OFLUXO
Third Solo Exhibition
Nandi Loaf
At King’s Leap (New York, US)
reviewed by Almog Cohen-Kashi
February, 2021
Before walking into King’s Leap to see Nandi Loaf’s Third Solo Exhibition, I already had questions. Going into this show, the only thing I knew for certain was the gallery community the artist was aligning herself with; Ashes / Ashes, Alyssa Davis Gallery, Gern en Regalia, Mery Gates, Love (loveclub.tv), Lubov, and Sinkhole Projects in addition to King’s Leap. Loaf asserts that this group of galleries represent her through their sponsorship which helped fund NL%PHONEFARM, a work you are confronted by upon entry. This piece consists of nine black cases arranged in a grid, housing two inexpensive burner phones each. Interconnected by the wires that feed them the electricity they need to mine for cryptocurrency, this work offers a look at alternative methods for the artist to produce money at the expense of the gallery. Her gallerist is tasked with the labor of tending to this micro phone farm, a form of creating money that plateaued in popularity in the mid to late 2010’s due to the fact that it was highly ineffective. While Loaf is able to collect her earnings, the gallery loses more money than she makes to the electric company that powers this farm. Above and beneath the phones, there are moving signs reminding you this is Nandi Loaf’s show and to follow her on Instagram, in case you forget.
There’s a livestream projected on the adjacent wall, http://twitch.tv/nandiloaf/, where Loaf is playing the game in multiple respects by creating an “art world” social space situated in the reality of the first person shooter game, Call of Duty. The participation of galleries and friends who bought themselves in this world is signaled by the inclusion of their Instagram handles floating in red on the bottom right hand corner of the screen. Operating in this virtual realm helps Loaf stake her claim as an artist while reveling in the spectacle that is associated with live gaming culture. Her skill level is irrelevant as this game is a vessel that permits her to define who she wants to interact with while temporarily residing in Georgia. This piece is the core of the exhibition as it fully allows the artist to explore the conditions of working in the moment as Nandi Loaf. In the longer tradition of Lynn Herhsman Leeson, who took on the identity of Roberta Breitmore from 1974 to 1978, or Duchamp when he made his first appearance as Rrose Sélavy in 1920 by signing her name on collages and claiming her as the creator of works such as Anémic Cinéma, the playful irony of Nandi Loaf roleplaying “Nandi Loaf the Artist” is essential to understanding her.
Loaf sits on the seam of a fabricated identity and reality, by operating through the self presented in her work she collapses the way in which one informs the other. All at once, she is bound to the virtual space that grants her the ability to perform as herself while simultaneously using this to break down the walls of the gallery and connect it with the outside world. As a viewer, you may start to question how far the unattached apathy of her persona goes, but are reeled back in an instance by the aggressive and repeated reminder to follow her on social media. This self-branding seems to be Loaf asking for acolytes and fans, but also reveals a contradiction. Why would someone who is so prolific need to tell you to follow them?
We can start to trace who Loaf is when exploring the corners of the internet she’s been inhabiting for many years: in reading her writing on DeviantArt from 2017, browsing her Teespring where she has three t-shirts for sale, watching her videos on Youtube infrequently uploaded over the last eight years, or listening to the only piece she has on SoundCloud, a clip of her belching seven years ago. These fragments of an identity arouse questions that we do not know the answers to yet, however this undoubtedly is what makes her practice attractive. Is Nandi Loaf the most important artist of the twenty-first century? That’s not a question I can reasonably answer just yet, but the thing that I do know for certain is that questions always outlive answers. ●
