\\
22. Eric Wesley (1973, Los Angeles, California, United States).
Get Off the Cross, We Need the Wood / CD Player, 2003, is a fiberglass copy from the cross of Jesus Christ made in sections accompanied by a series of drawings illustrating all its potential uses and functions, such as that of a temporary home, a floor, a fan, or a bar counter. In the background, sonorized through the resonance of the cross, is the Stabat Mater prayer, attributed to Iacopone da Todi, a meditation on the sufferings of Mary, Mother of Jesus, during the Crucifixion and Passion. The sequence is usually sung during Mass during Passion Week (the Friday before Palm Sunday).
“Get Off the Cross, We Need the Wood” is a typical American saying to mock the victimhood or excessive self-pity that results in the selfishness and vanity of those who, focused on themselves, do not think of the good and interest of others. A sarcastic and direct way of calling anyone to take responsibility by employing all the tools at hand to do something to change reality.
Eric Wesley’s work, mixing references to classical philosophy with elements of popular culture, mocks the sclerosis of the Western world and society, unmasking the fundamentally primitive composition of the drives that underlie all the social and economic institutions that govern society, including that of art and the art system. Easily pigeonholed into the category of “institutional critique,” his brilliant work corresponds to the less orthodox category of “prankster,” prankster.
Making use of stereotypes, clichés, or customs of popular culture, Wesley unmasks the fictions behind which the apparent order of reality lies. Adopting craft or DIY productions, Eric Wesley’s works range from installation to photography, sculpture to drawing, video to architecture. Also responding to this approach placed outside the system in order to observe the human, perhaps all too human, aspects of it, is the co-founding in 2005 with Piero Golia of a school in the back of a Los Angeles bar, the Mountain School of Arts, completely free and led by internationally renowned artists.
The work, on view on the Foundation’s third floor, potentially closes the building’s upward journey, deliberately leaving the visitor with doubt, but also with a plan for the future.
22. Eric Wesley, Get Off the Cross We Need the Wood, 2003, Project composed of 25 drawings mixed technique on paper, 58 x 41.8 cm (each)
23. Eric Wesley, Get off the cross we need the wood, 2003, Fiberglass, CD player, variable dimensions