Arthur Jafa’s 2022 exhibition at LUMA Arles was called LIVE – EVIL, like an impromptu Miles Davis recording. The catalogue documenting the show, though, is called EVIL – LIVE, which I guess is the opposite: a carefully crafted production that took years to realize.
I realized it was out in Arles several months ahead of its release in the US, so I yeeted myself over there to pick one up. There are three Jafa interviews, a grailcollection of his writings, and some choice essays.
Like an excellent deepcut essay by Julian Myers of Grupa OK fame about Jafa’s confounding appearance in the Whitney’s 2000 exhibition Bitstreams. All these years later, my mind has been reopened on that digital art show that left me bored and cold at the time.
And Liam Gillick goes long on Jafa’s wall-mounted metal sculptures, which are an alluring presence throughout the extensive photodocumentation of the massive Arles show. The Arles sculptures are larger and more architectural/structural than the similar works Jafa showed at Barbara Gladstone’s townhouse gallery in 2021. Those felt like Cady Nolands made from a different tool bin. Gillick, with some ambivalence, sees them primarily in relation to the Arles train sheds he helped gentrify. [ofc to the Cady Noland guy everything looks like a Cady Noland; to the extruded aluminum structure guy, everything looks like instant architecture.]
Anyway, buy this book.