jonathan griffin, humphries — counter
picture this, humphries is painting the walls of the aspen art museum. she paints them with chromatic and toned intentions, thinking to light up the dark blues and muted greens in a way that de-emphasizes the walls, and thinking of coloring up the walls in a way that de-emphasizes the paintings, after which she covers the floor in blacklight and causes a neon spillover all over the gallery floor and the lights on the roof. then she hangs her pieces, apparently a commentary on art protesting splashes and politically bloody turmoil, the enviornment moves between gated horror and over-bright pastiche without any apology, other than maybe the intricate art which loomingly sits in its own background rather than on top of a background.
she then leaves the studio and goes over to a tavern in aspen right across the street, a self-described "unpretentious watering hole serving basic bar fare such as chili & wings, plus tap beer & cocktails". the letters of the tavern show a strong and restrained topography, golden-plated, with irish curving lights above them, and christmas lights posted up on the guardrails above the establishment on a seperate window-terrace. the inside of the tavern is wooden and feels homey and overfilled, with diamond-shaped stained glass window panes, overdecorated only in some places and unfortunately underdecorated where the guests are to sit.
the aspen art museum staff comes in after humphries exhibition and paints everything white as if the exhibition never happened or mattered, and then, as griffin briefly and half-relatedly notes about the presence of tesla cars, the owners of the museum get inside their teslas to go back home after the shift. the staff just take their normal cars back home, which are also owned by a billion dollar congolomerate but arent cool enough as a brand. meanwhile, humphires storms into the tavern and takes photos of their wings and beer, after which she writes a review precisely for e-flux, rating their dining a moderate four. after that, she takes their golden logo, and travels to a permanently closed tesla store on e cooper's ave street. tommy newnes notes that he "was bummed to hear about the tesla store in aspen closing" that he "thought it was an awesome location and the staff was always super helpful" and that he "absolutely loves his model s" that it is "the best car he's ever owned".
but newnes doesn't realize is that humphries, hailing from new orleans but living in new york, is currently in colorado because, regardless of her own territory, had already become aware of the fact that colorado has one too many tesla charging ports surrounding its beautiful and snowy mountainous landscape. that's right, the same yellow-colored resin-filled logs now make their appearance inside the closed tesla store, all with the tavern's logo imprinted on them instead of tesla's logo. the tavern's marketing logic is now suddenly taking over elon musk's psychosomatic mental space, corrupting him with the logic of under-pretentious colorado huts instead of over-pretentious car designs.
however, this time, humphries red-stained paintings aren't exhibited inside the tesla-located gallery, but outside, as a violent riot emerges between musk-hired merceneries and the residents of colorado, newly inspired by humphries exhibition, where the awful bright red and painful streaks reminiscent of cafo-adjacent bloodbaths take part in the very street across from which her original exhibtion took place. or at least, all of this were to be true if my imagination was a reality, which it isnt, the only remaining fact being that aspen did in fact repaint their own walls without a fuss.
who is at fault here, tesla, for leaving something permament, or aspen, for failing to even allow humphries to complain about tesla without brushing it away? or wait, she isn't complaining about it, apparently she has nothing to say at all? so then, how do we judge what this does for us, do we account for the context behind the paintings? griffin seems to both argue that they dont fit because of tesla's corrosive political theatre, but also that they do fit because of their inclusion in an enviornment ambigously resistant to that same political commentary.
according to griffin, you cant tell which of the paintings are invisible and roll into the background given her use of color corresponds between painting and wall, but also, you can exactly tell that none of them are invisible at all, and in fact, for griffin, they stand out too much, the bright green tesla logs are called "duds", the tesla logo remains entirely ambigous, griffin even struggles to understand it despite claiming that its strenght relies in its agnosticism. is griffin lying to himself or us? either humphries is displaying a strenght with her showcasing of the logo or isnt.
apparently its not the first time shes done this, griffin notes that she portentously showcases neiman marcus as either an example of galleries being taken over by commodity logic, or sadness over her favorite store being shut down. if she was nostalgically lamenting the loss of the store, why did humphries not re-open it herself, the way she re-opens the tesla store in my imagination? how come she doesnt display tesla pieces directly imbedded into her artworks, given she's already performing the art of the gimmick with the resin logs?
johnathan griffin's previous review for e-flux, candice lin’s “lithium sex demons in the factory” is structurally mostly gimmick and little craft, except for the fact that she literally went on a whole adventure with a korean onggi master craftsman, hyangjong ohwith, just to learn how to craft a part of it. apparently humphries isnt including anything originally or newly learned in her artwork except the inclusion of a tesla logo. candice's gimmick is reviewed by griffin as an enviornment where narratives collapse and new conditions bubble, ferment and proliferate. candice returns us to the 70s in malaysia, a uniquely specific time, a spatiotemporal region of space much like a church, where you can re-live and re-create the very same conditions.
griffin's narrative would be true, except for the emerging realization that the lithium sex factory is absolutely still a story, and re-emerging narratives are equally as squashed as your stratified existence in a church space as they are inside the exhibition space, where if you were to actually recreate the sex factory's conditions, the visitors would quickly begin to rebel, disagreeing with the idea that politically it makes sense to symbolize what the artwork enviornment actually feels the need to symbolize. the only difference is, the death of abstract painting appears to be so dead that just the very implementation of a tesla logo in humphries works is able to entirely trump the entirety of abstract art's current state, whereas the implemantion of the physical installation in liu's work at the very least stands in correspondence rather than opposition to her work.
this indicates that humphries fault isnt just an installation failure, but that she has no idea how to speak about tesla without speaking about tesla yet still speaking about tesla, partially because of the way her artform works, whereas liu knows exactly how to do this very same thing, creating the conditions for roleplay rather than any type of novel narrative emergence, which is impossible to state as pretentious only if we put into consideration how all of contemporary art can neatly be placed in the same apolitical space.
tesla is a commodity-driver, part economic driver of commodities, yet also creator of drivable commodities, since its cars arent exactly a piece of clean tech considering their markup and the way they excuse incompetence through aesthetic overcompensation, the exact opposite of humphries, who excuses competance with aesthetic undercompensation. griffin reconsiders humphries inclusion of the tesla logo as a stylistic choice only when it corresponds to the paintings complexity and not to a gimmicks' non complexity, but what part of the giant tesla display isnt a gimmick, precisely when her otherwise fully abstract art has supposedly sustained its effort for over fourty years?
it is impossible to tell whether humphries is questioning tesla's place in the world as a brand-sign, or whether she's situating them in a way where she herself is promoting their work as a hypercommodity, in other words, reading the tesla fragment as an experience of the world the way that virgil abloh reads the nike brand-sign as a vision of the world through his shoes, or rather more specifically, the way he uncritically puts it together, and then allows westside gunn to fashion it as part of his own cultural capital, not much dissimilarly to humphries here.
griffin argues that between critique and complicity sits this middle ground of genuine politics, where the tesla logo isn't sending any message, unable to land on reddit feeds in the form of ragebait, but also, the art refuses to not talk about tesla in some way, refusing supposed complicity. except for the fact that, as seen in levi bryant's lifes work, the political is badiouan in its event-space, its revelatory power is equivalent to its immediate acting scope, which is why tesla exists as its own political reality far more than humphries can ever capture, or if anything, exists politically so much that humphries cant help but simply mirror its signal. humphries isnt solanas, she isnt going to travel to musk's "factory" tomorrow and find him there, not that he would be there anyways, he isnt chromatically highlighted.
humphries is also selling her prints on artsy for lots of money, and none of them have tesla logos as of this moment. mark bradford donated his work "smear" for four million dollars just last decade, it looks quite similar to humphries works. the political content drowns in its own technique, secludes history, reappears somewhere on a website or auction, rinse and repeat.
but there is still something great about what humphries is doing, and that sits in the realm of recognition. what is the realer form of recognition, between tommy newnes' healthy google maps review of tesla's model s, and humphries confusing portrayal of tesla? well, naturally, in her phenomenologically clean-slated state, humphries is simply reacting to the world with ultimate clarity. not only is she so complicit that its apolitical, but its anti-political, its a pure recognition of tesla's existence, it grinds tesla into its own abstract symbol.
the presence of the symbol is in fact just an accident, its nothing different from her existing brushstrokes, it only happens to look like tesla's symbol. in fact, she isn't talking about tesla at all, its a coincidence that only griffin noticed, and maybe a few of the other attendees of the exhibition. humphries never intended to talk about tesla or even considered it, she may have simply passed by a closed store or two, but it never made its way into her art.
legal note: the hypothetical scenarios in this article are clearly obfuscating and fictional, as already noted in the text itself.