Christian L. Frock, Visible Alternative, December 2011.
Jonn Herschend: The Book You Said I Never Returned, plus three to five pastorals
November 12 – December 22, Steven Wolf Fine Arts
Jonn Herschend’s work weaves narrative through performance, installation, film, and writing, often presented as Power Point presentations. His current solo show at Steven Wolf Fine Arts includes all of these elements in addition to a series of new paintings—all engaged in the telling of a story that spins off into various directions, leaving the viewer to find their own position within the work. Herschend’s work is often presented as a drama that unfolds in response to something that predates the viewer’s arrival on the scene and the larger installation functions like staged physical evidence. Visitors must navigate these clues to arrive at an understanding of not only the larger story being portrayed, but also to develop empathy for a fictionalized narrator. This exhibition unpacks whether one co-worker returned a book loaned by another co-worker. The borrower, who indicates a romantic attachment for the lender, insists that the book was returned. The installation in the gallery, which includes a corporate office cubicle, claims to provide evidence that proves the book was returned. Except the narrative detours and we never see the book.
I stood in the gallery trying to figure out whether or not the book was returned and thought, “Well, maybe I will write about it. Maybe through the writing I will come to some understanding of what happened. Maybe I will figure out the truth about whether or not this book ever got returned.” But then I thought, “You can’t write about this. It's a conflict of interest.” Herschend and I have collaborated over the years on projects and, I suppose I could say, we are pretty good friends. Good enough, you know, to have a beer sometimes. Maybe I might even use this review as leverage to get him to do more projects and be like, “Dude, come on, I wrote about your work once.” And then he might be all, “Hey, listen, its not like you are Roberta Smith. You are too tall to be Roberta Smith.” And then we might get into a fight. There might be shoving. In which case we wouldn’t be friends anymore, so this isn’t a conflict of interest because that S. O. B. thinks I’m too tall to be Roberta Smith.
It’s all fiction. At least I think the work is all fiction. Sometimes it is drawn from life, but then it is fictionalized, so it is still fiction. I think. These navigable tableaus implicate the viewer as a witness to Herschend’s side of the story, which is really both sides of the story since he creates the whole story. Case in point: He once gave a performance as himself giving a Power Point presentation, but then “something” went wrong and he/his character had a melt down. The audience was truly perplexed; as a result he said it went off perfectly. Within the work he argues vehemently for the misunderstood, often typified as the loner whose witty comebacks are best played out in his head, except, since this is art, its all out loud and we, the audience, are listening to the voices in Herschend’s head. In Herschend’s work, absurdity shifts reality in the same way that absurdity really does sometimes shift reality. Here you have a guy with a (perhaps slightly psychotic) crush on someone he works with and she doesn’t remember him returning a borrowed book. It's a very small thing that could mean everything—this kind of misunderstanding happens in life all the time. He is trying to make it obvious that he did return the book, while leaving the door open for the possibility that she might suddenly notice him. Most people can relate, even if the story is perplexing. He says he returned the book and the show makes it seem like he probably did, but after that vicious Roberta Smith comment that Jonn Herschend never actually made about me, I am not sure what to believe.
