William Pope.L Landscape + Object + Animal (review)

Showcasing works dating from the 1990s to present, Landscape + Object + Animal, William Pope.L's 2010 solo exhibition at the Mitchell-Inness and Nash Gallery in Chelsea, offers a critical reflection on the social, political, and economic totalities that rule the society in which we live. This review suggests that Pope.L's heterogeneous practice, which includes painting, collage, performance, video, and text excerpts, employs an allegorical mode of seeing in which fragmentary objects, particularly commodity forms, are depleted of their original meanings and associated with radically political ones. Simultaneously inhabiting the roles of man, animal, and Superman, Pope.L traverses the world of objects, redefining the racial, social, and political categories that organize the landscape they occupy.