Questions for Marfa

Back to Nothing Beside Remains

United Artists, Ltd.
325 East San Antonio Street
Marfa, TX 79843

As part of Nothing Beside Remains, Haendel created a textual mural for the facade of the United Artists, Ltd. building. Entitled Questions for Marfa, this installation posited twenty-five questions, each wrought with a seemingly insurmountable opposition: a concrete presentation that can only elicit an abstract response. Conflating two ways of navigating the world that often feel at odds, the work resided in the space between the spiritual and the rational, using definitive language to describe impressionistic thought. While in a way a kind of travel document, sharpened by context and the artist’s individual internal meanderings, the texts belong to a larger search for answers to questions about choice, purpose, belief, desire, success and failure – ultimately, about the nature of happiness.

Karl Haendel is a Los Angeles-based multimedia artist whose large-scale graphite drawings and installations explore American production, modernist forms, and political and personal narratives. Karl Haendel has had solo exhibitions at Galleria Raucci/Santamaria, Naples (2011); Yvon Lambert, Paris (2011); Harris Lieberman, New York (2007, 2009, 2011), Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Los Angeles (2010); Lever House, New York (2010); Milliken Gallery, Stockholm (2009); Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv (2006, 2008); Anna Helwing Gallery (2003, 2005, 2007); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2006); among others. Recent selected group exhibitions include Prospect II, New Orleans (2011); Collection: MOCA’s First Thirty Years (1980 – Now), The Geffen Contemporary at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2010); The Last Newspaper, The New Museum, New York (2010); and Haunted, Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010).

Specials thanks to United Artists, Ltd.