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    • XVII

      • Colleen Asper Labor with Rectangle
      • Dushko Petrovich & Roger White Monument Working Strategies LLC: Structuring Creative Freedom
      • Triple Candie Exhibition Preparations
      • Sean Raspet 2GFR24SMEZZ2XMCVI5L8X9Y38ZJ2JD…
      • Owen Kydd Handheld
      • Dan Levenson Notes From Jessica
      • Julia Rommel Easy Tacker
      • The problem of leisure/
        What to do for pleasure.
        —Gang of Four

        2013_juliarommel_img_01


        All of the artists I used to work for had me convinced that their lives were hard. And I never told them — I never thanked them — but they were making my life so easy. Hours of work that were challenging and quantifiable. I knew that working for them was the right thing to do, that was the best part. They taught me so much. I rode my bike to Staten Island everyday for Donald, I thought it would be good for street cred and thin arms, it only made my calves huge. I made hours and hours of paintings that only abandoned me, incessant crates to London and Berlin. For Mat I painted a painting that said THANK YOU over and over again. It went to Belgium.

        When these men left me in ’08 for simpler lives I was heartbroken. Slept all day and waited tables all night. I would still be in that dark basement with a cocktail tray if MTV didn’t save me, giving me a job making props for a Japanese game show. We made torture devices for the show. We stopped sleeping and one morning I had bags under my eyes, four years later they haven’t gone away. We electroshocked ourselves, for a laugh and some energy, using the same cattle-prod-like device that my wrist-and-hand doctor shocked me with a few months before, nerve damage in my fingers, too many hours stretching other people’s paintings.

        I don’t mean to complain. Yet why is it so hard to remember having a boss, that daily offense of pulling yourself away from yourself? I’m taking a moment to be grateful. My yoga teacher said that gratitude is confidence in our collective future. I go to an hour-and-a-half yoga class every day. I now live a life of leisure. Nothing is good for thin arms like an hour-and-a-half of yoga every day. In fact we artists should all be athletes. We can run marathons and feel so much pain and exhaustion and want to stop but work our way through it. We can play soccer and think about how the first touch dictates everything and understand that the game can change in a moment. We can be vain about our thin arms and lavish eating habits as if those things arose spontaneously out of our artiness. We can lose and win. We can go to our yoga classes and our teachers will tell us to be comfortable with uncertainty, and we will believe them, because they are beautiful. There are a few other good options. But choosing one is imperative. This is fighting for our lives, and our lives are easy. We are lucky. We have so much. My yoga teacher also said: If we cannot be happy with all that we have, what chance is there for anybody? And Agnes Martin said: We need not die because of responsibility.

        I accept this: one day there will be panic and boredom and no one to blame. But when I break a sweat at least that feeling will be familiar. Granted sometimes I feel as if the shower is the greatest labor of my life. The tedious toweling off, hours of damp head.

        But if sports aren’t your thing, maybe we could all have children. It sounds tough. Talk about a boss!

        Julia Rommel is a Brooklyn-based artist. She presented the solo show “Delaware” at Bureau, New York, in 2012. Her work has been included in group exhibitions such as “Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out,” White Flag Projects, St Louis (2013), “Out of the Blue,” Bortolami, New York (2012), and "Good Luck and Safe Journey", with Sam Falls and Federico Maddalozzo, at T293, Naples (2013). Rommel is represented by Bureau, NY.

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      • Jordan Kantor MAN(ET/DE)GAS
      • Sreshta Rit Premnath The Last Image
      • OJO The Adventures of Nuclear Wad & How He Learned To Stop Dreaming
    • XVI

      • Julia Sherman Re-Claiming Susan B. Anthony
      • Robert Hult Hasidic Street Posters in Brooklyn
      • Runo Lagomarsino Pedro’s Story: An Unsuccessful Transatlantic Traveller
      • John Houck Pine Ridge: An interview with Jim Houck
      • Brian Zegeer Dragoman of Little Syria
      • Sidney Russell Kuna Yala Swag
      • Desirée Holman Outer Spaces: Part I
      • Faith47 The Unexpected Present
      • Carmen Winant Personal Best
      • Philip-Lorca diCorcia Red Bull Snake
    • XV

      • Jessica Green & Tom Griffiths Terra Incognita (A Video Game Folly)
      • Prem Krishnamurthy The People’s Representation: On Staged Graphics in Klaus Wittkugel’s Work
      • Cian O'Day N/A, or On the Dark Stores of Brian Ulrich
      • Yasmeen M. Siddiqui Avatar Gone Analog: Musings on The Bridge Project by Do Ho Suh
      • Emily Larned ARTS 02–2011: The Artist-Created Institution as Art Practice
      • Yoonjai Choi & Ken Meier Interview with Metahaven
      • Aaron Kunin Space and Place in Two Video Installations by Amie Siegel
      • Tom Griffiths Interview with Barbara Griffiths
    • XIV

      • Colleen Asper & Justin Lieberman In Conversation
      • Dushko Petrovich & Roger White Report To The Committee On Periodical Group Exhibitions
      • Ryan Mrozowski & Mike Womack Before-Biennial-After
      • Kay Rosen Waiting for Michael Asher
      • Kate Gilmore Drag
    • XIII

      • Talia Chetrit Van Hanos’s Harlem Studio
      • Mieke Marple The Lives of Objects at The Suburban
      • Laurel Nakadate Island Light
      • C.D. Parker Draw Me a Pie Chart Powerfully
      • Alan Reid Despondent Babysitter
      • Lucy Kim & Leeza Meksin Art Crimes
    • XII

      • Anonymous On Looking at Nature: An Untitled Petition on Crapomimicry
      • Paul Huf Musical Box with a Dancing Ballerina
      • Lance Wakeling Voluntary Sculptures: Photographing the Unmonumental
      • David Kennedy-Cutler Possession Obsession
      • Nine Budde Stopping by at a Friends’ Place
      • Cody Trepte Untitled (Something Clever Here)
    • XI

      • Adam Helms Hirschhorn at Gladstone Gallery
      • David Scanavino Fact or Fiction
      • Jason Tomme The Voodoo of Robert Irwin
      • Kristin Posehn The Rocks of Rocklin
      • Joanne Greenbaum Decorating the Void: On Clay and Dirt on Delight
    • X

      • Jennifer Dudley Interview with Daniel Bozhkov
      • Dushko Petrovich & Roger White Report to the Committee on Decentered Practices
      • Shana Lutker Artists Are Not
      • Steve Cairns & Isla Leaver-Yap Blind Carbon Copy
      • Katarina Burin Rooms No One Lives In
      • Jonathan Bogarin What’s Your Context?
      • Sara Greenberger Rafferty Master of None
    • IX

      • Andrea Hill Fact, Factoid, Factotum
      • Nicholas Weist We’re Interested in Your White Horse
      • Tyler Coburn Ronnie Bass at I-20
      • Allison Kave Doa Aly and Juan William Chavez
      • Gillian Sneed Interview with Adam Pendleton
    • VIII

      • Jacob Hashimoto Interview with Luis Gispert
      • Lilly McElroy Guy Maddin’s Winnipeg
      • Kevin Zucker Thematic Apperception Test
      • Ian Cooper That’s What He Said
      • Colleen Asper Interview with Matt Borruso
    • VII

      • Mieke Marple Interview with Michelle Grabner
      • Farrah Karapetian Reframing Mirrors and Windows
      • Ruby Sky Stiler That’s What She Said
      • Spencer Finch New Zealand Light
      • Dana Frankfort John Walker: Text in/and Painting
      • The Editors Whitney Biennial 2008
    • VI

      • Katie Herzog Bay Area Figurative Language
      • Matt Connors Teignmouth Electron by Tacita Dean
      • Connelly LaMar New Photography 2007 at MOMA
      • Ethan Greenbaum Inside Lights
      • Matthew Lancit Cleaning Magritte’s Pipe
    • V

      • Roger White Jay Heikes at Marianne Boesky
      • Luke Stettner Interview with Michael DeLucia
      • Erin Shirreff Michel Auder: The Feature
      • Jessica Lansdon Interview with Brian Bress
      • Lisha Bai Suzanne Song at Michael Steinberg Fine Art
    • IV

      • Mariah Robertson Conditions in Time
      • Jacob Feige Psychopathia Pastoralis
      • Eric Golo Stone Interview with George Kontos
      • Skyler Brickley Keith Tyson at PaceWildenstein
      • Lumi Tan Curatorial Project with Jo-ey Tang
    • III

      • George Rush Wayne Gonzales at Paula Cooper
      • Jacqueline Cooper Margaret Wall-Romana at Bucheon Gallery
      • Ana Wolovick Robin Rhode at Perry Rubenstein
      • Skyler Brickley Nicholas Krushenick at Marianne Boesky
      • Luke Stettner Peter Young at PS1
      • Ethan Greenbaum Daniel Gordon Interview
    • II

      • Christine Frerichs Rebecca Morris at Karyn Lovegrove Gallery
      • Skyler Brickley Josh Smith at Luhring Augustine
      • Ethan Greenbaum Kristen Baker at Deitch Projects
    • I

      • Mark Barrow On Abstraction
      • Tova Carlin Superstudio
      • Julia Weist Johannes Vanderbeek at Zach Feuer
      • Skyler Brickley Wilhelm Sasnal at Anton Kern
      • Ethan Greenbaum Cement Garden at Marvelli Gallery