William Pope.L at Catherine Bastide
Since our friendly American artist gave up performance, its been objects self-mocking and the context that presents them. I walked into a giant bisected penis in Chicago, the cut slathered in a dry scab of ketchup.
Less the crude directness, Pope.L’s comedy in their refusal of expectations, a mastery of not-quite-speaking-it-aloud or abstracted to the point of loss, losing the punchline for the trees, waiting for the forbidden thoughts eruption in nervous dissonance, alluding endlessly to color, grey people, beige milk, speaking every other color but but the one we’re awaiting, allowing the distending of what-is-not-yet-said to inflate like a giant white elephant under the table, a goodbadandugly standoff of who is going to say it first.
Then the press release just goes and says it.