In Public Seminar

Is Alex Israel for Real? Sun, Sincerity and Simulacra in SPF-18 (Excerpt)

At heart, Israel is a fan, and his art is a love letter: to Hollywood, to Los Angeles, and more broadly to the discredited American Dream. Because his subject isn’t the city (“our city”) itself, it is the dream of the place as represented in the American cultural imaginary. Collector and gallerist Adam Lindemann asks, “Am I a throwback to another era because I was looking for deeper meaning, even when there is none?” I think what both he and the guide in Oslo fail to understand is that the depth is not in the meaning but in the feeling. Israel is dead serious in his enthusiasm; his work is shot through with genuine affection for the very clichés it depicts. It is as though he wants to bottle the “buzz,” the feeling of possibility that Hollywood and its products inspire, a kind of cinematic hope – regardless of whether they are worthy of that feeling or whether they obscure more than they offer. He believes that in this cinematic hope there is still, despite everything, a kernel of something true, and that elusive kernel is what he’s after.

Read the full essay here.