The Bulletin Board: Kevin Killian

White Columns is proud to present in our project space The Bulletin Board the first solo exhibition of photographs and a handwritten and embellished poem by the San Francisco-based writer Kevin Killian. The project has been guest curated by Darin Klein.

The photographs offer a glimpse into an ever-expanding index of Killian’s artist and writer contemporaries, highlighting his commitment to a grassroots social networking practice including actual, face-to-face interactions. Inviting a broad range of critical and aesthetic interpretations, the work fetishizes both a coveted original artwork by Raymond Pettibon and the corporeal/intellectual properties of the subjects Killian poses with Pettibon’s brush-stroked genitalia, and “…suggests an alternative to the surveillance camera, while weakening the power of collaboration between disciplined subjects, sexed identities and systems of control.”1

Killian’s poem, after which The Bulletin Board installation is named, bridges his writing practice with this recent photography project and conveys ideas including “…hurt feelings + revenge + the impossibilities of the alphabet as a means of maintaining concord and order…”2– Darin Klein

1 Rob Halpern. From the introduction to Tagged: Variations on a Theme by Kevin Killian (2012. Gravity and Trajectory, San Diego).
2 Kevin Killian. In an email correspondence with Darin Klein (October 2012).

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About the artist: One of the original “New Narrative” writers, Kevin Killian has published three novels, a book of memoirs, and three books of stories. He is also the author of two collections of poetry and forty plays for the San Francisco Poets Theater. Recent and upcoming projects include The Visitor Owl, a hybrid film/live action performance staged at SFMOMA (with artist D-L Alvarez); Nude, a book of poems by Killian and artwork by Ugo Rondinone; and the limited edition artist book, Tagged: Variations on a Theme by Kevin Killian (all 2012).

About the curator: Darin Klein’s independent publications and curatorial and arts programming endeavors have been showcased at venues including For Your Art, The Hammer Museum, Human Resources, LACMA, Luis De Jesus, and REDCAT (Los Angeles); The Montréal Museum of Fine Arts (Québec, Canada); Family Business, MoMA and Printed Matter’s New York Art Book Fair (New York); and Baer Ridgway, New Langton Arts, SFMOMA, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco).