American Artist: I’m Blue (If I Was █████ I Would Die)

Upon entering, visitors encounter what initially resembles a classroom with desks, black boards, and an instructional video. In a nod towards the Blue Lives Matter countermovement that has developed in response to Black Lives Matter, Artist has sculpturally reconfigured the first two elements. Fortified school desks barricade the video screen, while blue police fabric prevents those sitting in desks from seeing the film. The black boards, outfitted with the same familiar blue cloth, only allow those reading from them to speculate on the prominence of blue. Onscreen, in place of an instructional video, visitors instead find a speaking digital character. Fabricated by Artist, the character’s speech interweaves imagined and quoted statements taken from two characters, one fictional, one real.

The first character is DC Comics, Dr. Manhattan. Originally an Atomic-era research physicist, Dr. Osterman is renamed Dr. Manhattan after a terrible accident transfigures him into a cobalt- colored superhuman that is swiftly recuperated by the U.S. military. As fans of the Watchmen series will recall, little time passes before Dr. Manhattan grows disillusioned with the reductive application of his superpowers and in epic move of discontent, he abandons humanity and decamps to Mars.

The second character is Christopher Dorner, a former Los Angeles Police Department officer and Naval reserve officer. In 2013, Dorner came to national attention after explicitly threatening revenge on the LAPD by killing LAPD officers. In an 11-page manifesto, Dorner details his disillusionment with the law enforcement system and claims that he was unjustly fired from the LAPD for breaking with the “Blue Line” by reporting the use of racially biased excessive force on his squad.

As the monologue vacillates towards a narrative crescendo, questions swirl around points of incommensurability and in the wake of tragedy, we are asked to distinguish between the mobilization and the weaponization of grief.

In tandem with this exhibition, American Artist will host a discussion at the gallery, and a series of conversations at Recess as part of Assembly. This exhibition was made possible in part by Pioneer Works Tech Residency.

American Artist’s (b. 1989, Altadena, California) sculptural, digital and filmographic work, is rooted in Black Studies and considers Black labor and visibility within networked life. Artist has collaborated with authors such as Simone Browne, Fred Moten, and Jackie Wang. Artist is a 2021 LACMA Art + Tech Lab Grant recipient and artist-in-residence at Smack Mellon. They are a 2019 recipient of the Queens Museum Jerome Foundation Fellowship, and a former resident of EYEBEAM, Pioneer Works, and the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. They have exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA PS1, Studio Museum in Harlem, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and Nam June Paik Center in Seoul. Solo museum exhibitions include My Blue Window, Queens Museum, New York, and Dignity Images: Bayview-Hunters Point, Museum of African Diaspora, San Francisco. Their work has been featured in the New York Times, Artforum, and Huffington Post. They have published writing in The New Inquiry and Art21. Artist is a 2021 Regents’ Lecturer at UCLA, a faculty member at Parsons School of Design and New York University, and is a co-director of the School for Poetic Computation.