WASHINGTON, DC.- von ammon announced the opening of and, a solo exhibition by New York based artist Julia Wachtel. This is Wachtel’s third exhibition with the gallery.
In the press release for Wachtel’s previous solo show with the gallery was a brief aside about hypocrisy; it makes sense that Wachtel, whose distinct style serves to dissect and analyze media and culture images, would use her third show with the gallery to focus intensely—and thus expand—on this theme, by way of an aggressively concise installation of just two panoramic paintings. Among the multiple modern definitions of hypocrisy is dissembling: Wachtel’s paintings are, literally speaking, usually made of several separate but conjoined canvases—metaphorically speaking, they are always, somehow, about disguising or concealing one’s own true motives or feelings under a thin membrane of conflicting ideology. Wachtel constructs her paintings from canvases with disparate painting styles: usually some that are mechanically produced via screen printing, and others that are painted by hand. Once assembled, these contrapuntal elements create micro-narratives that explore the tragic distance between belief and behavior.
The first painting in the show is titled CyberChrist. Wachtel has hand-painted a clip-art image of a maudlin Jesus on the way to Golgotha, cross in tow. As Christian nationalism has infiltrated the nation’s capital from without and subsequently spread from therein, this graven image of voluntary submission to suffering has found purchase in many popular images: the pastor easily conveying the cross across the stage with the help of caster wheels; the fitness influencer bearing the cross while running on a treadmill. The very idea of a vectorized cartoon of Christ with the cross signifies a catastrophic drift from metaphor into the flawed realm of human behavior: Wachtel attenuates this absurd rift by smashing the image of Christ against the dreaded image of a Tesla Cybertruck and its proud owner. Once a metonym for sustainability—even for hope—Tesla’s leadership has forced many of its remorseful buyers into involuntary hypocrisy as they defend their electric cars against vandalism with pleading bumper stickers. Through the use of these two images, whose original meanings have been irremediably inverted, Wachtel points to the difficulty of being a good steward to a powerful metaphor…