White Columns presents Barbara Ess – Archives. Featuring materials drawn from the artist’s estate, the exhibition is a partial account of the life and work of Barbara Ess (1944-2021), a hugely influential and mercurial artist who was a photographer, musician, publisher, educator and longtime pivotal figure in the downtown New York art and music scenes. Forming a ‘portrait’ of sorts, the exhibition seeks to illuminate hitherto under-acknowledged aspects of the multifaceted artist’s life and work, underscoring what The New York Times described as a “rarefied position in the space where philosophical inquiry meets the cool-kid avant-garde.” Through her assignments for students, reading lists, diary entries, artist statements, and much more besides, we encounter Ess as continually probing the boundaries of the seen and unseen, what she called the “in here” versus the “out there.”
From 1978-87 Ess ran the iconic mixed-media publication Just Another Asshole, often edited in collaboration with her longtime creative collaborator and romantic partner Glenn Branca. Across zines, records, and books, Just Another Asshole gathered together essays, short stories, artworks and more by a truly idiosyncratic – and now iconic – coalition of downtown luminaries including Kathy Acker, Michael Gira, Kim Gordon, Dan Graham, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Cookie Mueller, Richard Prince, Lynne Tillman, Martha Wilson and David Wojnarowicz, among many others.
In 1983, Ess began making photographs with a pinhole camera, discovering the process by which she would go on to produce many of the most iconic images of her career. A page of handwritten notes on view in this exhibition, dated to November 12 of that year, notes the discovery: “Today I made my first pinhole photos. One of the most exciting things I can remember. The possibilities (…)”
Barbara Ess – Archives concludes with the collaborative artwork A Portrait of Barbara Ess, 2021-23, organized by artist and founder of F Magazine, Adam Marnie. Ess was, amongst many other things, a master self-portraitist, but here, across a group of 23 framed photographs by many of Ess’ closest friends, we, the viewer, get to encounter Ess as those who loved her did. A Portrait of Barbara Ess underscores just how important community was to both Barbara’s life and work.
More information on the event can be found here.