The Shadow of the Flatlander: Art Larson

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Image courtesy of La Virreina

The career of Art Larson (San Diego, 1962) defies any attempt at pigeonholing and even questions the drive (specific to the field of art) to gain prestige from being analyzed by a critical literature. 

The themes that appear in The Shadow of the Flatlander include failed expectations, misunderstanding as an epistemological basis, eschatology and the artist's social position. The title alludes to the amusement—a far from frivolous political humor—that categorizes Larson’s approach to most of his works.

You can see in these works a rejection of big decisions and definitive projects; to paraphrase the title of the book by Larson’s compatriot Susan Sontag, everything depends where the stress falls. However, intensity also means moving through apparently contradictory territories, between unfinished or amateur works and formal virtuosity, between comic performance and video documents.

The French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy wrote in The Inoperative Community (1983) that inoperativeness does not entail inaction but rather a plea to produce, through undetectable positions, a work from anywhere and through any material, with the aim of discarding two quintessential ontological questions: What is this? What does this mean?

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