Hans Haacke鈥檚 News (1969/2008) bleeps as a teleprinter unspools rolls upon rolls of a live newsfeed in the gallery space, reams of paper gathering like so many waves beneath and beyond a desk. Visitors are encouraged to touch and read the news stories and guards unceremoniously push the pile back into shape when it gets too unwieldy. 鈥淥ne way to break down the barrier between what is presumed to be this secluded and holy sphere we call art from the rest of the world, which is dirty politics, is to bring that other world into the holy place,鈥 the pioneer of institutional criticism says in an accompanying video.
It鈥檚 apt for this exhibition of works by 25 artists drawn from SFMOMA鈥檚 contemporary collection focusing on political resistance, surveillance and other social, civic and environmental concerns. The show takes its title from a 1962 James Baldwin essay on social upheaval that proposes: 鈥淎 society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven.鈥
Arthur Jafa鈥檚 breakthrough seven-minute photo and video collage Love Is The Message, The Message is Death (2016) is a dizzying compilation of found footage that details the joy, pain and horror of the African American experience, set to the tune of Kanye West鈥檚 rap-gospel song Ultralight Beam. There is constant, dynamic motion as Jafa moves seamlessly from police killings and brutality to Barack Obama singing 鈥淎mazing Grace鈥 or Martin Luther riding in a motorcade. The words 鈥渨e鈥檙e black and strong鈥 are removed from a 1995 Million Man March/Day of Absence protest banner in Glenn Ligon鈥檚 photograph of the same name. Ligon showed the demonstrators instead offering blank support to an unknown cause after he was troubled by the march鈥檚 exclusion of women and gays.
In An-My L锚鈥檚 hands, military training exercises in the Mojave Desert by US Marines preparing to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan become an arresting show of flashes illuminating the night sky, an illustration of war as theatre. Turning to the natural world, and the delicate balance of how it鈥檚 beauty can be 鈥渕aintained by human intervention,鈥 Rinko Kawauchi focused on the controlled burning of grasslands in Japan. She first dreamt up the scenery before realising it existed. Endless copies of Felix Gonzalez-Torres鈥檚 Untitled (1992/1993) print of a bird soaring in the sky are offered to the public, a mediation on loss and presence as the stacks of paper diminish before being replenished.
Olivia Hampton
Nothing Stable under Heaven. SFMOMA, San Francisco. Until 16 September. For more information, click .
Credits:
1.聽Glenn Ligon, We鈥檙e Black and Strong (I), 1996; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Accessions Committee Fund purchase; 漏 Glenn Ligon; photo: Ian Reeves.
2. Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled. (1992/1993).聽Collection SFMOMA. Accessions Committee Fund purchase: gift of Ann S. Bowers, Frances and John Bowes, Collectors’ Forum, Elaine McKeon, Byron R. Meyer, and Norah and Norman StoneCopyright漏 The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation.
