metropolis m

We just received the sad message that Pope.L passed away at home in Chicago. It was announced by his London gallery in the following message:

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Pope.L, who died suddenly on December 23rd at home in Chicago.

One of the foremost conceptual artists of our time, describing himself as a visual and performance-theatre artist, as well as an educator, Pope.L fundamentally challenged and changed the last fifty years of visual art in the United States. His longstanding history of provocative and absurdist performances along with his wide-ranging oeuvre of installations, objects, and paintings undermined conventional notions of language, materiality, and meaning. His elegant, indeterminate, and often humorous, yet bitingly poignant criticism of our history has only recently begun to be fully recognised.

In an interview for the monograph, member: Pope.L, published by The Museum of Modern Art in 2019, the artist noted that “the link between language and performance is duration; both exist only via the crucible of time and are continually remade in time.”

Pope.L’s work is currently featured in a solo exhibition entitled Hospital at the South London Gallery, London, UK. Other recent solo exhibitions, performances, and projects include Between A Figure and A Letter at Schinkel Pavilion, Berlin (2022); Misconceptions at Portikus, Frankfurt (2021) and Instigation, Aspiration, Perspiration a trio of complementary exhibitions of his work in New York organised by the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and Public Art Fund (2019). Pope.L has had previous solo exhibitions at MOCA Los Angeles, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, The Cleveland Institute of Art, The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, and many other institutions.

His work is represented by Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York, Vielmetter Los Angeles, Los Angeles, and Modern Art, London.

Our deepest sympathies are with his family and friends. A memorial is being planned for Spring 2024.

Exactly a year ago Metropolis M published a double feature on his work. No 6-2022 Dec-Jan