‘Call Me’: Jenny Holzer’s Latest Paintings at Art Basel Miami Beach Highlight Revelations From Trump’s Impeachment Hearings

Embattled Trump administration officials Gordon Sondland and
Kurt Volker were in attendance at the VIP opening of Art Basel
Miami Beach today—sort of.

The American diplomats, who have played key roles in the ongoing
impeachment hearings of US President Donald Trump, make an
appearance in a brand new painting by Jenny Holzer referencing the
investigations of the House Intelligence Committee. That
document, marking the next stage of the impeachment
process, was only sent out today
to the Judiciary Committee.

Asked why she chose to highlight these particular texts, Holzer
replied via email, “I want to paint the present.”

The canvas, completed in recent months as the impeachment saga
unfolded, is displayed prominently on the stand of mega-gallery
Hauser & Wirth, priced at $400,000. It is the first of a series of
paintings based on email exchanges unearthed in the investigations
of Trump’s dealings in Ukraine, according to the gallery. The work,
titled Call Me, has not yet been sold, but the gallery
says it is weighing interest and is likely to secure a buyer by the
end of the day.

The painting contains two email exchanges that have been some of
the biggest flashpoints of the impeachment debate. The first is a
message from Volker, the former US special envoy for Ukraine, who
was the first witness to testify in the House’s inquiry.

“Heard from White House—assuming President Z convinces trump he
will investigate / ‘get to the bottom of what happened’ in 2016, we
will nail down date for a visit to Washington,” Volker wrote to an
aide of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25, the
same day that the two presidents spoke by phone in a
conversation that is now at the center of the inquiry.

The second exchange in the painting is between diplomat William
Taylor and Sondland, in which Taylor tries to confirm that military
aid to Ukraine and the Ukrainian president’s White House visit are
both contingent on Ukraine agreeing to investigate Hunter Biden,
the son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

“Are we now saying that security assistance and WH meeting are
conditioned on investigations?” he writes.

Sondland’s reply doubles as the painting’s title: “Call me.”

The text in the painting is obscured by a swirling pattern
rendered in a mix of 24-karat gold, rose gold, and gold leaf,
requiring visitors to stop and look closely to make out the
exchanges. The work is part of Holzer’s ongoing “Redaction
Paintings” series, which delves into declassified and often heavily
censored documents obtained through the Freedom of Information
Act.

During the VIP preview in Miami, fairgoers routinely walked by
the painting, thinking at first it was a run-of-the-mill
abstraction, before catching the glinting famous names out of the
corner of their eye and slowing down to take a closer look.

“Good,” said gallery director Madeline Warren when told of this
response. “That means we lit it correctly.”

The post ‘Call Me’: Jenny Holzer’s Latest Paintings at Art
Basel Miami Beach Highlight Revelations From Trump’s Impeachment
Hearings appeared first on artnet News.