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Honor Fraser Gallery is pleased to announce Failed States, Jill
Magid's first solo show in Los Angeles. Magid will launch her new book,
also entitled Failed States, in conjunction with the exhibition.
Failed States is an exploration of coincidence and poetics
amid the barriers and bureaucracy of governmental power. In January 2010,
while on a trip to research the history of snipers in Austin, Texas, Magid
witnessed a mysterious shooting on the steps of the State Capitol. After
attempting to speak with a state employee a young man named Fausto Cardenas
exited the building and—in full view of security—fired six
shots from a small caliber gun into the Texas sky. Cardenas has offered no
explanation for his actions. Last August, after eighteen months of
incarceration, he took a plea bargain, ultimately silencing himself.
In Failed States, Magid acts as eyewitness and dramaturge,
drawing connections between Fausto's futile and tragic act and Goethe's
nineteenth-century epic poem, Faust. Magid portrays Fausto as
the tragic hero, guiding the relationship between the lone gunman and the
famed literary protagonist to a histrionic effect. Failed
States investigates Fausto's abstract, almost surrealist, act as it is
chronicled through an intermingling of personal and public, fact and
fiction, words and actions.
Faust was originally written
as a "closet drama," a play to be read rather than performed. In the
installation Failed States, the script is slowly unveiled through
stage directions, prints, audio, photographs, news reports, and a live feed
from the sky above the Capitol steps. The exhibition will feature Failed
States—the work from which this exhibition takes its
name—Magid's 1993 Mercedes Benz station wagon. This car was
originally purchased as Magid's family car and has been subsequently
armored to withstand gunfire common in war zones. While following Fausto's
case, Magid was training to be an embedded reporter in Afghanistan and
learned about the "hard cars" or armored vehicles (usually Mercedes)
designed to blend into local traffic. For a previous exhibition, this car
was parked on the site where Fausto Cardenas had parked his car before
approaching the Capitol in Austin. For her exhibition with Honor Fraser
Gallery, Magid brings the car inside the gallery, embedding herself further
into the drama.
Jill Magid is an artist
and writer who infiltrates structures of authority and power by engaging
their human side. Rather than treating these structures as subjects
to challenge, she creates opportunities to draw them closer. Through
dialogues and manipulations Magid finds her way in through introduction or
invitation, often locating or exploiting a loophole in the system.
Jill Magid was born in Bridgeport, CT in 1973. She received her Master of
Science in Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge and was an artist-in-residence at the Rijksakademie
van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam from 2000–2002. Solo exhibitions
include those at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Tate Modern,
London, UK; Stroom and the AIVD (Dutch Secret Service), The Hague, NL;
Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam; Berkeley Museum of Art; Arthouse at the
Jones Center, Austin; and Yvon Lambert, Paris, France and New York, NY. Her
work has been included in group exhibitions at The Bucharest Biennial; The
Singapore Biennial; The New Museum, New York; Museo Tamayo, Mexico City;
Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw; Townhouse Gallery,
Cairo; Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York; Museum of
Contemporary Arts, Taipei; and Tate Museum, Liverpool, among others. Magid
has performed at venues including Location One, New York; Museum Tamayo,
Mexico City; and Museum of Modern Art, New York. Magid currently lives and
works in Brooklyn, New York.
To order Failed States,
the book, send an email to: failedstates@publicationstudio.biz or contact
the gallery directly.
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