There are classic pictures of young art dealer Lucien Terras modeling stockades at Cady Noland’s 1994 exhibition at Paula Cooper Gallery. Gibbet, above, is named after the lamppost-like cages used to starve people to death in public. It has an American flag draped over it, with carefully placed holes to allow the stockade to function as it was designed. Your Fucking Face is named after your fucking face, I guess, and is identical except for the flag.
What I’d never realized until I saw both photos side by side on @_installator_‘s instagram, was that they were of the same object. Or one played the other on film. Bruce Hainley’s Artforum review of the Frankfurt show is very clear that these two works are installed next to each other.
Like in the photo above, which accompanied Bob Nickas’ Spike Art review. Except the checklist for the show did not include Your Fucking Face, and the stockade listed after Gibbet was called Beltway Terror. The Brants own “both,” so I guess we could ask if there is one stockade or two–or two stockades or three.
Oh here is a photo of the 1994 show in Bob Nickas’ installation photo roundup in Bomb Magazine, with Your Fucking Face and Gibbet side by side, but on a plinth. And it looks like the transparency was flipped, or the flag was. When even her collaborators get confounded, I can see why the artist issues disclaimers about reproductions of her work.