Kaari Upson Explained

Kaari Upson
Birth Date:22 April 1970
Birth Place:San Bernardino, California, U.S.
Death Place:New York City, New York, U.S.
Education:New York Studio School
Alma Mater:California Institute of the Arts
Occupation:Artist
Children:1

Kaari Upson (April 22, 1970 – August 18, 2021)[1] was an American artist. The bulk of Upson’s career was devoted to a single series titled The Larry Project – paintings, installations, performances, and films inspired by a collection of one man's personal items she found in 2003. The Larry Project was exhibited at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles in 2008, as part of their program Hammer Projects.[2] Her work resides in the public collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston[3] [4] and is known for exploring themes of psychoanalysis, obsession, memory, and the body. She had lived and worked in Los Angeles.[5]

Biography

Upson was born in San Bernardino, California, on April 22, 1970.[6] However her date of birth is often listed as 1972, incorrectly. She attended New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture and later attended California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). She received her BFA in 2004 and her MFA in 2007 from CalArts. She began The Larry Project as a student, and exhibited a portion of the work as her MFA thesis.[7]

She was married from 2000 until 2010 to television producer Kirk Rudell, together they had one child.

In 2017, she had a large moment in her career when she had two New York City shows; at the Whitney Biennial and at the New Museum. That same year 2017, she was part of the Istanbul Biennial.

After fighting breast cancer for years, Upson died of metastatic breast cancer at New York City's Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in the evening of August 18, 2021.[8] [9]

The Larry Project (2007–2011)

In 2003, after trespassing onto an abandoned property across the street from her parents' home in San Bernardino, Upson discovered boxes of ephemera: letters, legal documents, diaries, photographs, all belonging to one man who she later dubbed 'Larry.'[10] [11] [12] [13] She kept the boxes for a year, unsure of what to do with them, but, in 2004, the house mysteriously burnt down, and she decided to begin tracing the life of 'Larry' through her artwork.

For the next seven years, she produced an ongoing body of work, The Larry Project, creating a narrative through the faulty memory of the documents and her own fantasies. The work exists in a variety of mediums: drawing, sculpture, video, and performance. She discovered that 'Larry' styled himself after Hugh Hefner and partied at the Playboy Mansion; he also was involved in a few different self-help programs, including Jungian analysis, chakra cleansing, Gestalt Therapy, and Erhard Seminars Training.[14] His hyper-masculine "Ladies' Man" persona became a site of exploration for Upson's own performances of gender, power, and desire.

In 2008, Upson made a life-size doll version of 'Larry,' that she enacted different scenes with, switching roles as his daughter, mother, and sexual partner.[15] In 2008, Upson also made "The Grotto," a fiberglass replica of the infamous cave-like swimming pool at the Playboy Mansion. Inside the sculpture, Upson projected videos of herself, wearing silicon prostheses of breasts and genitalia, straddling the 'Larry' doll. In 2009, Upson cast the 'Larry' doll into charcoal, and used the form to make drawings against the gallery wall, slowly destroying the charcoal form in the process.[16] In 2011, Upson cast architectural copies of 'Larry's' former house into soft pink latex, as well as other objects, like a chandelier and an iron gate. In "Mirrored Staircase Inversion (San Bernardino)" (2011), Upson went back to the site of the original house, which was now an empty dirt lot. There, she dug into the ground an inverted replica of the twin staircases that had led into 'Larry's' bedroom, and cast the giant hole in latex, creating a skin of the non-existent house. Themes of twinning, mirror images, and negative copies emerge throughout the project, as Upson drew on the pervasive fantasy of the twin Playboy Bunnies and the discovery of her own reflection in a complete stranger.

Exhibitions

A select list of exhibitions by Upson:

Solo exhibitions

Group exhibitions

Notes and References

  1. News: Farago. Jason. 2021-08-20. Kaari Upson, California Artist of Desire and Disturbance, Dies at 51. en-US. The New York Times. 2021-08-22. 0362-4331.
  2. Web site: Subotnick. Ali. Hammer Projects: Kaari Upson. Hammer Museum. 27 November 2007 . 15 June 2016.
  3. Web site: Collection: Kaari Upson. The Museum of Contemporary Art. 23 June 2016.
  4. Web site: Kaari Upson. Massimo De Carlo. 16 June 2016.
  5. Web site: Lucas. Josh. 2017-04-19. Kaari Upson. 2021-08-22. Interview Magazine. en-US.
  6. Web site: Kaari Upson, the Multimedia Artist Who 'Skewered the Fallacies of the American Dream,' Has Died at 51 . Artnet News . 20 August 2021 . 19 August 2021.
  7. Web site: Farago. Jason. 2016-06-28. An interview with Kaari Upson. 2021-08-22. Even Magazine. en-US.
  8. News: Ludel . Wallace . Kaari Upson, Los Angeles artist who obsessively explored identity, family and Americana, has died, aged 51 . 21 August 2021 . www.theartnewspaper.com . 19 August 2021 . en.
  9. Web site: Greenberger. Alex. 19 August 2021. Kaari Upson, Rising Star Whose Work Evoked Strange Psychological States, Is Dead at 49. 22 August 2021. ARTnews.
  10. Book: Subotnick. Ali. Nine Lives: Visionary Artists from L.A.. 25 February 2009. Hammer Museum. 978-0943739366. 78–90.
  11. Book: Upson. Kaari. Marta. Karen. Kaari Upson: The House. 28 April 2015. UCCA/Keonig Books. 978-3863356248.
  12. News: Griffin. Jonathan. Life Study. 15 June 2016. Frieze Magazine. 145. March 2012.
  13. News: Mizota. Sharon. L.A.'s Artist Iconoclasts. 23 June 2016. The Los Angeles Times. 8 March 2009.
  14. News: Campagnola. Sonia. Larry's House. 15 June 2016. Mousse Magazine. 21. 2009. https://web.archive.org/web/20160817143635/http://www.moussemagazine.it/articolo.mm?id=504. 17 August 2016. dead.
  15. Holte. Michael Ned Holte. Kaari Upson. Artforum. February 2008. 46 . 6 . 23 June 2016.
  16. News: Soto. Paul. Thinking Inside the Box: Q+A With Kaari Upson. 15 June 2016. Art In America. November 2011.
  17. Wilson. Michael. Kaari Upson. Artforum. February 2010. 48 . 6 . 23 June 2016.
  18. Web site: Ashfaque. Rabia. 2017-07-14. Kaari Upson: Good Thing You Are Not Alone. 2021-08-22. The Brooklyn Rail. en-US.
  19. Web site: Glauner. Max. 12 October 2019. Kaari Upson – Go Back The Way und You Came & Door, Open, Shut in Basel and Hannover. 13 August 2020.

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