For his installation … Zane uses video, drawing and sculpture to imitate a crime scene. The observer is left to build a narrative from viewing the scene, an activity that Zane views as parallel to the process of extracting meaning from art in a gallery or museum setting. In his own words: “It struck me awhile ago that there is this really apt analogy between an art exhibition and a crime scene. Viewers walk into a gallery and look at the evidence of an artists activity and try to piece together some sort of meaning or experience from the clues. So, basically what I have done is make an exhibition that is art as crime scene as art, where I mimic a crime scene and the different elements are art objects.”

Joe Zane presents a number of works that employ traditional artistic media and subject matter, including a bust cast in plaster and portraits rendered in oil paint, yet upon closer inspection, the possibility arises that none of Zane’s works are quite what they seem. The carefully arranged works are positioned to reflect and interact with each other, as the artist explores questions of artistic originality, the nature of representation, and the spirit of competition with humor and skill. The identity, and originality, of a painted portrait is called into question by the existence of an apparent “twin” on an adjacent wall, but are the two works really the same? Is it helpful to know that they were both painted, following the artist’s instructions, by workers in a factory in China? A third portrait appears to be hidden behind a drape – its title, The Triumph of Parrhasius (2008), refers to an ancient Greek painting contest in which the artist painted a “veil” across his work that was so lifelike that his competitor did not realize he had been taken in until he moved to draw back the “curtain” from Parrhasius’ painting.

The idea of doubles pervades Zane’s installation: double meanings, double images, and double languages take many forms here, from the visual double-take engendered by an object that might be a vase of flowers, or a double portrait, to the call and response of the painting For Pistoletto (I love you too) (2008), created in reference to a famed 1965 painting “Ti Amo” (I love you) by Italian Arte Povera artist Michelangelo Pistoletto. The connections between the works, whether with other works in the gallery, with works from art history, or with objects found in our everyday lives, are open to multiple interpretations, each different, complex, and equally correct.

Photography by John Kennard

* Note: On November 13, 2008, This key work in Zane’s installation has been temporarily removed from the show after it was unfortunately broken. The artist worked to create a new piece to take its place.

** On Novemeber 26, the artist installed Doppelgänger to replace Tulip Head.

Joe Zane is a conceptual artist of a new stripe, with a great sense of humor that belies the serious intellectual rigor of his work. In this show, Zane presents a cohesive installation that explores many facets of authenticity and authorship in contemporary art making, and looks at how the artist’s persona becomes an object marketed along with the rest of the artwork produced. It includes oil paintings, colored pencil drawings, printed matter, an audio component, and some sculpture, all tightly focused on the topic at hand.
In this exhibition, Zane present several interrelated bodies of work, including a series of paintings inspired by his study of the lives of famous forgers, whose visages have been reproduced in beautiful oil on canvas by anonymous artists working at a mass production paintings house in China. A small wall label identifying the area of expertise of the counterfeiter accompanies each portrait.

ARTIST STATEMENT:
Besides the objects themselves, art is composed of its stories. Important events get written about and artists become famous. What we rarely hear about are the ‘near misses’, the artists who almost, but didn’t quite make it into history. Sometimes the stories of the ‘work that almost was’ are as interesting as the stories we come to know about the successes. When we are told the story of an important exhibition, the actions and intentions of the artists, curators, and critics involved are part of that narrative, as well as their histories and the little personal details that led to their momentous success. The ‘near misses’ have their stories as well, often with surprising details; anything from a petty squabble, an illness, or bad weather that fated those involved to art historical oblivion.

In 1969 Willoughby Sharp organized an exhibition, “Earth Art”, at the A.D. White house. This show would come to be known as one of the most important shows of its time. It would be the first major exhibition of Earth Art as well as a symposium featuring the participating artists. The exhibition featured works by several who subsequently gained great fame in the artworld; artists like Robert Smithson, Dennis Oppenheim, and Michael
Heizer.

Behind that narrative however, another one lurks. This story revolves around Walter de Maria (best known for his outdoor sculpture, “The Lightning Field”) and the director the museum at the time, Thomas Leavitt. De Maria was also invited to participate in the exhibition and the symposium. He did, in fact show up at Cornell to install a work, for which he wrote, with the handle from a broom, the title phrase, “Good Fuck”, in a pile of dirt he’d placed in the gallery. This caused an argument with Leavitt that culminated in de Maria’s withdrawal from the exhibition. His name was removed from all documentation, he did not participate in the symposium, and his dirt pile was swept out of the gallery (perhaps with the very broom he had used to form it).

As an artist, I find stories like these fascinating. Every institution and every artist surely has a ghost or two like this in the closet. Who knew that an argument over ‘good taste’ or ‘appropriateness’ would lead to de Maria missing out on what would become a pivotal exhibition in recent art history?

For my contribution to the “CCA Emerging Artists Exhibition”, I wish to give a nod to this particular story. I am submitting a drawing and an accompanying sculptural installation in order to pay tribute to this episode. The drawing is a portrait of Walter de Maria, drawn from a photograph taken during the year of the exhibition (1969), to be captioned with “Good Fuck,” the title phrase from de Maria’s Earth Art submission. The drawing is mounted on the wall near a sculpture, which will consists of a broom partially buried in a pile of dirt. The handle of the broom stands straight up from the pile so that the tip of the handle is at approximately head height.