Susan Silton

“We,” Susan Silton’s first solo show with Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, featured a suite of sixteen photographic prints of the Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve in Northern California. Each black-and-white work presents two nearly identical views of coastal redwoods, resolutely earthbound trunks emerging from the grassy floor. Silton shot them on her iPhone; vantages capture clearings and the receding spaces of deep, dense groves that eschew the aperture of sky.

“What are we looking at?” You hear that (usually rhetorical) question a lot in art galleries and design houses – also in accounting firms, screening rooms, at construction sites, and (really) business meetings of any kind – frequently spoken with some impatience. (We’re always in a hurry here, even as we’re telling ourselves to slow down – which is what this question is actually asking for permission to do.) It is understood that what is referred to here is a presentation, or representation of the actuality, the thing, what we all agree to agree is the reality. How we may think about that agreed-upon actuality or reality becomes a matter of both methodology and attitude.

The intaglio print edition, which is called WE, engages the messiness of subjective observation through pairings of the same subject. In this case multiplicity/repetition — of the images and also of the phrase silkscreened below each pair — activates difference. The repetition of one phrase in Type Specimens, through twelve different mastheads, activates intersection. Those of us immersed in a politics of identity have always attempted to transcend the confines of classification through multiplicity. But I’m having a hard time these days coping with “multiple truths,” especially as that applies to journalism. Nuance, which I’ve often relied on in my work, feels like a thing of the past, when facts could be agreed on, but one could still discuss subtleties.

Yes, in the work I danced for myself—my personal form of grieving—but I hoped it could embody many people’s grief. I find that with spectacles and casts of thousands, it’s more difficult to access feelings and content, since the content is too often the spectacle itself. I tend to focus more on intimate collectives because they’re more meaningful to me personally, and I like to construct situations that allow for others to feel.

Sensing resonances between Messiaen’s inspirations and our contemporary challenging political moment, artist Susan Silton decided to restage the work in a large warehouse space in downtown LA, not far from the site of her 2015 operatic piece A Sublime Madness in the Soul. The all-female cast and crew will feature four musicians accompanied by four dancers performing a minimal score choreographed by Flora Wiegmann. The work will be preceded by an introductory reading by Cristina Frias of a text by Hannah Arendt, well known for her writings on totalitarianism.

Susan Silton resides in Los Angeles. Her multi-disciplinary projects engage multiple aesthetic strategies to mine the complexities of subjectivity and subject positions, often through poetic combinations of humor, discomfort, subterfuge and unabashed beauty.Silton’s work takes form in performative and participatory- based projects, photography, video, installation, text/audio works, and print-based projects, and presents in diverse contexts such as public sites, social network platforms, and traditional galleries and institutions.

Back in 2003, Los Angeles-based artist Susan Silton was given a solo exhibition for her projects Aviate and hemidemisemiquaver, reconfigured ornithological photos and a video projection, respectively. Now, the artist returns with The Whistling Project, which she began in 2010 as an in-depth study of the human voice. In addition to the metal casts of pursed, presumably whistling lips on view, Silton performs at SITE with her all-woman whistling ensemble, The Crowing Hens, on Saturday, Nov. 7. 

Silton's exhibit isn't just a philosophical exercise, it also touches on what is still a sensitive topic 75 years after Steinbeck published his novel: labor. "I was really interested in the notion of labor and class and how that resonates today," said the artist.Silton's exhibit isn't just a philosophical exercise, it also touches on what is still a sensitive topic 75 years after Steinbeck published his novel: labor. "I was really interested in the notion of labor and class and how that resonates today," said the artist.

I passed out a series of postcards I produced in conjunction with a concurrent public project of mine about free speech called Utility, which is installed on five utility boxes in neighboring Pasadena. It’s incredibly gratifying to extend a work’s sphere of influence beyond the gallery or museum. If one person who never sets foot in a traditional art space posts one of my postcards on her/his refrigerator, the work, to my mind, has achieved great success. And this is in sharp contrast to how success is defined by the institutional art world. In addition to the accessibility of public space, I’m drawn to the relationship between public space and media proliferation; public space is where and how media of every conceivable nature goes viral. As such, it’s propaganda’s chief venue. So I regard the public realm as a rich site for subversive intervention

The work inspired Silton to look more closely at names and how they function. "When I saw John's piece I began to think about the ways in which we identified with this sequence of letters as being ourselves, even if we have the same name as countless other people," she says, "A name becomes the stand-in for the body." Nowhere is this perhaps more true than in the art world. In her essay for Silton's book, art historian Liz Kotz reminds us that an ad for an exhibition may consist of nothing more than a name, and that shows and works are routinely referred to in the same way: "We're doing a show of Richard Prince.' 'We just bought a Sherman.'"

Over the next 10 weeks, Silton rolled out nine more apologizing avatars: Marion Barry, Ted Haggart, Trent Lott, James McGreevey (planted next to a photo of his wife standing by the real McGreevey during his apology), Larry Craig, Chris Brown, John Edwards, Mel Gibson (with Christ wrestling the cross in the background), Bob Packwood and Mark Sanford. Each avatar is flatly animated, like a cartoon, and each weirdly reacts to the cursor — when it moves, the avatar’s eyes follow it. And each makes his apology in the same measured voice — Silton’s — which adds a layer of eeriness, and also one of intrigue: The female voice (or at least Silton’s) seems to make the men appear more sympathetic. “You want to believe them,” Silton says, “and, based on the reactions I’m getting, my voice seems to offer sincerity.”