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Puppies Puppies

Overduin & Co, Los Angeles 18 November – 16 December

It is, on the face of it, not an auspicious premise husband, Forrest. Though these texts are Mainly green. Of course, this is an impossible
for an exhibition. The ruse of an artist living in explicative, they also admit to being totally claim. I have no idea what colour their dog
the gallery, as art, has been done and done again partial, and quite possibly ‘wrong’, as Forrest is, but I sneaked a look inside their green fridge
over the past half century, whether by Chris writes. You may know Forrest (identified and, alongside the olives and salad, I spotted
Burden in Bed Piece (1972) or Marina Abramović here only by his first name) as Forrest Nash, some foodstuffs with chromatically aberrant
in The House with the Ocean View (2002), or by founder of the fantastically popular art website labels. These slippages speak to the inevitable
Dawn Kasper at the 2012 iteration of the Contemporary Art Daily. Which is not quite failures in presenting a seamlessly constructed
Whitney Biennial. Not to mention various beside the point here because the primary identity to the world. They make the enigmati-
installations in which only the artist’s domestic sensation conveyed by Puppies Puppies’ exhi- cally pseudonymous Puppies Puppies human,
furnishings were present, from Lucas Samaras’s bition is of familiarity – from the recognition make her fiction believable.
Bedroom (1964) to Tracey Emin’s My Bed (1998). of mass-media references like Harry Potter The idea of identity as an aesthetic composi-
Now add to the list Green Ghosts (2017), a perfor- (1997–2007) or Lord of the Rings (1954–1955) tion is thrown into relief in one of Forrest’s
mance by Puppies Puppies in which she, to revelations of interpersonal intimacy texts, in which he reveals that Puppies is
her husband and their dog sleep at Overduin of the ickiest order – processed through currently transitioning from male to female:
& Co outside of gallery hours, having trans- a deeply self-conscious cultural filter that ‘a creative act, full of calibration and authorship
ported the contents of their apartment into makes everything seem so highly contrived and aesthetics’, as he puts it. The morning
the white cube. And yet Puppies Puppies’ that it might as well be fiction. On a rectangle before I visited the show, Puppies cleared the
smart exhibition feels anything but derivative. of grassy green carpet tiles, blue and yellow furniture away from one wall and fixed two tiny
This is in no small part thanks to a series panties are spread out beside a blue silicone blue oestrogen pills, side by side, to the wall.
of moves (here the term seems appropriately vibrator. First underwear, first toy, our carpet (Blue) Opposite hung one of a number of ‘bootleg’
tactical) that the artist makes in the framing (Yellow)(Green) (2017) is an archly formal composi- artworks, a green version of Felix Gonzalez-
of the stuff in the gallery. First, there is no press tion that also requires us to believe that these Torres’s twin clocks, Untitled (Perfect Lovers) (1991)
release as such, although there are a series objects are the artefacts they purport to be. – a homage that, like so much of the exhibition,
of typed texts posted around the gallery, Everything in Puppies and Forrest’s beyond its appropriationist game-playing,
in a disarmingly chatty tone, written by Puppies’ apartment is putatively green, blue or yellow. was foremost about love. Jonathan Griffin

Toothbrushes in cup (Blue)(Yellow)(Green), 2017, pair of toothbrushes containing DNA in blue glass,
15 × 8 × 8 cm. Photo: Lee Thompson. Courtesy the artist and Overduin & Co, Los Angeles

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