Sade for Sade's Sake by Paul Chan at Greene Naftali

“For you, I am become thunder, For you, moonlight, I am a whore.” This strange phrase is Paul Chan’s name rendered in his own font, created specially for the exhibit Sade for Sade’s Sake. To clarify, these fonts take each typed letter and transform it into a new word or phrase. He created 21 fonts inspired by the Marquis de Sade and other characters, of which the one represented here, Oh Ho darlin, is one of the most tame. The fonts are available on the artist’s website for free download.

Chan’s exhibit is an intersection of a surprising amount of media, it is innovative in the way it blurs the lines between painting, video, and design. He has designed fonts for the computer, but also painted them on large boards and propped them against the wall. Supported by a pair of shoes on the ground, the paintings have an aesthetic appeal beyond simply conveying typographical information. He paints the fonts with a procession of correspondences between the keyboard keys and Chan’s phrases. The fonts replace letters with whole words with disturbing and sometimes hilarious consequences.

Painted with dripping black ink the letters and words assert themselves, striking the onlooker with their boldness. Each font plays out like a the miniature story. Chan is playing with words and is using technology to bring to the fore what is usually implicit, implied, or hidden. His fonts bring out subtexts of language, forcing the writers to make explicit statements they would never type themselves. He has done this before, creating fonts based on the black power movement. It has proven a successful formula to pose questions about words, specifically those usually left unsaid. When writing with his fonts, phrases spring up on their own, creating imagery that many people would rather not confront.

Chan views art as a “dispersion of power”, and this principle is in full effect here. He creates the means of expression through fonts, but limits himself to displaying them in rigid order. It is up the visitor of the gallery or fan at home to take these fonts and create; he freely hands out his system of art making. Chan transforms typography from design to art, and though the line here is always blurry, he takes the function of fonts and subverts it, when considering fonts as means to clearly represent what is typed. On the other hand fonts always affect how thoughts and words are made manifest, Chan simply takes it to the extreme.

A keyboard sits at the center of the room, the keys of which have been transformed into gravestones. What this means is unclear, but it unfortunately lends itself to a simplistic and obvious comment on technology. Theoretically typing on this unique keyboard would create texts on a connected computer in one of Chan’s fonts. However, this jerry-rigged connection was not functioning (a meta-comment on death and technology as well? probably not). The keyboard, if functioning, would ultimately undermine Chan’s fonts. Because the keys are stripped of their letters, Chan’s fonts no longer transform what is typed. Rather they are produced with no expectation from random keystrokes.

Paul Chan takes his influence from a wide variety of sources, his artistic inspirations span from the Renaissance to the contemporary. The centerpiece in the exhibit is a large video installation. The film draws the ideas of the Marquis de Sade and is rendered in a cutout style reminiscent of Kara Walker. Chan uses the cutout to present objects in his art because it parallels his idea that “there are no such things as ‘actual objects’ in art.” Chan has used the projected cutout before, in his 7 Lights exhibit at the New Museum. In that exhibit the cutouts were inanimate objects that looked as if they might have been real silhouettes. Here, however, there is never any doubt that the people in Chan’s video are cutouts. Instead of objects that happen to be cutouts, they now assert their artificiality; proclaiming their existence as mere silhouettes of silhouettes. Does the idea that there are no actual objects in art hold true beyond contrived demonstrations of Chan’s principle? There are counter examples from history, but has modern art come to the point were functioning “actual things” cannot be art? Or does Chan mean this statement in a more platonic way and his projections simply reinvent the shadows on the cave wall? Chan wants his art to ask “new questions for possible futures.” He is certainly raising plenty of questions, but with few answers.

The video runs for over five hours. This eliminates the sense that the work is simply repeating itself, but will surely frustrate completists. It alternates between abstract shapes and cutout people. These people move like puppets in rhythmic motions acting out routine and sometimes inventive sex acts. The characters are men, women, and some with mixed attributes. Their repetitive movements hypnotizes, but also impress the viewer with the characters’ tenacity. The video is less aesthetically pleasing than 7 Lights and despite its provactive subject is in many ways less interesting. The abstract images were dull and uninteresting and and the orgiastic scenes may have been pulling for shocking but fell short, only managing to amuse. The video is supposed to build to a climax, but since it runs five hours most visitors will miss the full experience.

Paul Chan is known for his political activism, especially his work surrounding the 2004 Republican Convention in New York. He prefers to keep his politics and his art separate, and has spoken about how political art is often dismissed. Other critics have already mentioned that his stance artificially divides his work, which are politics and which art? Sade for Sade’s Sake, presented in the art world surely makes cultural and political statements. Indeed this intersection of social commentary, humor, and visual interest is one of the show’s strongest suits.

Overall, the show is amusing and occasionally inspired. Only the font series rises to the intellectual bar that Chan has set for himself. His ink posters have a stark visual quality, and reading the words as art is satisfying. Chan extends the experience beyond the gallery and democratizes it by distributing his fonts free online. The show is a continuation and development of ideas that he has been working on, at times advancing them, but sometimes keeping them in a holding pattern.