Greene Naftali, New York
April 30 – June 15, 2019
Seven years ago, Alex Israel recorded As it Lays, a series of interviews with “iconic and influential” Angelenos in his studio at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood. [1] Sitting upright and still, any expression in his eyes hidden behind a pair of Freeway sunglasses (his own brand), he asks random and unconnected questions to his celebrity subjects—to Marilyn Manson, “Did you have a childhood comfort object?,” to Jamie Lee Curtis, “Do you scrapbook?,” and to Christina Ricci, “What did you eat for breakfast this morning?” Israel repeatedly fails to respond or react to any of their answers, regardless of how convivial they are. These eight to twelve-minute skits are as hilarious as they are baffling. Israel’s banal interview style is a trojan horse for an interrogation of these lauded individuals. Seeing how a celebrity deals with his antics is far more revealing than the answers they provide. In some ways these videos unmask Hollywood’s sleaze—how someone with power and money can have access to anyone, and here Israel inserts himself into this scheme. The interviewees generally prove kind and interesting, and Israel, who produced the videos a few years after graduating with his MFA from USC, becomes the centre of attention. A celebrity in waiting.
Recently As it Lays came back. Israel is older, has better hair, a new Giorgio Armani suit, and if it’s possible, an even more wooden approach to interviewing. The upgraded set resembles a Grecian-style living room with an oil-painted trompe l’oeil background; replacing the original faded, faux Breuer chairs are two regency style tub chairs purportedly snagged from a yard sale at Oprah Winfrey’s. The intro music is a classy, all-strings affair, rather than the synthy, saxophone-led ditty from Israel’s last instalment, and the logo for the film has rebranded from a blocky, pop-art inspired silhouette of Israel, to an elegant line drawing, reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s brand from the 1950s.
Even the gallery got pimped. In 2012 esoteric Reena Spaulings Fine Art in the Lower East Side hosted the show; in 2019, it was swanky Greene Naftali in Chelsea.[2] Walking down their alley off 26th Street you could hear the audio from a new set of interviews being pumped into the industrial space. Alicia Silverstone muses on the glutton of carnivals, Corey Feldman deliberates on his favourite Kardashian, and Paris Hilton reflects on loneliness and aging. You could press your nose up against the gallery window to gaze at the interviews of these passé starlets or, enter the gallery via a giant profile of Israel cut out of the wall.
Inside, in addition to the empty As it Lays set were five large oil paintings from Israel’s Self-Portrait series that hung around the room. Each an enlarged contour of his same profile, they depict assorted scenes loosely representative of Israel’s life. The exhibition took its title from Joan Didion’s Play it As it Lays, and these visages recall the book’s protagonist, Maria, who describes her mind as a blank tape that records her encounters and experiences. Israel’s Self-Portraits reveal that his mind is somewhat vacuous, filled with scantily clad females (photographed at a music festival in Coachella, 2019), automobiles (Israel stares back in his car’s mirror in Rear-view Mirror, 2018) and celebrity worship (a collection of signed framed photographs in Autographs, 2019).
Concealed in a back room were a series of works from Israel’s continued practice of utilizing props from well-known films. Five framed reproductions of the golden tickets from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory hung next to a mimicry of the idol from Raiders of the Lost Ark. All glimmering objects that, in their respective movies, signified desire and reward. Israel’s uses of these objects pointed flimsily to the tired notions of the artifice of Hollywood, or narratives around originality, authorship, and chance.
[1] Reena Spaulings Fine Art, Alex Israel, As it Lays Press Release. Published 2012 <http://www.reenaspaulings.com/images3/ISRAEL.PR.pdf>
[2] Running concurrently to As it Lays, Israel presented SOLO an exhibition at Reena Spaulings Fine Art, a hologram of the artist playing a saxophone