The Cady Noland Polaroids 1986–2024 book is beautiful but not sumptuous. Obviously one Polaroid is produced, enlarged, per page. The dates of the book’s title must be taken on faith, as there are no captions or texts beyond those written—or occasionally stickered—on the Polaroids.
At least three Polaroids say “doesn’t exist” on them. One hapless work doesn’t exist twice, in the middle, and at the end of the book. There are examples of other works depicted in similar, but different, Polaroids, but why this Polaroid is reproduced twice is not clear. I must assume it is a secret sign to me that the artist read my blog post about the non-existent works.
[two nazi podcaster official mourning periods later update]: Once this duplicate was pointed out to him, fellow Noland sleuth Matt quickly discovered two additional Polaroids are also printed twice. One of those pairs shows another work that, in another Polaroid, is labeled, “Doesn’t exist.” [It’s actually also in a third Polaroid, existing, next to another work.] I then noticed that another pair of images, of the 1987 work Shuttle, are actually two basically identical Polaroids, only one of which has a written caption.
Some works are seemingly over-represented, with various images appearing like a leitmotif throughout the book. Some Polaroids have printed or typed titles, or handwritten storage locations, as if they were indexical. Some are documentary, while others are blurry and purely aesthetic. On first pass, I think my favorite has to be the one that has SHARD #2 written on it with a fat lipliner.
The shard does not immediately match to any cutout I can find. It looks like it’s from a side, but it could be from the top, like the heads and sofa of Betty Ford (1994). [But it’s not that.] Maybe what I like about it is that it’s shard #2; there are others, all left behind by their respective Cady Nolands, but saved by Cady Noland. Each one hints at an artwork that doesn’t exist here, in front of this camera, but might exist, somewhere. And unlike so many Cady Noland-related objects in the news, one thing can be clear: the shard is absolutely not an artwork. Unless, of course, it is?
Previously, related: me just reproducing a line from the Gagosian press release as an entire blog post