_________________________________

_________________________________

THE READER

Cut and Dry

The Reader is the eighth artist to take part in  Has Art?, a twelve-part series of exhibitions inaugurating the gallery's new space.   Each month, for one year, artists will be paired with a writer and a page from Stéphane Mallarmé’s Un Coup de Dés.  The writer will provide a critical response to the work as it relates to the poem as well as offer scholarship about the artist’s practice as a whole.  As the solo exhibitions progress, a publication will grow and the imperative of the group show will emerge. The Reader joins Isaac Layman, Jeremy Shaw, Bert Rodriguez, Wynne Greenwood, Carolina Silva, Cris Bruch and Elena del Rivero in this ever-evolving exhibition.

You can follow the progress of the publication and the exhibition HERE.

A printable PDF copy of Has Art? is also available upon request

Simply email: scott@lawrimoreproject.com

                                                              IT WAS                                                           NUMBER

                                                           stellar issue         

                                                                                                                                   EXISTED HE

                                                                                                           other than as a scattered hallucination of agony

                                                                                                                 COMMENCED HE AND CEASED HE

                                                                                                          upwelling but denied and closed when apparent

                                                                                                                            at last

                                                                                                                   by some profusion widespread in rarity

                                                                                                                                  CIPHERED HE

                                                                                                            evidence of the sum if only one   

                                                                                                                               ILLUMINATED HE

    IT WOULD BE

            worse                                                                                                        CHANCE

                            to

                                        more nor less

                                                    indifferently but as much

                                                                                                                    Falls

                                                                                                                            the plume

                                                                                                                                        rhythmic suspense of the sinister

                                                                                                                                                                                    to bury itself

                                                                                                                                                                in original forms

                                                                                                 not long ago whence sprang up its delirium to a peak

                                                                                                                                                                        withered

                                                                                                                                by the identical neutrality of the gulf

Cut and Dry

by Elias Hansen

It is all of us or none of us.

I still see us as little kids together.  That picture of us at the picnic table with jam smeared all over our faces.  We are only

children, young men with big bodies and even bigger expectations hoisted onto our shoulders.  We never thought anybody

would take us seriously, we never thought anybody would even notice us. It seemed like it would always just be us in that tree

fort, singing songs and drawing stupid pictures.

If there were something sacred to hold onto, we’d have held onto it.

But you get to be this age, no diploma, no reasonable job skills, you’ve got to make a choice.  You write your name on the wall

enough times and it’s already your job.

Read has built his own empire of visual vocabulary using the graphic and physical building blocks of books, labels, hand

written text, font styles, and advertising. His books are published through Operation Madman publishing company.  This book

is an original plagiarization, stolen from existence and returned to the people in a condensed form.  It is a mix tape of the last

100 years of graphic design.

Read has extensively studied graphic design from a consumer, street-level approach.  He is a workingman, and a workingman’s

artist, creating work about our obsession to mark our physical presence in the world. As long as I have known Read, he has

produced museum quality work for public exhibition anonymously, with no intention of economically benefiting from his work.

This is his first gallery show.

The packages I receive in the mail from Read are some of his best work.  Envelopes built obsessively out of stickers and old

cigarette packs.  Boxes full of lead type, MREs, tokens, stickers, strange photographs, found notes.  To be able to find the

humor in the sadness of the human condition is a unique talent.  Read is able to capture this humor and reproduce it without

seeming nostalgic or condescending.  He is an observer, bringing to his art a true presence of now.

Perhaps jail lies ahead.  Maybe he’ll get beat up.  He could go crazy.  I’ve definitely seen that happen.  Some guys get nerve

damage.  They start pissing themselves in the night.  Or you can reveal your real name. Or you can keep your two identities

separate, creating subtle jokes that only people close to you understand. Sometimes it’s not so clear.  Some ask, some tell, some

do.

It would be hard not to explain Read as a gamer, an operator, an agent in the truly intentional sense. But this isn’t liberation and

salvation.

We’re in the thick of it. If there were a way to explain it, I would have already.

“Shine don’t don’t never rust”

TAGS:  The Reader, Operation Madman, Read More, Boans, OYE, Graffiti, Booker, Read More Books,