The result is an artifact, or an index, of virtual phenomena that are otherwise withdrawn.

All of the variety of the social and physical worlds is built out of rhythms and spatial arrangements arising from such withdrawn patterns. Traditional Chinese philosophy traces these structures through qi, a term used to describe the essential energy of all things, from wind and static, to food, individuals and nations. The study of how qi affects us in our environment is known as feng shui—a practice unrelated to formal design strategies, and yet deeply involved with composition, which is “less a critical thought project than an integrally experienced emergence.” [3] Embeddedness in an energetic eld, as well as a sensitivity to that eld, produce coherence as composition.

In other words, what we sense as compositions are resonances between an external non-determinacy and our own patterning, which is itself revealed and cohered in the exchange. As such, lived experience is a constant negotiation across our own subjective patterns, the patterns we come into contact with, and the patterns within which we are already embedded. With this understanding, it becomes ever more critical to foreground the labor of reproducing oneself within and against normalizing social and political patterning, in order to sustain a subjective ecology of worlds, forms of life, points of view, rhythms and gestures. [4]

1 - Rotman, Brian. Ghost Effects. Address presented at Stanford Humanities Institute, November 2004.

2 - Pelbart, Peter Pál. Cartography of Exhaustion: Nihilism Inside Out. Univocal Publishing, 2015.

3 - Massumi, Brian. Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Duke University Press, 2002.

4 - Pelbart, Peter Pál. Cartography of Exhaustion: Nihilism Inside Out. Univocal Publishing, 2015.

N. Dash (b. 1980, Miami Beach, Florida; lives and works in New York and New Mexico) earned a BA from New York University in 2003 and an MFA from Columbia University in 2010. In recent years, Dash has presented solo exhibitions at institutions including the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2014-2015) and White Flag Projects, St. Louis (2013). The artist has recently been included in group exhibitions such as the Jewish Museum, New York (2015); Strozzina Centre for Contemporary Culture (2015); Pier 54 High Line, New York (2014); Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley (2014); Maxxi Museum, Rome (2014); Columbus College of Art and Design, Ohio (2013); and Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND), Los Angeles (2013).

Lauren Gault (b. 1986, Belfast, Ireland; lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland) received her BA from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee. She works in installation, writing and performance. Recent solo exhibitions include lipstick-NASA at Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh (2015); fugue states (with Allison Gibbs) at the Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow (2015); I AM IN/ Losing You at the Modern Edinburgh Film School, GSS, Glasgow (2015); and Plosive Blows at Hotel Maria Kapel, Netherlands (2015). Her work has also recently been included in group exhibitions at Tramway, Glasgow (2016); Frutta, Rome (2016); Rinomina, Paris (2016); and SALTS, Basel (2014).

Norman Leto (b. 1980, Bochnia, Poland) is a visual artist and lmmaker. Recent solo exhibitions include City Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand (2014); Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw (2014); and Galeria Kolonie, Warsaw (2013). He has participated in group exhibitions at the National Art Museum of China, Beijing (2015); Karlin Studios, Prague (2015); 19th Biennale of Sydney, Australia (2014); Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Poland (2014); Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw (2013); and Haifa Museum of Art, Israel (2009). Leto’s lms have also been screened at lm festivals including FID Marseille, France (2011); Era New Horizons, Poland (2016/2010); Bradford Film Festival, UK (2011); and Palic European Film Festival, Serbia (2011). He lives and works in Warsaw, Poland.

Lucky Dragons is an ongoing collaboration between LA-based artists Sarah Rara (b. 1983, Livingston, New Jersey; lives and works in LA) and Luke Fischbeck (b. 1978, San Francisco; lives and works in LA). Lucky Dragons uses participation, dissent, perception, and attention as research methods for their performances and public art projects. They purposefully work toward a better understanding of existing ecologies through workshops, publications, and recordings. Lucky Dragons have presented collaborative work in a variety of contexts including REDCAT, the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater, LA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Hammer Museum, LA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Institute for Contemporary Arts, London; The Kitchen, New York; the Venice Biennale; Whitney Biennial, New York; and the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; among others.

Park McArthur (born 1984, North Carolina, USA) lives and works in New York. Solo exhibitions include Chisenhale Gallery, London (2016); Lars Friedrich, Berlin (2014); Yale Union, Portland, Oregon (2014); and Essex Street, New York (2014). Group exhibitions include Incerteza viva: 32nd Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (2016); Question the Wall Itself, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota (2016); Greater New York, PS1 MoMA, New York (2015); Unorthodox, The Jewish Museum, New York (2015); Ludwig Forum, Aachen (2015); Deborah Schamoni, Munich (2015); The Kitchen, New York (2013). Her rst book, Beverly Buchanan, 1978 – 1981, co-edited with Jennifer Burris Staton, was published by Athénée Press (2015).