William Pope.L: Showing Up to Withhold

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Texts include essays by Lawrie Balfour, Nick Bastis, Lauren Berlant, and K. Silem Mohammad, and an interview between the artist and Hamza Walker.

Published to accompany his wonderfully inscrutable exhibition Forlesen at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, Pope.L: Showing Up to Withhold is simultaneously an artist’s book and a monograph.

Iconoclast and artist Pope.L uses the body, sex, and race as his materials the way other artists might use paint, clay, or bronze. His work problematizes social categories by exploring how difference is marked economically, socially, and politically. Working in a range of media from ketchup to baloney to correction fluid, with a special emphasis on performativity and writing, Pope.L pokes fun at and interrogates American society’s pretenses, the bankruptcy of contemporary mores, and the resulting repercussions for a civil society. Other favorite Pope.L targets are squeamishness about the human body and the very possibility of making meaning through art and its display.

Published by Renaisssance Society and the University of Chicago Press, 2014
Hardcover with 208 pages
Dimensions: 10 x 9 inches

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