From "Evidence"
© Mike Mandel & Larry Sultan
"Regarding a more contemporary reading, where paranoia politics are openly discussed, and the distinction between public and private spheres is dissolving, can we look at this body of work in the same way? The access alone Mandel and Sultan received to make this work is confounding to the modern Westerner. You mean they just went in and started searching through archives of apparently classified documents? I wonder if we can rely solely on the fact that this book was produced in 1977 to remove modern political connotations. And to do this, in some way, undermines the respected notion of an artwork’s “timelessness,” where the ideas are relevant enough to allow us to overlook the dated imagery and iconography. In fact, the vernacular informs this work today in a way that it did not in 1977.
From "Evidence"
© Mike Mandel & Larry Sultan
And so Evidence serves two distinct functions as an aging body of work. The first is the conceptual grace in which Mandel and Sultan seemingly produced this work. The practice profoundly influenced every subsequent generation of image-based artists. The process here triumphs, and the ideas are timeless. Secondly, considering the completed, exhibited work set out to be about image-generated narrative, we understand that narrative to be strikingly different, due to various sociological factors. The presented work and the audience’s interpretation of the deadpan simplicity was clearly an important aspect in its conception, and remains to affect the deeper psychological implications of art-viewing today."
From "Evidence"
© Mike Mandel & Larry Sultan
You can read Shea's review in its entirety here. Also make sure you spend some time looking at T.J. Proechel's wonderful series Dream House and reading the Mårten Lange interview.
