Laura Hipke Curators Essay from the Circle of Truth Exhibition Catalogue

November 20, 2017

THE ARC

The Circle of Truth project is a nostalgic nod to the Exquisite Corpse game of the surrealists of the early 20th Century, where artists came together to collaborate on an unknown and unpredictable outcome. The Circle of Truth will be remembered as a moment when generosity, goodwill and courage came together to make something bigger than the individual, while inviting the viewer to be an integral part of the outcome.

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I never imagined that the Circle of Truth would take nine years to complete. There are so many moments that come to mind, I hardly know where to start. But if I had only one thing that I could talk about, it would be how much I admire and respect the artists who took up the challenge of this project. They were willing to work completely in the dark – knowing nothing about the “visiting painting,” knowing nothing about the artist who painted it, or why it had been painted. But they realized that the success of their work would be judged by the truth they were able to call on within themselves. That moment of risk and inner challenge, the dialog that occurs between the work and the artist when everyone else leaves the room, is the secret ingredient. The truth of each artist’s effort cannot be hidden. And so, in the end, it is the courage and willingness of these 49 artists that has made this project so remarkable.

The Circle of Truth is, at first glance, a take-off on a childhood game that demonstrates how rumors develop – an amusing idea for sure, but for my co-curator, Shane Guffogg, and me it was more than just a look at rumors. From its inception, the Circle of Truth was a vehicle to try to corner truth – a way to trap it on canvas in hopes of getting a better look at it. A rumor might seem to be at the opposite end of the spectrum from truth, but they are not strangers. Most rumors start out as truth. Once truth is handed from one to the next, it is gradually transformed into a rumor. When you look at the Circle of Truth project I would argue that the rumor never develops. The Circle of Truth started with the very essence of truth, Shane Guffogg’s Truth painting, #1 in the Circle. If you read what Shane wrote about his painting, you will quickly see that he infused truth into every molecule of his contribution – the Golden Mean, that magic equation, upon which everything in the universe is based. It is there for all to see in his painting, but Lisa Adams, #2 in the Circle, picked up on something different. Perhaps Lisa did not notice the Golden Ratio, hovering quietly just below the veils in Shane’s offering, but what Lisa gathered from his painting was the absolute truth. It was her truth. And so in Lisa’s painting, truth was not transformed into a rumor, it was transformed into another, absolute truth. 

Another great example is Stanley Dorfman’s contribution (#11). He responded to a painting by Ruth Weisberg. Ruth painted a truth that resonates deeply in her. But Stanley rejected that truth and painted truth as he sees it – as he believes it – a well-reasoned and heartfelt truth. In that way he did not paint a rumor either. He transformed the message into truth from a different perspective. As we stand back and look at these contributions we can see that they are valid in their own right, which gives rise to the question, “What is truth?” Perhaps truth is not something that can ever really be cornered or trapped. Perhaps truth is simply what we believe to be true.

I have puzzled over the subject of truth for many years. Much of my work contains a question about truth, as if asking the question might someday return an answer. The Circle of Truth project started as one of those questions. Truth itself is a complex idea that can be contemplated every day for the rest of one’s life without exhausting all of its many facets. Does truth exist? If it does exist, who decides what truth is? Is it us, or does our concept of truth rely on the fulcrum of an omniscient being? In my childhood I was given to believe that God would judge all – that God sees all, knows all. I found comfort in this idea, but as I grew so did the questions about truth. Is truth an inalterable constant, or is it subjective? I had always reasoned that truth was a constant and could not be changed. It could be concealed or dressed up, but underneath it would remain unchanged. My husband, Randy, has always argued that truth is subjective – that it is different depending on who you are, and when and where you live. Both sides of the argument seem to be true. Clearly more pieces of the puzzle were needed.

The Circle of Truth is a simple concept. It’s based on a lesson from grammar school. Some people know it as the Telephone Game. In my grade school, our teacher called it a Rumor Circle. Her intent was to teach us not to believe stories we heard on the playground, hopefully causing us to question what we believed to be true. In this exercise we sat in a large circle in the middle of the room. The teacher whispered a story into the ear of the student to her right. That student whispered the story into the ear of the student sitting to his right and so on. The story went around the room, whispered from one student to the next, until finally the last student in the circle told the story he heard out loud. Of course that account was completely different from the story that had been whispered into my ear. It captured my imagination completely, but the thing I longed for, was to know how the story had evolved. I wanted to understand how and where each change to the story had occurred. Afterward, I was able to collect bits and pieces of what the other students heard but it was not enough to give me the whole picture, or to quiet the angst that had been stirred in me. 

For years after that day I would lay on my bed and puzzle over how the story could have changed so completely. I began to wonder about truth as a concept. Of course, I understood that what people told me might not be true, but the rumor circle had awakened something in me. I realized that I could explore truth as a subject.

As the years passed, I contemplated the Rumor Circle on a much larger scale. I wondered about history, the Bible, or other ancient stories. How had the narratives that shape our societies and belief systems evolved as they were whispered from one generation to the next? Once this question made its way into my consciousness, how could I be sure of anything? I concluded that inner truth was the only truth that really mattered. My work as an artist began to change. Inner truth became the focus of my explorations, and with each painting I was rewarded with another piece of the puzzle. I came to understand that inner truth is the single most important element in art. I looked for it in the work of other artists, and gathered around me the ones that I could see were investigating the same things. I wondered what would happen if a visual rumor circle was executed by the artists I admired. What truths would become visible? A circle of artists “whispering” a painted truth – a “Circle of Truth.”

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I came to Pharmaka in 2005. Pharmaka was a painter’s group which also ran a non-profit museum/gallery from 2004-2009. The Pharmaka gallery was located on the corner of 5th and Main in downtown Los Angeles and was said to be the epicenter of the Downtown LA Art Walk. In 2007, Pharmaka was in need of exhibition ideas and I decided it was time to explore the Circle of Truth as an exhibition. I had never curated a show before, so I asked Vonn Sumner, one of Pharmaka’s founding members, to collaborate on the project with me. Vonn is wise and easygoing, with a wry sense of humor. 

For the next year or so, we would meet and discuss the project. Vonn and I agreed on many things and made a number of decisions, but the one thing we could not agree on was the concept of Truth. Truth carries baggage with it, and Vonn felt that the “Rumor/Telephone Game” was a strong enough idea for an exhibition, and suggested that we drop “Truth” from the title. At first it didn’t seem like a big deal to come up with another name. But the more I tried, the more I came to appreciate how important the concept of truth was to me. I struggled to imagine the project without allowing truth to be part of the question. Vonn and I continued to work on the project, but the wind went out of my sails and progress was slow. Then, in February of 2009, Vonn announced that he would be moving to Pennsylvania with his family. His leaving put an end to our partnership as co-curators of the project.

In March of 2009, I asked Shane Guffogg to take up the project with me. Shane was also one of the founding members of Pharmaka, and in my mind, the driving force of the group and the gallery. Shane and I were on the same page in so many ways. He possesses a wonderful quality of accepting each day as it comes to him and his take on truth was exactly what I was looking for. From the start we decided to allow truth to be the guiding force of the project. At every crossroad, truth would be the compass.

I spent about three months putting together the sponsors, while Shane and I hammering out the remaining details of the project. We compiled a wishlist of both abstract and representational artists that we wanted in the Circle. It didn’t matter to us what type of work they did, or how big their careers were. We felt that inner truth was the most important element. As the project unfolded, we contacted them one-by-one. Initially, we were concerned that some artists might eschew the challenge and merely paint something that was within their comfort zone. We believed that if the artists didn’t respond honestly, that the project would not be true to its concept. But we came to appreciate that every contribution would possess its own truth. Viewers of the exhibition would be able to see which artists gave an honest effort and which ones did not. In that way truth would add yet another layer to the project. So we vowed to take a “hands-off” approach, resolving to accept whatever the artists did, no matter what.

It was decided early on to withhold the identity of the artists participating in the Circle of Truth. We wanted each artist to work in a vacuum and didn’t want the name of the previous artist to inform anyone’s response. The idea was to “sneak up” on the innocence of every artist in the Circle, and not letting them know who painted their “visiting painting” would help a great deal. The art community is surprisingly small and we realized that keeping the project a secret would be especially challenging. To ensure that no word leaked out, we asked that no one sign their painting or talk about the details of their experience. 

We crafted a uniform set of instructions that accompanied the project to each artist’s studio. Just as with the Rumor Circle of my childhood, each artist would receive a “whispered” truth in what we termed the “visiting painting,” created by the previous artist. Each artist would then have to determine for themselves what truth it possessed, interpret it and imbed the seed onto the blank canvas that we provided them. Once their piece was complete, we asked each artist to write an essay about their experience. 

The last order of business was to try to figure out how to begin the project. What would be the catalyst for the first painting? The initial painting would set the tone for the entire project. Shane suggested that I paint it, but I felt that given the importance of the first painting, Shane’s beautiful work and thought process would be the ideal beginning. So we decided that Shane would create the first painting, and that I would decide what he would respond to. From the beginning of our collaboration, truth was the question, the guiding force and the motivation for the project, and I realized that we had been staring at the catalyst the whole time – Truth. So, Shane got to work, quietly gathering his thoughts, and after several weeks of collecting scattered pieces of the universe, he finally called me to come and see his painting. It was the first big thrill of the project. Shane’s Truth painting, #1 in the Circle, was different than anything I had imagined (an experience that was to repeat itself many times over the course of the project). It was beautiful, filled with thought and meaning, the perfect beginning for our project. 

We were ready at last to release the project “into the wild.” Lisa Adams was the first artist to receive the project, and her painting holds a special place in my heart. Delivering the crisp white shipping crate to Lisa marked the moment when the project no longer belonged to Shane and me. It was the moment when we let go and waited to see what would happen. Margaret Lazarri came after Lisa, and by the time we got to Jim Morphesis (#4), the project was already more amazing than we could have imagined. But the most surprising part of the early results was how powerful the essays were. The artists were earnest and candid in what they shared. The essays provide a rare look inside the studios and thought processes of these unique and private people.

We estimated that the project would take three years to complete but it didn’t take long for us to realize that our estimate was optimistic. The first sign of delay came early on. One artist had the project for a week and was making good progress when she received word that her mother had died suddenly. Not knowing how long it would take to settle her mother’s affairs, she suggested that we discard her unfinished contribution and start again with a different artist. It only took a minute for Shane and me to decide that the integrity of the project was more important than the schedule. We put the project on hold until she returned three months later. We found that delays were going to be an ongoing issue. Many of the artists on our wish list had busy exhibition schedules to work around. There were times when progress slowed to a snail’s pace, especially as we approached the end of the project and our list of artists began to narrow to the final few candidates.

Shane and I were committed to allowing the Circle to take its own course, saying as little as possible, and allowing each artist to struggle through whatever obstacles they encountered. Our laissez faire approach was put to the test midway through the project. One artist had the project for several days when he announced that he was unable to respond to the visiting painting. He asked Shane to come pick up the project and give it to someone else. Shane told him that whatever was on the canvas when we came to pick it up in two weeks would be his contribution, even if the canvas was blank. When we came to pick up the crate we were relieved to find that he had chosen not to return a blank canvas. 

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What I witnessed during the nine years we worked on this project has affected me so deeply that I cannot reconnect with what I did not know in the beginning. The bits and pieces of the experiences have found their way into every corner of my thinking and creative process. I do remember that when we launched the project we had no idea what would happen. So much of the outcome was outside of our control, but we were confident that what we were doing would reveal something wonderful – something we could not see without the participation of the other artists. We held on tightly to the framework of truth and the results demonstrate beautifully the effects that time, mortality and human intervention have on truth.

The Circle of Truth explores the effects of the human filter on the framework of truth, as well as the added pressures of time and mortality. Now maybe you are thinking, “Um, mortality…? How did mortality find its way into this project?” Mortality in this case is the moment when the project was taken away from one artist and given to the next. In our human experience, we are given a window of time, to live out our lives. During that time, we gather information, witness events and suffer the realities of flesh. Then we die, taking all that we know with us into silence. Only the seeds we planted or wounds we inflicted are left to speak for us. The same is true for each artist and their contribution to the Circle. Each had a measured amount of time to gather information from the previous artist’s work and then leave a mark behind for the next artist to decode.

When I talk about a framework of truth, I am not only talking about what we commonly believe to be true, I am also referring to a framework of truth that exists invisibly throughout societies. It informs our conscious and subconscious experiences of life – right and wrong, love, fashion and acceptance. Artists are especially tuned-in to the underlying currents of this truth. Most people can recognize trends once they see them, but artists are often the first to pull them from our subconscious and bring them to light. Truth, the elusive and abstract element that is the ruler by which we measure reality, is present and suspended for all to see in this project. It exists in a variety of layers, not only in the work of the artists, but also in what they have written and in the arc that is clearly visible between them. In addition, there are the truths that were not meant to be revealed. The viewer plays the most important role in the project. Whereas the artists worked in a bubble, knowing only what they could gather from the visiting painting, the viewer serves as the omniscient one – the keeper of truth and knowledge – judging each generation, seeing truth and or deception from a great distance.

The artists who took up the call of the Circle are unique, sage shamans and scribes. Individually, they were each charged with keeping and conveying truth – discovering, analyzing, conceptualizing, creating and passing it along. The Circle preserves their careful contemplation and concern for truth as they encountered it. This truth was subject to 49 wholly different voices. No artist, no matter their reputation, critical acclaim or popular success, was better than another. Each of the 49 was stripped of their trappings and comforts. Each was adrift and on their own, seeking sight of something that was familiar in the piece that confronted them. They were all equals, subject to the same doubts, fears and challenges of their charged tasks. The 49 seemingly imperceptible arcs, when juxtaposed to one another, trace a common curvature that is the Circle of Truth.