Contributed by Jacob Patrick Brooks / I saw my favorite piece of Cady Noland ephemera before I ever saw one of her sculptures. On Instagram, a gallery posted a photo of a tee-shirt. It’s well loved and sun-faded, advertising the opening of Noland’s solo show at American Fine Arts on Wooster Street. The date of the opening is September 11, 2001. Opening the same day, across Canal Street on Broadway, was a show by Gelatin (Gelitin since 2005) at Leo Koenig’s gallery. The year before, the group had gone up to the 91st floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center and hung out a window. Josh Harris, founding Silicon Alley millionaire/internet pioneer/legendary liar, took photos from a helicopter. The Gelatin show was sparsely attended. I don’t know if anyone made it to Cady’s.
Fast forward to today, walking into Gagosian. Who is this show for? Does it exist only so Cady and Larry can say I know and nudge people after dropping the news? Through the doors, the first surprise: objects on the wall. Two enormous red canvases with large holes cut out of them. My heart sinks. Noland’s ripped off Steve Parrino. No, of course not. Parrino is just also there. It’s technically a two-person show, but Parrino is quarantined in the first room. Clusters of drawings are on the left and right walls when you walk in, crowded by Noland’s assemblage. The Parrinos are devastating. I wish there were more or none at all.
On the floor in the middle of the room are Titan Fitness kickboxing pads, with A4 sized images on them. They look old-school photocopied. Instantly, we’re back in the golden age of document replication, when xeroxing had teeth. Pictures of John Gotti, advertisements for revolvers, and introductory courses for private investigators. A sunglasses-wearing man with a tight smirk. Under him the words “PSYCHIC Important evidence” are printed. I move on quickly, drawn into the next room by two enormous floor pieces of printed vinyl that curl at the edges. One is an unintelligible morass, held together with a “jumbo clip.” The other is an advertisement for Silencio Magnum brand “Deluxe Custom” shooter’s earmuffs, the Cadillac of ear protection. Leaning against the wall are black pallets, A-frames for barricades and white-wall tires.
Cady’s work works you back. For every “Ah-HA!” you have, she’s got a “But have you seen THIS?” This dialogue flatters the viewer. This stacking of recognitions changes the passive experience of taking it in to the active connecting of dots. By room two, the viewer is an independent researcher. On the back wall, hanging askew, fingers point to the left and right, bringing to mind A Few Good Men as much as Philip Guston or that hotdog-fingered cop who scolded my friends and me for roughhousing in the Price Chopper produce section 20 years ago.
I feel sick.
Third room. Smaller, packed full of crap. The palette has expanded: black, white, and now red. The items have a government WASPy pragmatism about them, matched perfectly to the Budweiser cans encased in resin while also conjuring an infant’s mobile. Something to watch while the grown-ups do something important. A question to chew on while navigating the maze of construction barriers and Uline garbage cans: when has knowing the absolute, God’s honest truth, ever stopped someone powerful from doing something awful?
Behind me; plastic brick walls with bricks missing. There’s a mini-fridge plastered in images of Gotti, Oozewald, and a traffic cone in the studio covered in plastic. I realize the images are not paper or thick plastic, they’re magnets. Every image is a magnet. “Oh my god,” I say, under my breath. I go back into the other rooms. What I wouldn’t give to slap one of these on my fridge. She’s reduced an entire ecosystem of images, a whole way of moving through the world, into a gift-shop haul.
I come into the last room the wrong way. There’s a table in the center with grey chairs. Patty Hearst, America’s most iconic bank robber this side of Dillinger, depicted over and over. She holds a Thompson submachine gun and stands GI Joe action-ready in front of a Symbionese Liberation Army flag. I try to imagine what our Patty would be now, maybe Ella Emhoff in a crochet suicide vest at Fashion Week, the dynamite just melted together starbursts. Harmless AND delicious. Cady’s cut Patty up, zoomed in on different parts. The ink is smeared. The sun’s in our eyes. It’s impossible to tell exactly what is going on, but you can tell something is. Behind me, an old woman croaks: “Oh yeah, there’s Patty with Barbara Walters.” An image I didn’t recognize. Patty with Babs, opposite a portrait of Patty’s grandfather, William Randolph Hearst, who’d been king of a newspaper empire when the sort of deep political machinations that spawned the SLA were kicking off.
Underlying this entire experience is the knowledge that Cady herself put this play set together for us. Can something really be a critique if it’s on display at one of the most powerful galleries in the world? Parrino’s dead. Larry’s pretty sure he’ll never die. What’s Noland’s deal? What’s she getting out of it? I mumble these questions to myself quietly, afraid if I ask them too loud I may get an answer that depresses me.
Independent researchers are Cassandras, hollering about that damn wooden horse they just pulled into Troy. On the table are dioramas of Noland’s work. Oozewald is two inches tall. To the left, Oozewald again, but flat, blown-out, and degraded, also two-dimensional. (You don’t look so good, buddy!) There are messy, hand-painted white-wall tires. I want to take them home and place them next to my other knick-knacks. I know I could make them myself, but it’s not the same. On the wall, another SALE sign, in black and white. A security guard stands in front of it, watching me. They match, I think. I walk up to the guard.
“Do you like this stuff?”
He sighs, looks left. “I’m gonna be honest, I don’t care at all”
“Cady Noland,” Gagosian, 555 West 24th Street, New York, NY. Through October 18, 2025.
About the author: Jacob Patrick Brooks is an artist and writer from Kansas living in New York.
Lot’o Crap.
good review…