J Noland
A Kind of Saturnalia
September 7 - October 4, 2019
With A Kind of Saturnalia, Noland engaged the unifying potentialities of love, Sister Wendy’s misreading of Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, and low stakes gambling. Visitors were encouraged to bring dollar bills.
A pendulum hangs.
A vessel is placed in the path of orbit.
A wager is made.
The object of the game is to break the vessel with the return of the pendulum’s swing.
The first to break the vessel collects the wager.
[The vessel is a body. The game is a sacrifice.]
J Noland is an interdisciplinary artist with an interest in the American experience. His work engages questions of leisure, masculinity, faith, nature, and class. His gestures reflect a sense of fear and wonder at the ingenuity and stupidity of the human condition. Noland received his MFA from the University of California San Diego in 2014 and a BA in Visual Arts and Art History at the University of San Diego in 2007.
