PRIVATE
“WITHOUT TRESPASSING, LIPPY GESTURES TOWARD THE BANAL, IF NOT INSIDIOUS, FORCES BEHIND THE ARTWORKS ON DISPLAY: COMMERCE AND BUREAUCRACY. HIS PHOTOGRAPHS STRIP THE GALLERIES OF IDENTIFYING INFORMATION, COALESCING INTO AN EXPANSE OF GATEKEEPING WHITE SPACE.”
—ARTBOOK CATALOG
PRIVATE
As part of FRIEZE LA week, The Future Perfect hosted a conversation between artist Tod Lippy, and author Matthew Spector.
Private is on view in the media room of the Goldwyn House. The installation includes two framed editions from the series of Lippy’s photographs of the off-limits areas of commercial art galleries as well as a seven-minute single-channel video incorporating dozens of still and moving images of these private spaces.
In Private, Lippy is interested in all the points of exclusion in a gallery. He focuses his lens on the concealed corners, the delineated perimeters where visitors are forbidden. These off-limit zones, are captured with precision. A tiny ‘private’ written over a door knob (Tod and Matthew deemed this to be the most passive aggressive ‘private’ of all), a discrete fine wire, a velvet rope, they all speak volumes about the hidden mechanisms at play within the art world.
By showing what’s not allowed, Lippy is hinting at the influence of commerce and bureaucracy lurking just beyond the white walls of galleries. Collectors are allowed, others are not.
Lippy manages to imbue these restricted areas with a haunting significance, elevating them from mere signage. Ed Park has written a wonderful afterword in a stream-of-consciousness playing with the tension between accessibility and exclusion, transparency and obfuscation.
Lippy’s photograph hangs on the wall in the media room of The Future Perfect gallery in the Goldwyn House.
Someone pointed out that they felt more comfortable in a museum space than a gallery to view art because the duality has been removed. The art is not for sale but it is for public consumption.
very laboratory